Darcy Richie: Conflicting realities between Penn and life

Senior year in high school I learned that goldfish have extremely short memories. Then, like the mature seniors we were, my friends and I would pretend to swim around saying, "I've never been to this part of the bowl before, I've never been to this part of the bowl before." It's amazing the things we think are funny, in retrospect. But interestingly enough, that image keeps popping back in my head now that I'm graduating, and considering the idea of constant discovery.

For the past four years I've felt like I have been swimming through the Penn fish bowl and saying, "So this is reality ... so this is reality." I guess that defines my Penn experience -- I've been looking for reality (if anyone knows where it is) swimming around in this protected glass bubble, forgetting where I am, losing my reality, and rediscovering it all over again.

For the most part, this rediscovery has been a reminder of my constant state of double-consciousness. WEB Dubois said, "It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity ... two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings..."

Writing for The Daily Pennsylvanian has helped reveal all the contradictions and the ridiculous double-consciousness of my own reality. Through this forum, without the ability to defend myself, I couldn't help but see myself through the eyes of other people. I've been called biased, racist, a male hater, cruel, sick and liberal. (Oddly enough, I never thought of my opinions as liberal, just right).

In my little life's play (we all have one) where I am the main character, the antagonists have always been racists, mean professors, backstabbing friends and the evil conservatives who hate me. (I always pictured the Penn Republicans aiming darts at my gigantic smile on a dusty crumbling basement wall with one lit candle, and cackling at the idea of my demise). But perhaps the college struggle is an attempt for self-definition within these outside forces of negativity.

Writing, like Penn, has dragged, pushed and guided me through the inherent education a double-consciousness gives. I can't keep up with all of the versions of myself out there. College students struggle with a multiple self, attempting to somehow find cohesion after graduation. (For some reason, I have a sinking feeling there is no package waiting for me with my "real self" wrapped inside).

But there is another double- consciousness that I have experienced. It is a strange sensation seeing how some people view me in my most vulnerable and open state -- through my words on paper. Writing for the DP, I was both expected to, and ridiculed for writing about race. First, I'm black, and I never lied about this. Race has been an experience for me, and sometimes it would seem easier to fit into someone else's mold. But sometimes Penn has made me feel like I am stuck in a racist quicksand with an imposed image of what people think I will be weighing on shoulders.

Dubois said the problem of the 20th century would be the problem of the color line, and Penn has helped me see this in Technicolor. Though I stepped on the scene talking about, yes, race, but gender, sex, and such, people saw race. The reality of being the black female columnist, the black student in class, the black booth on Locust Walk, the angry black protester, is that black is always in the periphery, and is the card pulled not only by people who look like me.

But perhaps I have found reality here. Maybe I, and the family I stayed up nights with, debating about reality, social constructs, planning rallies and organizing meetings with the president and provost are the ones who have been "born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world." All of us have experienced in four years true friendship, happiness, loss, responsibility, rape, hurt and pain, drunken irresponsibility, oppressive emotion, apathy, addiction, segregation, "self-segregation," police, racism and laughter. This has defined our reality.

I hope I have lived in some reality. Someone once wrote to me, "Get ready for the real world to slap you in the face." Sometimes I've cried so hard and thought, "So this is reality?" Reality, for the most part, is imposed on us like our race. And like my race, my reality is a construct. As long as we are experiencing, we are always experiencing reality, or the real world -- It's OK for me to be idealistic.

I will find new intricacies in my double-consciousness. But I guess the most important thing is to remember that when someone says reality is going to slap us in the face, think, maybe it already has. This is our reality now, and sometimes it is so amazing and so painful at the same time but it's true. Hopefully I will remember my experiences and remember how idealistic and optimistic we all can be.

Darcy Richie is a senior urban studies major from Birmingham, Mich. Strange Fruit appears on Wednesdays.

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