A Parting Shot

WE sit at separate tables, keep largely to ourselves, count people of our own group among our closest friends. Whether Black or white, we all realize that race still matters in some intangible way, though its effects are real. The tensions evidence themselves in small ways--the perception by Blacks of insensitivity by whites, the assumption by whites of special consideration for Blacks.

These tensions do not lead to brawls, as on other campuses. But neither do they seem to be fading away. More and more, it seems the differences are here to stay; the tables will remain separated.

During the last year, questions of sensitivity have dominated discussions on campus, whether they concern Blacks, women or gays. At The Crimson, our sensitivity has been challenged. Shortly after we had begun publishing last spring, the first complaints set in. For a What Is to Be Done issue on Black History Month, we profiled a Black playwright who considers the Black contribution to history to be largely worthless.

We apologized for running the piece, as we should have. It was, in some respects, the equivalent of running a discussion of Dr. King's sex life on his birthday. But it was not a pleasant experience to have a Black law school student suggest that I was a racist or that our institution was racist for having printed it. The intent was not to offend, but the effect was to have done so. In addition to the apology, we ran a piece critical of the profile and challenging the appropriateness of having run it.

But I am sure that to those who believe The Crimson is insensitive, little was done to allay their concerns. The distrust is great. In a meeting early last spring with members of the Black Students Association, we discussed how we could attract more Blacks to The Crimson. We were told by some BSA members that we were a largely white institution, and were looked on as such by most Blacks on campus.

In short, it was as if there was a large "No Vacancy" sign on our front door. There was a desire on both sides to overcome that perception, to convince incoming Black undergraduates that it is worth their while to comp for the paper. But the level of distrust, on both sides, was high. Too high.

AND that is the case on campus generally. The complaints of insensitivity increase, but the level of dialogue does not. As concerns focus increasingly on language and attitudes towards race and gender, as opposed to discrimination, it seems that there is precious little in the way of talking or thought on the subject. We speak to ourselves.

For many this new demand for sensitivity is an unwarranted nuisance; it is the battle cry of the hyper-sensitive. The four-decade march towards a reconsideration of our attitudes towards racism and sexism has suddenly stalled. There is a reluctance, even a resistance towards those who want to subject private attitudes, and trivial public expression to the standards of civil rights and feminism.

The traditional means of overcoming racism and sexism has been through confrontation, a challenge to the morality of the accused. The effect was to force those accused of sexism or racism to confront their own attitudes, to determine for themselves whether they were in fact being offensive.

This was the meaning of Dr. King--to turn a nation in on itself, to confront its own conscience. As one writer has put it, Dr. King was successful because when Southerners "smote him--as they inevtiably must--they hurt them selves...In the end, it was the power of their own idealized vision of themselves as Christians, transcended into Blackness, personified in King and him, a seemingly loving and non-violent host, that shook them to the roots of self." But we are rarely shaken to such depths today.

The moral challenge, the cry of pain, no longer causes us to look within, to examine the morality of our actions. We have decided racism and sexism are bad. But that moral decision was painful enough, and further prodding is not appreciated. Those who do so with charges of insensitivity are annoying rather than challenging.

And this is the essence of the problem. We have created a new response to maintain vestiges of our atavisms, and it is condescension. 'Hasn't enough been given, will you people never stop complaining?'

PART of the reason for such complaints is the nature of the demands. It is one thing to be outraged by the events of Forsythe, Ga., but to equate such behavior with the kind exhibited by The Crimson or by a history professor lecturing on slavery strains credulity.

Every slight is said to draw its source form the same collective unconsicous of racism and sexism. The implications of the challenge are severe.

And in response many grow cynical. Indeed, our generation is not so much greedy or apathetic as it is cynical. It is the difference between Carson and Letterman.

The New York Times recently examined our generation's lingusitic creations and noted that the term "p.c." was foremost among them. It stands for "politically correct"; it is the detached and cynical term used to describe attitudes which are sympathetic to the demands for sensitivity. It describes those who believe the liberal litany unquestionable; it is the modernized version of the term "knee-jerk liberal."

