Fighting Insensitivity

VISIONS '89 held true to its name. The series of five intercollegiate minority conferences presented a vision of an America beyond minority factionalism and civil rights retrenchment. Three days of seminars and speeches forged alliances between students of diverse backgrounds, and imbued many with a mix of activism and hope for just college campuses, communities and society.

The idea for the conference stemmed from an era of insensitivity and outright hostility to minority concerns. In the past decade the Justice Department stopped actively seeking civil rights cases to prosecute, and instead dedicated itself to rolling back affirmative action and other minority gains. These attempts culminated in a recent Supreme Court decision which declared unconstitutional a Richmond program requiring 30 percent of the city's contracts to be awarded to minority contractors and thereby jeopardized all government-sponsored affirmative action programs.

On college campuses, minority interests suffered and were in large part ignored. Many colleges, Harvard included, seemed resistant to demands for courses in ethnic studies and for hiring of minority hiring. Many colleges, Havard included, continued to refuse to divest from South Africa.

But amidst the cynicism and alienation this decade has produced, some activism may have been born. What began as an Black student conference, "Why We Can't Wait: The Future of Blacks in America," led to a cross-cultural effort to increase communication and break down barriers which foster racism and insensitivity. The 1000-plus students attending Vision '89 called for justice on campus, in communities and in the economy.

THAT such a positive conference should be held at Harvard is especially a promising development. In recent months, accusations of insensitivity or outright racial harassment have been leveled across campus. The most disturbing trend has been the recent proliferation of racist grafitti on campus.

In an open letter to the College, Hilda Hernandez-Gravelle, assistant dean for minority affairs and race relations, addressed the problem of the grafitti as well as accusing the Dining Hall Services of insensitivity for sponsoring a '50s night, because it portrayed the era as a "carefree" time, when she said discrimination existed during that period.

The dispute surrounding Asian-American admissions has also been characterized by mistrust and a lack of communication. The admissions office and its accusers have bandied statistics back and forth without adequately explaining and discussing such basic issues as the priorities of the admissions committee.

Fundamentally, race relations on this campus have boiled down to questions of communication and trust. Hernandez-Gravelle described minorities at Harvard as burdened with a "sense of invisibility and lack of acknowledged presence and voice." Visions '89 is an important step to help counter this invisibility.

Most importantly, Visions '89 showed that "minority interests" should not be restricted to certain minorities, or even to minorities at all. Keynote speaker Samuel Betances called on participants to move beyond "coalitions of color" to "coalitions of interest." The upcoming AWARE Week will hopefully continue in this spirit with even more students of all races participating.

It is in everyone's interest to have a fair and just Harvard, a fair and just America. That is the true vision, one of everyone working together to combat insensitivity and prejudice, brought forth by Vision '89.