Does anybody know when the Majority Career Fair will take place? Who will be my white peer advisor? When is the welcome weekend for European-American students? Could the University please add my name to the White Student Association's list?
My history professor taught me that taking the opposite of things exposes the appropriateness of the original. My University teaches me that dividing opposite races is appropriate.
The University needs to stop dividing its students by race and adopt race-blind policies. By insisting on the segregation of races in social gatherings, this furthers the obnoxious self-segregation by identifying and grouping its students by their mere skin pigmentation.
Grouping students by race was exactly what happened on Sept. 12 in Garden V. Beginning at 4 p.m., University trumpets beckoned "Asian/Asian Pacific American Graduate Students" to enjoy "light refreshments" in what it billed as a "Gathering in the Garden," courtesy of the Office of the Dean of Students.Cake was served.
Grouping students by race has a name: "That's Wasssupppp." That's not a misprint. It's the subject line on a group e-mail sent to all black students every week to alert them to mostly black student events, black fraternity parties, and mostly black meetings. According to Desiree Aird, Black Student Alliance publicity chair, the BSA receives a list of all members of the black community at the University from the Office of African American Affairs (OAAA), to which it sends the "That's Wasssupppp" list. While the BSA has every right to send a newsletter to its members, "That's Wasssupppp" is sent to each black student regardless of whether a student requested it. The University is encouraging one race to group together.
Grouping students by race happens at the very beginning of the year in President John T. Casteen III's annual Fall Convocation speech. As soon as students arrive, they're told how they are different when President Casteen rattles off statistics of the percentages of minorities. We all can tell by looking around Grounds that this is no longer a white male institution, so please Mr. Casteen, in the next Convocation, do not harp on how the first-year students are racially different.
Grouping students by race happens when non-white, first-year students have the option for a peer advisor. Under the "Peer Advising & Family Network," the Office of the Dean of Students (ODS) assigns incoming Asian-American students to Asian-American peer advisors. Under the Hispanic/Latino Peer Mentoring Program, the same ODS assigns incoming Latino students peer advisors. Under the "Peer Advisor program," the OAAA assigns incoming black students black peer advisors. Under the Purple Mentoring Program, the ODS assigns incoming purple students to purple peer advisors.
"Race is preached to us wherever we go on Grounds," commented first-year Hawani Tessema about this University's fixation on race.After arriving on Grounds, Hawani lamented in an interview that all the "black awareness" has done is to make her "very much aware that I'm black."Another first-year student, Ama Cobbina similarly laments, "It was definitely shocking when I came to the school and I notice more and more when I look into the mirror that I am black."Both automatically receive "That's Wasssupppp."
Race, after all, is merely a social construction. There is nothing scientifically different about human beings that requires them to be grouped according to a single piece of infinitesimal genetic material. Race is just what we make, or construct, of it. The University constructs too much.
This recalls the source of the world's wisdom: The back of Charlottesville taxis. One message reads, "Genealogy: living life in the past lane."
Past racial discrimination does not mean the current University should continue to group non-whites together. True, our society's history of discrimination casts a long shadow of racial tension.But its response is flawed.
In response the University is grouping, segregating, and feeding one race at a time to compensate for the past injustices. I had the chance to interview, the Senior Associate Dean of Students, Shamim Sisson, who was present at the "Gathering in the Garden."She is right to not tell previously discriminated groups, "get over it," but the University exacerbates the racial problem by separating students by race in response.About bridging the past with the present, Dean Sisson claims that "together we can learn how to do it differently." However, in order to live differently from the past, further segregation is not the answer.
The past teaches us that when we stress differences, we construct walls between ourselves that can serve as kindling wood for fiery racial antagonisms. We shall stress commonalities, not differences.
When a first-year of race Q is paired up with another student of race Q, official segregation encourages self-segregation. When Dean Sisson's office sponsors gatherings in the garden, those serpentine walls segregate.
At the heart of the matter lies two dangerous sentiments:envy and exclusion.This place needs a mixture of races, not segregation.Instead of assigning just non-White students peer advisors, the University should assign all first-year students peer advisors, regardless of race.I have "special needs" too, and by neglecting me on the basis of my race seems to say that my needs are not as important as those of other races.
I want cake too!
(Brandon Possin's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at bpossin@cavalierdaily.com.)
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