The Vision | I, too, am Penn
After visiting Harvard’s first Blacktivism conference, how do we carry conversations about race from communities of color to white people?
10/14/14 10:16pm
“D ear white people, the minimum requirement of black friends needed to not seem racist has just been raised to two. Sorry, but your weed man, Tyrone, does not count.”
So begins Justin Simien’s satirical film and winner of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Talent, “Dear White People.” A film screening of the movie and a talkback with the director took place this past weekend at Harvard, where hundreds of students of color from all over the country populated the Cambridge campus in order to attend the “I, Too, Am Harvard” Conference.
The mission of the ITAH Blacktivism Conference was succinct and revolutionary: “To equip and empower Black collegiate students with the tools needed to fight social injustice on their campus and beyond so that we may finally and faithfully know that: We, too, are America.” Yet, as many people of color fluently know, the mantra is not one easily sung in this country and on our own campuses.
While the discourse from the conference brought many insights, what became clear is that we must let go of our aversion to discomfort. Whether in the bold declarations of humanity as displayed in the ITAH play or the solemn memorial of the black lives lost to state-sanctioned lynchings, it is an inconvenient fact that racism is America’s silent curse. If we are to ever move past this nation’s traumatic youth, we must be willing to endure the growing pains that shatter our complacency with our current state of affairs.
The fantasy of a “post-racial” society is nothing more than a delusional disconnect from reality.
During the tensions following the murder of Ferguson teen Michael Brown, there was a gap in the opinions on whether this case reflected the state of race relations within the country. According to the Pew Research Center, 80 percent of blacks believed that the Brown shooting raised racial issues compared to 37 percent of whites.
Even on our campus, last spring’s “Gangsta Party” mixer held by members of Beta Theta Pi fraternity and Chi Omega sorority spurred debates about whether or not it was a racial issue.
“We are working with the University and our national organization to address the situation and make amends to the Penn community,” stated Daniel Zuvia, Beta president, in an interview. But what were these amends? Where are they and for whom are they working?
Perhaps it’s easy to have amnesia about past sins when accountability for those actions is made to seem soft, like a written apology to an entire body of people. Truth of the matter is, Penn’s campus must realize that efforts to address the issue of racial tensions on campus must happen daily, by every single member of Penn’s community.
As it stands now, our nation lives under a politically correct anesthesia, incapable of dealing with the visceral pain of racial inequality. For minorities, these discussions are held openly such as those held during the ITAH Conference where students reflected on their lived experiences, many that go unnoticed by their peers. These issues have been beautifully reflected in James Baldwin’s piece, “A Letter to My Nephew”:
“In this case the danger in the minds and hearts of most white Americans is the loss of their identity. Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shivering and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one’s sense of one’s own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man’s world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar, and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations.”
To truly make amends on this campus we must engage in these daily conversations. This will, as our country’s ugly history proves, require us to become uncomfortable.
The fact of the matter is that racism is uncomfortable. It is not a blanket. It is not a couch.
And in the words of the divine comedian and philosopher Dave Chappelle,
“Fuck yo’ couch."
Victoria Ford and Nikki Hardison are a College and a Wharton senior, respectively. Their email addresses are vicford@sas.upenn.edu and chardi@wharton.upenn.edu. “The Vision” is a column for black voices that appears every Wednesday.
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