Vinay Harpalani: Activism with the pen, not the sword

It was the fall semester of 2000 when I first regularly shared some of my invisible labors -- my own thoughts on salient issues -- with the Penn community. In America, no issue is more salient than race, and "Invisible Labors" was merely an extension of the CALL TO ACTION project, which I had founded to mobilize the Penn community in defense of affirmative action and racial equity. Writing has been a form of activism for me, not only to educate the public, but also to effect change. And as I have learned, there are many ways that writing can accomplish this.

To be sure, a DP column will not stop wars or eliminate racism. But the smaller victories also matter, and I found out back in fall 2000 that writing for the DP can directly bring about changes on campus.

One of my first columns discussed the Western, Eurocentric bias in texts for the Penn Reading Project. At the time, the project, in its 10-year history, had not incorporated any works from outside Europe or America. I shared my column with the text selection committee and gave them a student-compiled list of works by African, Asian and Native American authors. This contributed to last year's choice of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart for the PRP.

Sometimes, tangible results can come about even quicker, as I found out with my next column. I criticized the DP itself for the disrespectful caricature of the swami, a divine Hindu religious teacher, in its football prognostication contest. Soon afterwards, several student of color organizations pressed the DP to remove its mocking portrayal of the swami, and this was done within two weeks.

The Save SARS Coalition also formed shortly after I wrote about the proposed reduction of the South Asia Regional Studies Department. While I was only tangentially involved in this movement, it did help SARS maintain departmental status.

Through these small successes, I saw firsthand the power of the pen. And I knew this past fall, when the Supreme Court decided to hear the University of Michigan affirmative action cases, that "Invisible Labors" should return in spring 2003.

Besides affirmative action, the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the unionization of Penn graduate students have made this the most politically active and charged semester in recent memory. And beyond mobilizing us for the April 1 march on Washington, I also tried to provide a critical and timely perspective on the war, unionization, racial profiling and other significant issues.

With the plethora of rallies and marches these past few months, the DP editorial page also provided a direct and free medium for advertisement. Earlier in the semester, I plugged the anti-war rallies at Penn and in Center City, and I also publicized our picket of conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. And there will be more pro-affirmative action demonstrations later this semester -- on May 16, when Justice Sandra Day O'Connor speaks at the Loews Philadelphia Hotel, 1200 Market Street, at 6:30 p.m., and on May 19, when Justice Stephen Breyer speaks at Penn Law's Commencement at the Academy of Music, Broad and Spruce streets, at 2 p.m.

But beyond these proximal actions and appeals is the broader message of my column: that race does matter in the U.S. and that colorblind fallacies will only exacerbate racial inequality. As the late Justice Harry Blackmun noted when commenting in the 1978 Bakke decision, the last Supreme Court case dealing with affirmative action in higher education, "In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way."

My most important column, written in December 2000 during the DP's series on campus race relations, was about white privilege. Although many of my columns focused on the dilemmas of people of color, it is the advantages still afforded to whites that perpetuate racial hierarchy in America. I do not have space here to discuss white privilege in detail; instead, I refer interested readers to the work of Peggy McIntosh, Tim Wise and Charles Wade Mills, among others. But the unseen benefits of being white are so numerous that I could have written about them every week. Perhaps "Invisible Privileges" will appear in a future semester.

Until then, I thank all of my readers who have offered praise and criticism. I have enjoyed this experience, and I encourage more race-conscious individuals, particularly people of color, to write for the DP, The VISION and other campus publications. We must continue to fight, and beyond marches, rallies and direct lobbying, writing itself is a form of activism.

Indeed, it was once said that "the pen is mightier than the sword." And so I hope others will also write about the unrecognized struggles and accomplishments of people of color -- and thus continue to shed light upon all of our invisible labors.

Vinay Harpalani is a Ph.D. candidate in Education and a Master's candidate in Bioethics from Newark, Del.

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