WHITE BLACK

Last year, President Clinton introduced an initiative on race calling for real discourse on the topic of race and its significance for the American people. Race is an uncomfortable topic often left to high-brow intellectual conversations or witty comments by comedians. Rarely is it discussed in an honest, concrete way. On this campus, race has been the topic of a recent Institute of Politics-Crimson poll, the main thrust of a recent issue of Radcliffe Quarterly and a factor in several high-profile debates.

Yet, how many of us feel comfortable enough to sit at a meal and talk freely about race with our friends? Race will continue to be side-stepped until people can understand what it means to be a racial minority. If the current state of race relations at Harvard is maintained, we will never reach that point.

Most of the interaction that occurs between students of different races is in the classroom. Only rarely do all the black, Asian-American, white and Latino students sit together in a Moral Reasoning section or a history tutorial. Sometimes this is due to a lack of minorities in a particular class. But the issue of race also seems to be erased at the classroom door. When I am sitting in class with others and we're both reading the sourcebook, trying to understand the material, these connections overwhelm racial differences. The shared academic experience, in the pursuit of common knowledge, becomes more important than skin color.

It is when we step outside the classroom and enter our dining halls that race becomes a greater and more dynamic concern. In my experience, black students tend to socialize apart from white students. Every year, it seems, a majority of black first-years sit together at the same table. Although football and hockey tables are also present, the sight of an all-black table seems to engender the most questions, comments and stares. What is it about an ethnic group deciding to eat together that makes others feel uncomfortable?

Harvard may pride itself on its diversity, but this means little in the daily encounters of individuals of different races. There is still a hesitancy among students to tangle with race. We notice the segregation and may become a little upset by it, but never honestly ask ourselves why it occurs. It occurs because minority students know that they cannot escape from their race, and they flock to people who understand that. My blackness is part of me and everything I do.

My greatest fear about meeting my first-year roommates was not that they would be dirty, or that they would have too much sex, or that we would not have anything in common, but that they would be racists. My fear was that they would look at the color of my skin and immediately judge me. In our pre-move-in conversations, my racial identity was always at the tip of my tongue. I wanted to scream "I'm black" when they asked me what I looked like, what I liked to read or what my favorite CDs were, if only to warn them to call the Freshman Dean's Office to request a lily-white room. During the year, I often wondered if racism lurked behind certain comments or looks. This is a reality many blacks and other minorities must regularly face that whites have the luxury of ignoring. This is a reality that Harvard students do not discuss.

I propose that we take it upon ourselves to fill in the gaps in our racial education. Have empathy, rather than mere sympathy, for what it means to be a minority. Or better yet, go out and put yourself in a position in which you are the minority. One of my first-year roommates recently accompanied a black friend to a predominately black party in New York. As the only white person in the room, she told me, she was uncomfortable and began to question what it was like for her friend at predominately white Harvard parties. At the next party you go to, look around and notice how many students look completely different from you. Put yourself in their place and see what it feels like. While we rarely want to admit it, a social gathering composed primarily of a certain racial group sends off a warning sign: EXCLUSION HERE, DO NOT APPLY.

Every day on this campus I hear more calls for diversity in student organizations such as The Crimson or Phillips Brooks House Association. But if individuals really care about diversity--and not just about promoting it--then there must be a greater acknowledgment of minority concerns, not just more faces of color. We don't need more books about race by Harvard academics; we need more truthful conversations about race.

Kamil E. Redmond '00 is a history and literature and women's studies concentrator and a resident of Pforzheimer House.