If before, such liberalism was denigrated as the result of rote belief, now it is said to be the product of a desire to be "correct," fashionable. It is not so much unthinking, as conniving.

In this way the cynicism projects itself onto the object of the cynicism. The term arises because we do not believe that people hold to liberal views for moral reasons. They hold to them because it is "cool." It is part of the process of stripping the morality from beliefs which once were thought to spring wholly from a moral foundation.

TO give into sensitivity is a sign of being a conformist, lacking a free mind. In this respect, it is the difference between All in the Family and Family Ties--the hip youngster now makes fun of the sensitive male, who is old.

Morton Downey's popularity derives in large part from the fact that he is not bound to any of the conventions the rest of are forced to obey, lest we be criticized of being racist or sexist. He is the mouth unchallenged, free to speak as he pleases. He gives inspiration to the timid.

The protesters are now on the other side, the courageous free spirit more likely to be conservative than liberal. It is they who now lay claim to the protections of free speech, who can claim that morality is on their side. Even The Dartmouth Review claims the privileges of the oppressed.

The success of the civil rights and women's movements has turned the world on its head. Those who challenged power are now in it, and their demands often seem unreasonable.

A classic example is the letter which Assistant Dean for Minority Affairs and Race Relations Hilda Hernandez-Gravelle recently released. Commenting on two recent incidents of racial insensitivity, she asked the campus to pay attention to its language, so as not to make others feel excluded. But the incidents she described trace the line from the old racism to the new perception of insensitivity. To many, the letter was a parody of the kind of demands which minorities now make.

The first incident was the spraying of racist graffiti on a campus wall around the time of Martin Luther King's birthday. The second was the posting of a flyer by the University Dining Hall Services advertising a "1950s night" as a chance to remember a care-free time.

If we acknowledge that the first incident was clearly offensive, we are likely to question the dean's concern about the latter event. By linking the two, is she not trivializing racism? After all, no offense was intended by referring to the 1950s as a "care-free" era. Must we always mention Jim Crow when we refer to a pre-1970 decade?

But by the same token, the dean said she was responding to student complaints. Minority students on campus took the poster to be offensive, an indication that perhaps many on campus would like to return to the 1950s when, in the words of jazz great Gil Scott-Heron, the movies were in black and white and so was everything else. The distrust is great. But we are reluctant to acknowledge that the distrust is legitimate. Somewhere along the line we have lost patience with the demand for sensitivity, and, as a result, we have become immune to those who feel injured.

In this instance nothing would be lost by showing more care. For the same reasons we have a "winter break" rather than a "Christmas holiday," the request that there not be a mindless 1950s dinner seems reasonable. Symbols do matter, if only because people take them seriously, need them to prove that their worst fears are merely that.

BUT the symbol can only do so much. Too often, it convinces those who cling to them more than those who must accept them. And if there will never be another 1950s night at a Harvard dining hall, students will no doubt attribute it to the complaints of a bunch of Black students. Not to a bunch of white people who offended them.

One day this fall The Crimson ran a small box on its front page announcing that after 115 years. The Crimson would now employ gender neutral terminology. Chairmen would now be referred to as chairs, and spokesmen would be spokespersons.

It was not a very bold step--many papers adopted such a policy long ago. It didn't signal the end of sexism at a building which has long been accused of the crime. Clearly, the change is of much less significance than the election of The Crimson's first woman president nearly a decade ago.

The decision was not the occasion of much debate at first. After all, it seemed ridiculous to refer to the head of our editorial board as Chairman when she was, in fact, a woman. And besides, what relevance does a person's gender have to their capacity to do the job? But after the box appeared, there was criticism. It followed the lines which have become all too familiar. Does everything have to be an issue? The Crimson has finally lost its independence and is now a slave to modish opinion.

The purpose of making the change was twofold. On the one hand to remove archaicism from the paper, and on the other to confront people with the fact that language does carry biases, and that these biases matter. Its impact was intended to influence those who work on the paper as much as those who read it. But the impact was negated.

