Kevin Collins: A new way to teach diversity at Penn

When my colleague Darcy Richie wrote recently about how a conservative white male in her identity politics class viewed Americans, she said that he believed Americans to be "white, middle-class, monolingual, English-speaking individuals who have had little direct experience with cultural, ethnic and other kinds of diversity."

To a casual observer, I fit most of these criteria. As perhaps you can tell from the photo attached to this column, I am fairly white. On more than one occasion, close friends have told me that I'm the whitest white boy they know. Add to this the fact that I am male and was raised in an upper-middle-class household, and from all outward appearances, I am The Man. But does that make me the same as Richie's classmate?

In truth, I'm a liberal with a horribly leaky cardiac system, and just because I fit Richie's classmate's beliefs about Americans doesn't mean that I share them.

I recognize that the spectre of racism continues to haunt our nation and our University. From a proliferation of racial slurs on campus to the controversial arrest of Rui DaSilva, racial biases survive. I recognize that black poverty is the continuing legacy of slavery, a legacy that the politics of bootstraps have only prolonged. And I recognize through firsthand experience the persistence of segregation -- now not enforced by laws but by economic circumstance -- for my hometown of Milwaukee is one of the most segregated cities in the nation.

Richie's approach to whiteness is far too monolithic, and the assumptions inherent to her initial argument are flawed. People with tones of skin close in shade to mine speak languages that I cannot, profess creeds that I do not, and eat foods that I, sometimes, will not. Yet I've engaged the cultures of people whose skin color I do not share.

Moreover, cultural hybridity increasingly prevails over simplistic divisions of black, white and Latino. What culture is Justin Timberlake part of? I dearly wish that I could say not mine, but the spread of hip hop culture to the suburbs is breaking down class and racial lines. Whiteness is not some Babylonian Tower of ethnic uniformity, and like skin color of any other shade, it is a poor predictor of individual beliefs and behavior.

That said, I don't entirely disagree with Richie's point (that we need a more diverse education) but her proposal is flawed. Sure, avoiding a Eurocentric bias, like any bias, is a good idea, but the multicultural perspective should be integrated within the curriculum, not segregated into a single requirement.

Furthermore, Richie argues that there is a lack of "direct experience with cultural, ethnic or other kinds of diversity" among white Americans. Even if you accept this argument, a few texts and a blackboard don't amount to direct experience. Instead of adding a course on diversity, then, let us add a requirement for community service.

My all-male Catholic high school, where the motto was "Men for Others," integrated service into the curriculum. Not only did we do service projects in some form for all four years, but every senior left school for two weeks to work full time at a community service site; I taught literacy and English as a Second Language courses in a Milwaukee neighborhood not unlike West Philadelphia.

I admit, even with my politics, I would probably have missed such opportunities had they not been required, for while volunteering is the right thing to do, there is always that something else that gets in the way. Yet I'm grateful for the requirement -- serving those of a background entirely different from mine was and is an invaluable experience.

An appreciation for diversity can surely be learned, but it cannot be taught in Meyerson B1. A few tests and PowerPoint presentations will influence few and leave us with nothing more than another course requirement. Encountering diversity firsthand in West Philadelphia -- not just racial diversity, but diversity of background, culture and experience -- can succeed where lecture notes will surely fail.

Mandating student service to our community, whether through the Academically Based Service Courses that Penn already offers or the completion of a set number of community service hours, better accomplishes the goals Richie sets for a diversity requirement and continues Penn's commitment to our community that is President Rodin's legacy.

In the postmodern pastiche that is our nation's mediascape, cultures are less separated by race, yet diversity persists even inside color lines. The reality of life provides a different story, though, as circumstance hands out economic hardship along racial divisions and authorities view you differently if you look more like Darcy Richie than Kevin Collins.

To learn about this reality we need not read more books or take more classes, but rather engage the community around us, and lend a hand while we're at it. Diversity education isn't a bad idea, as long its proponents can see white as more than pale skin color and it's carried out in the right classroom: our own backyard.

Kevin Collins is a sophomore political science major from Milwaukee, Wis. ...And Justice For All appears on Mondays.

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