With Thanksgiving merely a week away, perhaps it's time to think beyond the turkey and stuffing and pumpkin pies and reflect on the precedent America's first European settlers set in their first contact with a minority group and the country's exclusive treatment toward Native Americans.
As part of Unity Week, keynote speaker Evelyn Hu-DeHart, spoke on the topic of "Redefining America: Race Relations in Our Time" in Houston Hall. She took the text book version of historic American treatment of minorities and revealed the incongruencies she has found.
Hu-Dehart took a close look at American History in order to exhibit what she believes is the faulty base of existing definitions of Americanism and to exemplify the knowledge that must be obtained to create new, more culturally encompassing definitions.
She said that although America has created a tidy self-image as a "cultural melting pot... there is another history that certain other Americans have lived through," namely those Americans that are of African, Native American, Hispanic or Asian decent.
"Why do we see how diverse this country is," she asked, "but at the same time we have so much trouble dealing with that diversity?"
Hu-Dehart declared that "Triumphists" are the enemy of the multiculturalists, whose aim is to reconstruct a more accurate historical account of race relations. She said "Triumphists" can be found across all party, intellectual and economic lines literally triumphing America as a predominately good product of western tradition. But they are lurking out there "ignoring the inconveniences in history, rationalizing them and refusing to acknowledge the fact that America didn't include everyone," she said.
"Triumphist" and "multiculturalist" are two of the forceful words that Hu-Dehart employed in creating her argument.
"She presented a lot of really useful vocabulary," College sophomore and former Daily Pennsylvanian staff member Natalie Fabe said. "Language is so charged with meaning, so to be able to use these definitions will really help me to be able to more intelligibly discuss ethnic relations."
And as Hu-Dehart maintained through the entire lecture, the journey to obtain that intelligence and put it to use is what it's all about. She remarked that the "goal of education should be to produce that new knowledge so that it is available and incorporated" and that students today should "participate in constructing a new account of American History that may be truly inclusive."
Hu-DeHart was recently added to the faculty of Brown University because of her extensive knowledge of and experience in the field of ethnic studies.
"She is not only knowledgeable about race and ethnic relations, but she has also established ethnic studies as a legitimate discipline in the academy," said event co-organizer Samir Meghelli, a College junior. "She has both experience and scholarly background."
Hu-DeHart was invited to speak by the United Minorities Council, the Greenfield Intercultural Center and the Social Planning and Events Committee's Connaissance branch so that she could help confront some of the pressing issues of exclusion of minority groups and consequently contribute to Unity Week.
