Jeremiah Keenan | An apology and an appeal

Keen on the Truth | An apology for incendiary style and an appeal for more constructive conversation

By Jeremiah Keenan 10/26/14 9:51pm

A t the be ginning of their careers, doctors must bury a few mistakes in the morgue, lawyers wave goodbye to a few mistakes outside jail and journalists publish a few on the front page of a newspaper. Each type of error may be painful, but the last — however embarrassing — has some chance of partial remedy.

I’d like to hazard that chance with regard to last week’s column. I am sorry for the way in which I wrote. It was ill-advised to write a column as casually as I did about such a sensitive topic. The column was labeled in strong terms by many. Evidently — leaving aside my actual point — my mode of expression was foolish and highly ineffective.

Let me clarify first what I did not mean. Many assumed I was employing a strictly literal writing style. Some readers thought that I believe black people must be either criminals, pan-handlers, dumb students or wealthy immigrants. This is, as I said, a stereotype that I see and hear at Penn. It is no more my personal belief than the stereotype that white people are all racists. Other readers assumed that I claimed a “sour sense of unfair treatment and smug feelings of superiority” for my own. On the contrary, it is my observation that affirmative action leads to sour and smug feelings on the part of white people, but in my belief, such feelings are not justified.

I could go on listing phrases that were misunderstood, but the article was so unclear that it is easier to simply state what I believe. In my experience at Penn, I am stereotyped on a racial basis. This labeling includes socially acceptable elements like wealth, as well as some negative connotations like snobbery and racism. I have observed this stereotype applied frequently in conversations in which whites are arbitrarily labeled as “probably racist.” When arguing over topics unrelated to race, white males are often labeled as such in an effort to invalidate their views.

At the same time, I find at Penn that black people are negatively stereotyped — more severely than white people. Little offhand comments made in casual (“all white”) conversation, a refrigerator magnet I saw: “UPenn safety alert: black male seen on campus. Avoid everything” and many other things might be brought up to confirm this impression.

What particularly upset me about these stereotypes is when I caught myself starting to play along with them. When a white friend was arbitrarily labeled a potential racist, I joined in the joke saying, “Well, I don’t know ... he is from the South.” After a semester or two at Penn, I also thought the refrigerator magnet funny, when formerly I would have found it strange — if not offensive.

Thinking about this problem, I realized that there seemed to be very little honest discussion between the “black” and “white” communities on the issue. In last week’s column, I stated that the heavy emphasis on reparations, programs earmarked for racial minorities and affirmative action is unproductive. For this, I apologize. The arguments surrounding these sensitive ideas are too complex to address lightly and largely separate from what I am trying to say.

Unfortunately, many people took my attack on racial stereotyping as a form of racism. Thankfully, a number of people from the black community reached out to me personally about the column, and we had open, friendly conversations. Honestly addressing stereotypes on both sides helped to bring them down.

One student shared her experience as a black person in America with me — how racial stereotyping forces her to be self-conscious about everything from her posture to how she styles her hair, how her parents grew up under systematic discrimination and even today would tell her to “trust her black friends.” And I shared parts of my story with her, as a “color-blind” financial aid student learning to be stereotyped as rich and racist.

It would seem strange that a column as ill-fated as the one I wrote last week could lead to productive conversations. But I hope that others will also be willing to forgive my poor articulation and see something valuable in an open and honest discussion — coming from all different perspectives — of the destructive racial stereotyping that so many of us face and perpetrate at Pen n.

Jeremiah Keenan is a College sophomore from China studying mathematics. His email address is jkeenan@sas.upenn.edu. “Keen on the Truth” usually appears every Wednesday.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.