Cosmopolitan Imperative

To the Editors of the Crimson:

Camille Caesar produced a first-rate article on the second edition of The Black Student's Guide to Colleges, demonstrating that the current edition is as had as the first. Caesar's article also revealed something about Black students' lifestyles at Harvard that the Crimson eight to spend more time writing about--namely, the growing cosmopolitanization of their lifestyles, dispersing beyond the one dimensional ethnic cocoon of Black roommates. Black dining tables, Black singing groups, etc. etc. These cosmopolitans among Harvard Black students recognize that excessive ethnocentric behavior is dysfunctional to the egalitarian goals of parity for Blacks (and other weak groups) in institutional participation, leverage, and clout in American society.

This recognition of the cosmopolitan imperative in American life is both correct and in line with the comparable recognition of the cosmopolitan imperative by Jewish, Irish, Italian, Asian, and other ethnic students at Harvard. The cosmopolitan imperative, moreover, does not preclude intra-ethnic relationships and networks, as Timothy Wilkins, head of Harvard Black Students Association, intimated in his comment that Black students "see that Harvard is the only Ivy League school without a Third World Center and they think that the University wants all Black students to assimilate." The cosmopolitan imperative demands only that the parochial impulses and proclivities that one brings to Harvard be tempered by the global realities that inevitably make up an elite secular college community in late 20th century America (or anywhere else for that matter).

Students will, of course, vary in the degree to which any given student will temper his or her parochial givens with cosmopolitan interactions. Some prefer a foot in parochial moorings while trekking Harvard's cosmopolitan cross-roads, which explains the existence of a Church of the Latter-Day-Saints on Brattle Street for Harvard's Mormon students and a Hillel House on Mt. Auburn St. for Harvard's Jewish students. But Black students must recognize that such preference for parochial moorings are not rights--requiring inputs by the wider college community for their enjoyment. Thus Mormon and Jewish students wishing to enjoy parochial moorings while trekking Harvard's cosmopolitan turf turn to their respective ethnic communities for the funds and resources to sustain this preference.

It is a pathetic and disorienting contradiction for Black students like Timothy Wilkins and also Anthony Ball of the Third World Students Alliance to ask others (whites)to generate resources to sustain their parochial preferences. If such Black students entertain any serious intention of aiding resolution of the crisis of social pathologies facing some one-third of Black Americans who are in or near poverty, they have to rid themselves of an immature and phony perspective toward ethnic leadership. Blacks with wealth and institutional resources will have to put some of these on the line (not just ethnocentric theatric)in order to upgrade the Black poor, or stop all the fast and easy talk about being Black leaders And Blacks with cosmopolitan lifestyles, with linkages to inter-ethnic friendships and networks have got to find ways in out ncoconservative era to get these cross-ethnic networks and friends to recognize their obligation and American society's obligation to bring our countru's average standard of living to the Black poor.

For my money, I'd bet that the Black students at Harvard (and other colleges, too) who have chosen cosmopolitan identities rather than ethnocentric ones will in the future perform their Black leadership requirements better than Black students who have opted for ethnocentrism. If the good Lord's willing. I'll meet Timothy Wilkins. Anthony Ball, and Audrey Mitchell down the road in 20 years to pick up my winnings. By the way, I don't think Wilkins and his followers are getting off to a very good start, using resources of some Black graduates of Harvard for an ethnocentric Alumni Weekend gathering on March 1-3, rather then galvanizing such bourgeois resources to begin to make a dent in the crises of the Black poor. Why not tell -these Black Harvard graduates to show up at Harvard's Commencement--one of the most powerful college annual in-gatherings around--where they'd do much better for the Black poor by trying to persuade their White. Asian, and Hispanic Harvard alumni to turn their backs on neoconservatism and the New Right and to help America keep her promises to the Black poor. Martin Kilson   Professor of Government