t seems we can’t get through ten weeks of Dartmouth without some major controversy regarding racism. This term, Peter Blair ’12 graced us with a column in The Dartmouth suggesting we do away with women’s and minority studies departments. We also all got to see the now infamous GGMM (Generic Good Morning Message) blitz with its racist mockery of Dartmouth’s new president. Last spring, it was another twofer: the Black Womanhood Exhibit entitled “Hip-Hop in the Hood” and the BlarFlex comic in The D, which did a fine job of being simultaneously racist, sexist, and homophobic. Unfortunately, these instances become focused on the specific offenders (who are sometimes well-intentioned but misguided), instead of forcing us to deal with pervasive racial problems on campus.

At the moment, the majority of campus has hunkered down to pull desperate all-nighters in preparation for finals. In fact, that’s what the authors of this editorial were supposed to be doing last Saturday—that or sleeping. Instead, we were wrapped up in a six-hour discussion/debate about race, racism, white privilege, and minority communities.

We say discussion/debate because we were coming at the issue from pretty different sides. Catherine is half-Latina, half-white, and describes herself as newly “militant” on the issue of race thanks to the education of a lifetime from close friends here that has left her empowered at best, and embittered at worst. Alex is inarguably white and accepts her “white privilege.” However, she also came into the conversation defensive about the subject of the previous day’s panel on “whiteness,” which could have been better titled “white people shape up.”

Even without being overtly racist, it’s easy for white people to go through life not recognizing the privileges their race offers them, an obliviousness minorities find far more difficult to share. By not acknowledging all the ways our social structure gives preference to white people, white passive neglect contributes to circumstances in which minorities are left at a disadvantage. It’s certainly easier to walk through life unconscious of the issue of race in certain areas of the country which sport less diversity than Dartmouth; nonetheless, even here it’s easy to be fairly unaware and isolated in predominantly white Greek organizations or groups of friends.

However, say you’re a white person; you’ve accepted that affords you certain privileges; you trying to perceive the world through a more race-conscious lens and want to do something to shape up. What should you do? Nobody has articulated any good answer—the Whiteness panelists stressed awareness and not handing down statements about minority identity outside of your experience—but have not offered good solutions about the right way to dialogue about racial issues or what kind of action could be taken.

Whose job is it to come up with a solution? Minority students complain that they’re always the ones compelled to reach out, that they’re expected to “educate” white people on race, and that they shouldn’t have to be the ones to make white people aware of race or present them with opportunities to get actively involved toward changing those issues. They’re right. But if they feel that this is a necessary responsibility that someone must take on, they might have to do so themselves. While in an ideal world white people would come to an awareness of race on their own, in an ideal world these issues wouldn’t exist in the first place.

Many white people do grow up in homogenous communities where they don’t gain much experience with race, so they aren’t liable to realize of their own accord that they need to be aware of their privilege. Often, white students believe they are aware of racial issues because they studied the Civil Rights Movement in school. These people need to know this does not suffice. Even with the benefits of attending a “diverse” college like Dartmouth, it is easy to live a segregated existence and, of course, not to study anything that would make one more aware of racial problems and tensions.

Say you are a white person with a pretty good awareness of white privilege and racial issues. You feel informed enough to comment on race and you have the desire to get involved with racial justice issues. Minority students sometimes shut down white students when they try to engage in a discussion of these issues. Minority communities want to practice self-help and not be bossed around by white people. So even if you want to begin a dialogue about race as a white person, it’s difficult to find a way in which you can do so without coming across as offensive or insensitive. So many “well-meaning white liberals” adopt the politically correct route and just try not to enter into deep, nuanced discussion of race at all. Sadly, whether this comes from good intentions or cowardice, it is not helpful to better the situation of race relations in America or on this campus.

