Effectively addressing issues of race on campus - BI Forum

Black Issues in Higher Education, April 24, 2003 by Douglas F. Challenger

Racial and ethnic diversity on college and university campuses is on the public agenda again this spring as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to rule on the University of Michigan's admissions policies.

Rather than remedying past racism and discrimination (not to mention the present), advocates for affirmative action argue that race and ethnic background are important criteria for college admittance, in addition to academic merit, because a diverse student body creates a better learning environment.

An impressive list of American corporations also supports this argument. While many readily admit diversity helps sell product, they also maintain that a diverse work force is creative and dynamic. This is a fine argument and one that I believe is right, but as a sole defense of this policy, it too easily excuses past and present racial injustice. In addition, it overlooks what both people of color and Whites really want to say about racial considerations in hiring and admissions guidelines, as well as the present state of race and ethnic tension in America.

It was de ja vu all over again for me when I read about how classes were cancelled recently at Connecticut College so that a campus-wide meeting could take place to address a series of racial incidents and a host of other issues, including affirmative action. For the last four years, our college has held regular public forums to address racial and ethnic tensions on our own campus and in society at large.

We use a structured format for these participatory forums based on the National Issues Forums (NIF) in which participants, with the help of a trained moderator, examine the advantages and disadvantages of a range of policy choices for addressing the issue.

We also began an interracial "sustained dialogue" group of students, faculty and staff that has met weekly since 1999 to deepen and sustain the conversations that occur each semester in the policy-oriented campus forums.

Together these campus dialogues have significantly improved the campus climate and have given us a new way to teach and learn from each other. We also have learned a great deal about why race and ethnic tensions persist in America and what young people, in particular, think about how to reduce such tensions.

Our experience of several years of dialogue about this issue on campus was confirmed when I read a report by Doble Research Associates on the findings of hundreds of National Issues Forums held nationwide this past year. Like our campus dialogue groups, the structure of these forums provides a safe and comfortable space for people to talk. When Americans engage in dialogue about race and ethnicity, we approach these issues differently depending on our ethnic or racial background.

Whenever we hold a forum on race and ethnicity on campus, we hear statements that indicate Whites are not aware of the racism and discrimination that people of color regularly encounter. Moreover, many Whites do not see how the ordinary patterns of interaction in our society function as a kind of affirmative action program for them in housing, education, employment and so on. This is what many call "White privilege."

Many White students express resentment over racial preferences in admissions and in hiring practices. They see such practices as a major source of racial and ethnic tension. They point out the need for a class-based or need-based form of affirmative action, which could provide help to low-income Whites. One White woman in a recent forum I helped moderate at the University of Massachusetts-Boston stated: "I hear you all talking about White privilege, but I don't feel so privileged."

While Whites and people of color agree that there are racial and ethnic inequities to remedy, most have serious doubts about affirmative action as a means to those ends. Like Whites, many students of color on our campus do not want to have race considered when they apply for admittance to college or a job because they want to be judged and rewarded on their merits. Yet, students of color are more likely than their White counterparts to say that whatever shortcomings affirmative action may have, the need for it, as well as its underlying rationale, has not changed. Race still matters, they say, regardless of class background.

Regardless of racial and ethnic background, students and others on campus say diversity is an important goal that should be pursued by both educators and employers.

Like participants in the nationwide NIF forums, students in our campus dialogues discover that their mistaken ideas about one another are a major obstacle to developing productive relations across racial lines. Once those differences are shared and internalized, it enables people to work together and leads them to transform their proposals into policies designed to benefit the community as a whole by addressing the needs of those uniquely situated within it.

Let's hope the U.S. Supreme Court will do as well. *

--Dr. Douglas E Challenger is an associate professor of sociology and director of the New England Center for Civic Life at Franklin Pierce College in Rindge, N.H.