Parochial Moorings Don't Bog Down

COSMOPOLITANISM Assimilation Work within the system if you want to get anywhere.

Black students--as well as other minorities--have heard these words before, and now we're hearing them again Just last week, in a letter to The Crimson (February 25). Professor of Government Martin Kilson writes that Black students' preferences for what he calls "parochial mornings," or ractally exclusive groups and activities, are "not rights."

Kilson goes on to assert that "it is a pathetic and disorienting contradiction for Black students line (Black Students' Association President) Timothy Wilkins and Anthony Ball of the Third World Students' Alliance to ask others (Whites) to generate resources to sustain their political preferences" Kilson suggests that Black students should adopt "cosmopolitan lifestyles" and develop "inter-ethnic friendships and net-works," with the belief that "Black students at Harvard 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." While Kilson maintains that cosmopolitanization doesn't preclude "intra-ethnic relationships," he seems to place Blacks into two camps--the cosmopolitan or the ethnocentric--and judges the first superior to the second.

What Kilson is asking Black students to do, then, is the same things Booker I Washington asked Blacks to do a century ago assimilate Don't rock the boat Black students should walk around like inside out double-stuff Orco cookies, hard and Black on the inside, but soft, and white on the outside.

Kilson also takes a shot at Black Alumni Weekend, saving that in its ethnocentricity it is not a "very good start." He suggests that these Black alumni should instead show up at Harvard's Commencement, which Kilson calls "one of the most powerful in-gatherings around."

Perhaps the professor is right. Perhaps Blacks need to forsake their Blackness in order to succeed in a white world. But the cost Kilson would have Blacks pay is, for many, too high. The price is for Blacks to forsake their very identity as a race in order to get ahead. The price is to give up Black friendships we have formed out of choice in favor of "inter-ethnic" ties for the sake of future financial contacts. Kilson's argument makes perfect monetary sense but true friendships should be of a higher order.

ABOVE ALL ELSE, Kilson and the Black students at Harvard disagree on the uses of a college education. For the professor, Harvard can be viewed as a way of getting in with the power structure of whites Blacks can abandon their traditional customs and through a type of collegiate evolution become Yuppies, driving to work at IBM, parking their Nissans in the rows of Cadillac.

But these is a danger in education, the danger of forgetting one's roots and responsibilities. We have short cultural memories. Without developing strong ties to other Blacks while in college, the Black cosmopolitan would have little in common with his poorer brethren save the color of his skin. We need to build a sense of cultural morality, to foster a sense of ethnic responsibility in college. Hanging around the power broken is no way to achieve this.

Black students can and should see Harvard as a way of strengthening themselves from within through intrarace relations that create a greater cultural awareness and a greater cultural solidarity. This is done through Black singing groups and Black history courses and Third World centers, precisely the groups and activities that Kilson says add up to "excessive ethnocentric behavior," which he calls "dysfunctional to the egalitarian goals of parity for Blacks in institutional participation." The professor never defines "excessive" ethnocentricity, but he constantly puts down this quality in favor of "cosmopolitanism." But this feeling of ethnic belonging is crucial in motivating these future doctors to heal and not to steal, future lawyers to make justice work and not just make money. It creates a Black social conscience that must be instituted in college so that it is not just skin deep.

Individual Blacks shouldn't have to go it alone. Blacks can't afford to separate themselves from Black social circles to enter the white world and be absorbed by some sort of pinocytosis. Why should it be different at Harvard than it is in American society? The United States is a country which prides itself on cultural differences and a society that thrives on the interface of its varied cultural groupings. To ask Blacks to become "cosmopolitan" in a corruption of what it is to be a Black American. No gain, whether educational, influential or financial, in worth the denial of what one is. That is a corruption of the spirit.

But is it right to ask Harvard to fund such excursions into Black cultural awareness? How can the Black Students' Association (BSA) and its affiliated groups justify both their rejection of mainstream Harvard life and their requests for Harvard's financial backing?

The first thing that the casual observer notices on a Black Alumni Weekend poster are the large words "all are welcome." This is the Key to the Black society of Harvard. The BSA is not saying "stay away, what we do is ours." Rather, The BSA by means of Alumni weekends, parties, readings and a host of other proposes is saying to Harvard "look, this is what we've done a young are welcome in participate." It is not an assertion of separatism and isolationism but one of identify and accomplishments. And accomplishment is something Harvard should support.