Those who do believe that adopting a gender-neutral policy is right were not debated; they were dismissed as blind followers of what is "in." The more earnestly the belief is held, the less influence it holds. It is met with condescending amusement, the derision of the critic who is certain that one's (not necessarily his) mind is independent. To be above such petty demands is to be a rebel. The rest are merely the herd.

This method of retort, I fear, has been largely effective, and not only in this instance. It has not succeeded in preventing the sensitizing of language or the broadening of the curriculum, but it has succeeded in stripping these actions of any moral force. It is presumed that if the aggrieved party is placated, it is done not out of a sense of remorse, but rather under pressure.

IN this respect, it seems that the level of distrust will not soon dissipate. For each victory is seen in terms of a power dynamic, not as part of a moral conversion. Thus each victory is hollow and only makes the desire for victory the next time greater. In each win, there seems only the confirmation of the worst fears of the accuser. The change is on the surface, but the real demand is for a change of heart.

It was precisely that demand which University of Chicago philosopher Alan Bloom could not understand when he appeared at Harvard earlier this semester. The irony of his attack on relativism is that he encourages us to ignore morality. For him, every demand from a minority group is an attempt to seek power. He refuses to accept that it might be a request for compassion, and beyond that, a plea for self-assessment.

At the conclusion of his speech, in which he lambasted the move to diversify the curriculum at Stanford as tantamount to an attack by barbarians, he opened the floor to questions.

A Black student rose and challenged him on why the works of Black writers should not be included in the pantheon of great books. Bloom was unyielding, and the student proceeded to rail against the ancients as white Anglo-Saxon protestants. The slip was for Bloom, and no doubt for many, proof of the unthinking mindset of many minorities who demand inclusion.

Armed to defend himself, Bloom pointed to the words of W.E.B. DuBois, who in Souls of Black Folk himself cited the importance of reading Shakespeare. "Does that satisfy you?" Bloom asked, and in the question one hears the heart of the problem.

It is not a matter of satisfying those who feel aggrieved, it is a matter of acknowledging that the feeling is real. DuBois would have been sympathetic to the Black student far more than he would have been to Bloom. One of DuBois' central tasks was to show the important contributions of Black culture, to show that what he termed the "Sorrow Songs," the Negro spirituals, were the equivalent of Shakespeare.

BEHIND most of these pleas for greater inclusion and sensitivity lies the possibility for us to find our commonality. But too often, both because of the manner in which the challenge is presented, and in the way in which we respond to it, it only leads to further division--the one requesting too much; the other asserting their superiority.

An episode at The Crimson late this semester bears out the difficulty we (majority and minority) have in finding a way to speak to each other. We were discussing the story on the rape in Holyoke Center. There were two men and four women executives participating in the discussion, and the conversation split straight down gender lines. The conversation revolved around how we would go about identifying the victim, beyond not revealing her name.

As the two men, including myself, argued the importance of identifying her as an employee, the women became increasingly angered. Rational argument on both sides quickly disappeared, and we were accused of being sexist, taking a cold and clinincal approach to the event.

They said we would not have done so had we been women; they also said that the effect of what we were doing was not unlike the rape itself. It was clear by the end that the manner in which we had been discussing the incident had been insensitive and offensive, which is to say that it sounded exactly the way women assume men will sound if they are sexist.

I still think we were right to raise the questons that we did, but the way in which we did it was wrong. There has to be a way for people to disagree as individuals, and for those disagreements to be perceived as emanating from some source other than race or gender. That is the basis for the demand for greater sensitivity.

It was assumed that the civil rights movement was about the irrelevancy of race, which is why conservatives so fondly quote King about people being judged "not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." But the larger point was that race does matter, and that it will only cease to matter once we as a nation confront it head on, determine what it means to us and why it continues to hold meaning.

It is a moral question. We have lost sight of that, and that is the danger. Our world, and our attitude to that world, affords us few occasions to contemplate the morality of our conduct. Demands for sensitivity are opportunities more than accusations. They are a challenge. Otherwise the tables will remain separate, no matter how many other changes may come to pass. President, 1988-89