Glaring Apathy

LAST week's College-sponsored Actively Working Against Racism and Ethnocentrism (AWARE) week could have been a success.

Over six days across campus, well-publicized panels, speeches, films and performances could have helped air out malingering racial tensions at Harvard. Indeed, administrators have been quick to claim success.

But student apathy, rather than communication, characterized the week. Not for the first time, inactivity overwhelmed a moment that could have been seized by all in the community to examine how we relate to each other and how to make our society better.

An opening speech by Colgate professor John Dovidio was well-attended, but other events, such as a forum on institutional racism, drew only 20 to 25 people each.

There was some indication last week that the College may not have given AWARE its full support.

When AWARE's publicity costs exceeded their original budget, Assistant Dean for Race Relations and Minority Affairs Hilda Hernandez-Gravelle asked the Undergraduate Council--not the College--for $400 to cover the shortfall. Although Hernandez-Gravelle's motivations in requesting the money are not fully known, it seems likely that for some reason she sensed resistance on the College's part to more funding.

The council's president withdrew Hernandez-Gravelle's request when members rightfully argued that the student government should not have to sponsor official College programs.

BUT the funding controversy cannot really explain the tepid student support for AWARE. Calendars about the program were posted all over campus, and it is reasonable to assume that the vast majority of students knew about the events. Why did so few attend?

Ironically, part of the answer may lie within Dovidio's speech. Dovidio, who has spent yeas researching the topic, finds that most Americans, up to 85 out of every 100, do not consider themselves prejudiced.

But at the same time, the idea of "difference" between "my group" and "your group," the distinction between any arbitrary division of students or schools or people with different skin or hair or eyes makes it impossible to resolve racism. It is, as Dovidio says, one of the most natural things in the world. And that is why it must be addressed.

At other campuses, where there have been flagrant instances of racism, it has not been difficult to draw students to AWARE-type events. Most undergraduates today are enlightened enough to lash out against racial hatred when it appears in highly visible forms.

But Hernandez-Gravelle and her staff were faced with the challenge of motivating people to attend events which, to the average student, did not seem so imperative. There have been no large galvanizing incidents recently at Harvard. How do you convince "well-intentioned" students to examine their own racial attitudes when they will not admit to even the possibilty of being racist?

THERE also seemed to be a disparity in the expectations some students had for the week and the content of the programs. While many of the events emphasized issues of subtle, unconscious racism, minority students in attendance repeatedly brought up questions of institutional racism. Specifically, they were interested in discussing Harvard's dearth of minority faculty members and paltry course offerings in ethnic studies.

Some students may not have attended because they believed that interpersonal racism, which the conference emphasized, is not as important as the more glaring problem of institutional racism. Minority children in single-parent homes, economic inequalities, unfair sentencing practices and persistent exclusion from influential positions haunt our country. But it is impossible to separate institutional and personal racism, because institutional racism is simply an expression of more subtle personal prejudices.

Of course there are those students who would not have attended the conference no matter what issues it addressed. Perhaps their inattendance would have been more easily explained if students had honestly felt too ignorant, too intimidated or too embarrassed of their own attitudes to confront the issues.

But the far more likely answer seems that most of us simply didn't care enough to think about how to live together.