In Search of Common Ground

Although this column deals with race, I will not start with qualifications, hesitations and disclaimers. I will not apologize for discussing the issue even though I am not a person of color, or plead ignorance.

To qualify a discussion on race to such a degree--as people do so often--does not complicate it; rather, it simplifies. People deliver these disclaimers in the name of "open dialogue." They want to show that they realize the sensitivity and complexity of the issue and respect the exchange of ideas. However, their eagerness to prove what open minds they have backfires. The hesitant beginning leads to a hesitant discussion. Fear of saying the "wrong thing" obscures honest talk. People bite their tongues, and a woefully inadequate status quo remains in place. As a result, the "open dialogue" becomes quite closed.

Recently, the Office of the Dean of Students released its "Handbook on Race Relations." When I first saw the title emblazoned on the glossy booklets, I recalled another "handbook" the College gives us--the "Handbook for Students." According to its introductory note, that Handbook "contains a concise review of the rules and procedures of Harvard College." Would this new handbook be the same idea, providing us with "rules and procedures" of race?

To my relief, the Handbook on Race Relations did no such thing. It is an entirely uncontroversial collection of interesting essays from students and scholars that, according to Dean Archie Epps, should "deepen our understanding of the light and shadow surrounding the important subject of race relations" and "affirm the `common ground' in human experience." But what is this "common ground"? If we could define this nebulous area of human experience, that would certainly be a step in the right direction.

A few days later, as I sat in the audience of the "Randomization and Self-Segregation at Harvard" forum, I witnessed how sorry an attempt to find this "common ground" could be. As its name suggests, this forum sought to explore a number of questions raised by randomization, particularly in light of race: Has randomization created more diversity among students? Did randomization break up important existing communities without replacing them in some way? These seemed to be very debatable questions that offered room for many viewpoints. Yet panelists did not express a wide variety of opinions. Instead, they staked out a safe "common ground" of discussion that they all could fit into, and conducted an essentially "closed" dialogue.

For the most part, these panelists insisted that randomization has been bad for black students. Randomization broke up the self-segregated black student community in the Quad, leaving black students with no place where they could feel entirely at home. It uses students of color as symbols of diversity who "season the rice" of the College's predominantly white landscape. Finally, they argued that students should be allowed to self-segregate if they choose. All the panelists might not have agreed with this agenda, but if they disagreed, they did so amid so many qualifications and disclaimers that they came across as either nonsensical or bumblingly equivocal.

The treatment of the issue of self-segregation particularly disturbed me. I recognize the strengths of self-segregation, but I also see it as tragic. I understand that many black students should have a place to get together where they do not have to worry about, as one panelist put it, "dealing with racial stuff." I also understand that white people self-segregate all the time--athletes with athletes, Jews with Jews, artists with artists. Amidst all this other self-segregation, black students often get singled out because they are conspicuous.

Self-segregation may have its positive elements, but it also has its negative ones, and I was shocked that no one at this forum strongly suggested that self-segregation is a bad thing. Self-segregation, even when it is self-imposed and "positive," keeps people apart. For example, I am in a blocking group of thirteen, of which eleven of us are white, nine of us are Jewish and all of us are from well-off families. I don't know how such self-segregation happened, but I lament it. I wish my circle of friends were more diverse, not simply to "season the rice" of my social experience, but because I identify it as a problem in myself.

Randomization, in theory, is good because it forces us to look for "common ground" among us. We can't fault it for its shortcomings; we should fault ourselves for not overcoming the narrow and safe worlds that we find when we settle into familiarity. Diversity should be a common goal. Yet first we must interact in a real way, not bite our tongues as the panelists at Monday night's forum did. We will not find our "common ground in human experience" unless we first agree to speak frankly and explore our uncommon ground. Marshall I. Lewy '99-'00 is a history and literature concentrator in Leverett House. His column appears on alternate Fridays.