Smart Alec | It’s bigger than racism

Christopher Abreu’s powerful column on Monday ascribed racism as the reason for his atrocious treatment at the hands of two sets of drunken students. Yet for our response to merely be a condemnation of racism confuses the symptom with the disease.

I don’t think certain white Penn students are just intolerant of black Penn students. If Abreu had been of any other ethnicity in both of those encounters, I expect that he would have gotten the same treatment with different epithets.

If he had been traveling home arm-in-arm with a hypothetical boyfriend, the insults would have been homophobic. Any visible sign of difference would have been turned into a hurtful insult. This is because the true problem is not racism per se but the application of racist rhetoric by students who, under the influence of alcohol, reveal their basic lack of human decency toward any person, be they of color or not.

Of course, I’m a white man, so I cannot speak to racism itself. But as I read Abreu’s column I came to reflect on my own experience of discrimination as an openly gay man. I thought it was important, while I was a semi-public figure on campus, to be fully out. It was not a decision without consequences.

One evening, I was walking home from my office on the east side of campus and encountered a small group of Penn students, who stopped me, threw their drink at my face, called me a “faggot” and stalked away. This was the capstone of covert and overt homophobia directed at me throughout my term as Undergraduate Assembly chairman, including charming comments from readers on The Daily Pennsylvanian’s website that asserted that I won the position because of my proficiency for engaging in oral sex with gay members of the UA. Indeed, it was made clear to me that a public campaign on the UA constitutional reforms would drag my homosexuality into it, which is one of the reasons I capitulated.

Looking back now, I don’t think homophobia had much to do with these incidents. They were homophobic, but it was homophobia used as a weapon against me, because I was different in some way — because I annoyed people. I was a target — and hey, here was some ammo that would really, really hurt.

And though I appreciate that there are significant differences in discrimination between “invisible” minorities and ethnic and racial minorities, I think in incidents like these the same is true — it is from our hearts, not our perception of race, that these kinds of attacks come. And it’s the behavior as much as the context that we ought to fight.

What is the solution? Abreu’s proposed solution (minorities, stay away) is rhetorically powerful but silly. We will hardly get more tolerance here by restoring Penn to its dubious past as a 19th-century bastion of white privilege. The solutions hitherto proposed by minority coalitions — that we need more (racial/ethnic) minority faculty, more (racial/ethnic) minority students and more, more, more money for more programming — will, in the best of all possible worlds, only change the epithets. It won’t change the behavior.

Penn students are capable of astonishing cruelty, indifference, bitchiness, bullying and all the cornucopia of what is bad in a person — brought to the surface by alcohol and adolescence. They are also capable of immense and unsolicited thoughtfulness and benevolence. We should respond to this incident not by focusing on race but rather on behavior exhibited to any of our peers, of whatever race, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation. We need more kindness on our campus.

Alec Webley is a College senior and former chairman of the Undergraduate Assembly. His email address is webley@theDP.com. Smart Alec appears every Thursday.

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