Currently, there are limited options for white students to get involved with racial activism on campus. They can try to join one of the organizations for a specific minority, like La Alianza or the Afro-American Society, which are open and welcoming to white people in varying degrees. But when white people feel they’re unwanted, they don’t want to intrude. There’s also the issue that attending meetings for one of these groups isn’t a situation in which you can deal with racial justice as a holistic issue; you are dealing with the specific issues of one minority group. So while many white people might not go just because they’re uncomfortable with the idea of going to a place where they’ll be in the minority—and minority students are right to critique that since they have to deal with this every day of their lives—others don’t attend simply because they don’t want to intrude where they’re not wanted or because they don’t feel like they can identify with the issues of one minority group rather than another.

Another outlet for white students interested in racial justice is the variety of progressive/activist organizations on campus. Issues like prison reform and the death penalty are disproportionately significant to minorities because of racism in the criminal justice system, so you can join an organization like Amnesty International or the Prison Project or the Coalition for Progress to deal with these race issues. Unfortunately, these organizations tend to be predominantly white, partly because minority students who wish to be actively involved in racial justice do so through minority organizations. Thus, you run into the same problem of white people “deciding what’s best” for minority populations, and students involved in these organizations generally aren’t viewed as legitimately interested in racial issues because they aren’t actually working with people of race.

So who’s going to come up with a solution? Well-meaning whites don’t want to come across as dictating terms; minorities don’t want to feel like they’re being subjected to white people’s solutions to their problems. Therefore, it seems difficult to state that white people alone are going to able to fix the situation. In our discussion, Catherine came up with the idea of a formal venue through which white people can work on important race issues alongside minority students of multiple communities, getting to know one another and forming bonds through action. A kind of “race-and-allies group,” premised on the way the LGBT community has incorporated allies into their activism, as the on campus Gender Sexuality XYZ group demonstrates, with a mix of straight and queer people. But if Alex, as a white person, were to start up a group centered on dialogue and activism regardin
g race, the only people who would show up would be white people. And just like straight allies don’t want to get together and work on queer activism by themselves, the point of an organization would be an alliance between white and minority students. Meanwhile, minority students might be pissed off that some white girl started up an organization thinking she could fix their issues. It can’t go both ways: either minority students have to let white people organize on their behalf, or they need to be the ones to initiate venues through which white students can contribute to improving race relations.

At lot of the nuances about racial activism, working within communities, the prejudices of white people, and the harm of passively not making yourself aware of race issues have been left out of this editorial for space considerations. Recriminations aside, we’re trying to think of the most positive way in which this race divide can be addressed. The raising of awareness about white privilege promoted by an event like “Whiteness” is one step, but without some idea of what positive steps can be taken by white people, this increased awareness can become an unproductive guilt-trip leading white people to become more defensive, rather than more helpful, engaged, and understanding. The race-and-allies organization seems to us like a good option: it wouldgive students who come to college with some interest in racial justice a place to develop that concern, improving the awareness of white people in general. Students come to college to expand their horizons and deal with their prejudices, and many of us end up with passions we didn’t expect coming in.

Right now, it seems that the best way for a white person to gain this education is through minority students—but the truth is, you can’t (and shouldn’t) go around saying, “I’m looking for a black friend to teach me.” Unfortunately, it’s too easy for white students not to get close to many minority students, especially since the Greek system is predominantly white and contains such a large portion of the campus; attending the occasional Cutter-Shabazz dance party doesn’t alter this situation. White students sometimes complain about the insularity of minority communities, and while there is good reason for minorities on campus to want spend time together, this claim blatantly ignores the fact that white people clump together as well. But the truth is, no textbook can teach you about racial issues the way human interaction can. It’s when we hear about a friend’s personal experience with racial slurs at a local store; it’s when we live that experience with them; it’s when we realize that a friend’s parents came illegally to the U.S. from Latin America had to work with few rights; and it’s when they were told to go back where they came from in front of their children. That’s when the idea of white privilege, and what it affords us, can finally hit home. And until then, we’re just talking past each other without understanding how we can all move forward.