Solidarity in Search of Identity

The following article, by Melvin E. Reeves '73-4 and Harvard W. Stephens '73-4, is a response to an article by Martin L. Kilson Jr., professor of Government, in last week's issue of The Harvard Independent. Kilson wrote that black solidarity among students at Harvard has become "an ethnic thumb-sucking disaster."

Professor Martin Kilson is upset again with black students who spend their time, in his words, sucking their "ethnic thumbs." His characterization of black solidarity implies that black students are both immature and insecure, for they have turned their backs on the "success patterns and intellectual processes" that are readily demonstrated among other Harvard students.

He posits a withdrawal of blacks from mainstream life at Harvard and calls this "ethnic thumb-sucking behavior," whose consequences have been disastrous. What does his analysis mean?

According to this view, black solidarity is an immature defense mechanism for students who would rather act out than cope more effectively with reality, and a useless ritual within a diverse academic community.

Solidarity is adaptive, more than maladaptive. Therefore, Professor Kilson's complaints also demonstrate the heightened vulnerability that isolated individuals can experience. The search for identity takes many forms of developmental importance to almost all college students. Through black solidarity, uncertainty about identity can evolve into confidence, political and social maturity, and intellectual achievement.

Professor Kilson, a noted scholar, concedes that the "black solidarity" activism of 1969-75 resulted in the revision of objectively racist policies at Harvard. Are not these revisions extremely important to the University as a whole, as both a reflection of and a model for corresponding societal change? With solidarity, power can be used for constructive and responsible ends.

There is some truth to Professor Kilson's claim that "for black students to ask the very group they hold responsible for blacks' oppression to finance black solidarity is, to say the least, a most profound and disorienting contradition." But there is another contradiction that we raise, a fundamental one--that Harvard's avowed commitment to social progress stands in stark contrast to its profitable investment practices that have helped maintain white-minority rule and apartheid in South Africa.

Varieties of white solidarity have been nurtured here, in America's leading educational institution, since its inception. As the admissions records show, there has always been space for sizable proportions of alumni children; people from different geographical regions; and those with special characteristics and talents, political or financial connections.

Harvard allows these individuals and other interest groups to create their own unique and autonomous niches through the House system, the social clubs and in other activities. We ask as black students, if our talents and potentials are of equal value, why is it so important that we not sit together for lunch

Professor Kilson's thesis relies heavily on what he calls the "success pattern" at Harvard. To him, black students should strive for formal integration within the University context. He should be pleased, as we are, that black Harvard graduates have historically made significant contributions to society. He should also be pleased that recent black graduates appear to be achieving the type of success he values, while still having to deal with society's racism.

In developing his argument, he gives explicit encouragement to the pursuit of that bitch-goddess, success. As shown by the Harvard Grant Study, a long term evaluation of the adaptations to life of the "healthiest" white male members of the classes of 1939 to 1944, achieving the bitch-goddess does not necessarily correlate with important indices of growth and maturity.

Minorities are not freely given the chance to define success for themselves, neither within college nor in society at large. Perhaps minority solidarity on college campuses is preparation for future roles in meeting the needs of communities for jobs, better housing, quality education and more effective political participation.

The coming together of Latino, Asian, American Indian, African and Afro-American students reflects a search for individual identities, common ground, shared ideas, and collective values. We seek to exemplify and remain respectful of our common heritage as proud peoples. Is this not proof of education at its best?

Pride and excellence go hand in hand; one promotes the other. Black solidarity is Professor Kilson's term for what is becoming Third World solidarity. It is neither thumb-sucking behavior nor a cop-out, but rather a positive expression of shared interests that demonstrates an increasing potential for meaningful interaction between culturally distinct groups.