Christopher Abreu showed great courage in his guest column by making public his recent encounter with racism on our campus and by breaking the silence that often pervades such incidents of oppression.
Over the past two days, this wake-up call has mobilized students into a silent protest, the creation of open forums for discussion and even the founding of a blog for stories of isolation and harassment at Penn. The outpouring of student support demonstrates that Abreu’s experience was not an isolated instance of bigotry and that racial discrimination occurs at Penn more often than we may think, whether in the form of overt hostility or microaggression.
Although the immediate concern was the existence of racism within our community, the incident touches upon the broader issue of students and faculty not feeling that they are a part of the fabric of Penn’s community.
While the incident in question is identifiably racist, the concept of difference is central to the marginalization of students on the basis of race, gender, ability and/or sexual orientation. For this reason, our communities have to understand, accept and speak across this difference.
The Penn community must take more steps to create an environment that is welcoming to individuals of all backgrounds, whether they be persons of color, queer or straight, male or female, minority or majority. Minorities and non-minorities alike must participate in one another’s communities in an effort to recognize that every individual has his or her own struggle and to create an environment in which students can serve as allies for one another — not only between majority groups and minority ones but also between minorities themselves.
We must take exploration of the ways in which identity operates on our campus beyond the realm of the classroom and student organizations. This is a call for open, sustained dialogue on a campus-wide scale.
This guest column was written by the United Minorities Council and the Race Dialogue Project. The UMC can be contacted at unitedminoritiescouncil@gmail.com. The Race Dialogue Project can be contacted at racedialogueproject@gmail.com.
The following are people and organizations are signatories of this guest column:
Civic House Associates Coalition Executive Board Class Board 2013 Community School Student Partnerships Penn Democrats Social Planning and Events Committee Rachel Abeles, President, Panhellenic Council Faye Cheng, Vice President, Undergraduate Assembly Angel Contrera, Chair of the Latino Coalition Tyler Ernst, President, Undergraduate Assembly Jim Foreman, President, Student Athlete Advisory Committee Candace Freeman, President, Minorities in Nursing Organization Meg Hlousek, Chair, Penn Consortium of Undergraduate Women Corinne Rich, Chairwoman, Lambda Alliance Victor Scotti Jr., Planning & Facilitating Chair, UMOJA Nickpreet Singh, Chairman, Asian Pacific Student Coalition Spencer Stubbs, President, Male Association of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania (MAN-UP)
