You Can Talk the Talk, But...

During the course of our Harvard careers, one word is continually shot at us like a bullet from a rifle. Diversity, diversity, diversity. Harvard seeks to provide its students with the most diverse environment possible. This is ostensibly why the administration and many students continue to defend affirmative action in making admissions decisions. This, it seems, is also why Dean Harry Lewis decided to go forward with randomization. But has it all worked? Has Harvard succeeded in providing its students with the most diverse atmosphere possible? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Race relations and inter-communication on this campus are in a pitiful state. The time has come for students, student groups and the administration to do more than just pay lip service to the idea of diversity; they must replace empty rhetoric with action.

Before you, the reader, get any premature ideas that this will be one more editorial added to a growing mountain of editorials and essays on affirmative action, randomization and race, I want to reassure you that these words are written only to help foster constructive dialogue and new solutions. All of the criticizing and vehement rhetoric that is volleyed back and forth between those with opposing ideologies at the University will not ameliorate the life of one single American or Harvard student. My aim is not to add further to the background noise that permeates the national and campus debate on race. If this essay helps foster even the beginning of a small dialogue, it will have been a success.

Many come to Harvard University with the bright expectation that a Harvard education will provide the opportunity to learn about those with different backgrounds, different world views and different perspectives. But hardly a month goes by before some begin to play a collective blame game. They ask questions such as: "Why do students segregate themselves along racial lines at the dining hall?" "Why do students have to agitate for ethnic studies?" "Who are these people clamoring for a multicultural center?" But rarely do those who continually blame take any action to change what they see as wrong. Rarely do they take the uncomfortable step of sitting at "the black table" or engaging those of different views on ethnicity. What they do is far easier and far more cowardly. They retreat into their own isolated circles and refuse to bridge the gap of communication that exists at the College--expecting that others will do it for them.

Others who avoid this blame game fall into a trap that is just as insidious--the trap of self-redeeming racial guilt. They believe that supporting affirmative action, ethnic studies and a multicultural student center automatically makes them "good people." They believe that speaking out in favor of whatever they think students of other backgrounds want will absolve them from taking any other actions to improve ethnic relations on this campus. They believe that rhetoric is as strong as action. They believe that by feeling as guilty as possible for as long as possible, we will somehow arrive at a magic answer to the problems posed by racial differences. But this belief is just as wrong as the belief that it is always some other person's or some other group's fault that the lines of communication between students of different backgrounds have not been sufficiently opened. The fact is that we are all collectively responsible for the state of our campus and, more importantly, our country.

In America, we have developed two main doctrines of thought regarding race relations. The national dichotomy between these two doctrines falls roughly into line with the campus dichotomy between those who assign blame to others and those who think rhetoric is sufficient. On the one hand, there is the conservative doctrine that is very uncomfortable in accepting any historical responsibility for the wrongs of the past. This doctrine would like to abolish affirmative action and many government-run social programs in the belief that it is individuals and not groups that matter. The liberal doctrine asserts that we must recognize the historical racial injustice in this country and that we must be good citizens on the question of race by never challenging government programs or so-called minority leaders, by going along to assuage our own guilt, by paying lip service to our ideals in order to make ourselves feel better. But neither of these doctrines move to solve the problems of race that we have in this country. The predominant conservative doctrine talks much of what it wants to destroy but very little about what it wants to do. The liberal doctrine expresses some powerful ideas but ultimately it cultivates a pernicious paternalism and absolves its believers of personal responsibility. These doctrines are not mutually exclusive; both contain elements of truth.

It is a fact that this country has committed great racial and ethnic injustices in the past. We cannot look at our history of slavery and the virtual extermination of Native Americans and claim that the current unfortunate circumstances of some black Americans and Native Americans are not a result of what we as a nation have done. But a paternalistic government is not the means by which we will right yesterday's wrongs. We have tried those so-called solutions for three decades and they have failed--and they will continue to do so as long as we place our native faith in them.

Individuals, as they have always been, are the key to a harmonious future. Millions of individuals working from coast to coast to reach out, to communicate, to understand and to support will do far more for race relations than any quota or government program ever did. Individuals working on public service projects, engaging their fellow citizens in initially uncomfortable conversations and discussions, working with community leaders in other communities can begin to rebuild the inter-racial and multicultural foundation that this country will need in the 21st century. Indeed, we cannot solve the problems of racial tension if we continue to misunderstand one another, if we continue to live in separate worlds and if we continue to argue past each other. Many may think that mine is a naive and overly idealistic synthesis of the best aspects of the liberal and the conservative viewpoints. But their criticisms may represent nothing more than a shrinking away from the responsibility that comes with actually working to solve our problems as individuals rather than pontificating about them.

On the Harvard campus, there is much more that we can all do to make sure that the diversity our administrators talk about becomes a reality. There is more that we can all do so that we can all learn from each other and our experiences. As individuals, we can work through Phillips Brooks House to engage ourselves in our community. As individuals, we can take the small steps to ensure greater communication--we can sit with students of different backgrounds, we can attend BSA, AAA, RAZA or Hillel meetings without necessarily being part of the racial or ethnic groups that those organizations represent. We must all begin to assume responsibility for the world around us and we must stop removing ourselves from that responsibility.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I will do my part to become part of the solution. I will, on behalf of the Harvard-Radcliffe Republican Alliance, contact the heads of student organizations that cover the political and ethnic spectrum from the Harvard-Radcliffe College Democrats to the Undergraduate Council to the Black Students Association in order to begin a dialogue on the issues of race and ethnicity at Harvard. Hopefully from my conversations with student leaders throughout our campus community, we will be able to begin to create a permanent structure that will begin the long and awesome task of bringing this campus back together and realizing the diversity that so far has been nothing but a rhetorical ideal. I and others will do this knowing that our task will be arduous and perhaps unforgiving but with the full realization that in issues of race and ethnicity (as with all issues of life) the only limits to our abilities are the ones we set for ourselves.

William D.A. Zerhouni '97-'98 is president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Republican Alliance.