Two links from the Miami Campus Newspaper:
As someone who studies race, who deals with racism, and who is working hard to increase diversity in my field and on my campus, these two stories do not surprise me. They dishearten me, but they don’t surprise me. And I’ll tell you why: everything in America, to some degree, is tinted by the two things you see here: racism and an attempt by the “majority” (read: white America) to pretend there isn’t racism in play.
Let’s start with the easy answer: I’m pretty sure the students didn’t respond to the campus climate survey because it was too long, it was marketed poorly for their attention span/schedules, and the name sounds like it was made up by a committee who couldn’t agree on what to call it. I get it. I took it. I was brutally honest in my response which will now be useless and unread. But it’s going to be hard to get a campus full of students who don’t see the major problems happening on their campus to respond to a form-mail looking, corporate produced “campus climate survey.” When you want students to talk about sexism, discrimination and racism, offering them the chance to stare at a survey for half-an-hour with a canned solicitation email won’t work. I’m not sure who thought it would, but I feel for whoever had to design it and get it through all the hoops something like that has to go through. Research like this is hard to do ethically, but sometimes the ethically part interferes with the doing part. A survey loses its force when you can’t call it what it is. The university was asking students, staff and faculty to look at what’s good and what’s bad. Mostly what’s bad. That’s not an easy thing to do. I know at times even I didn’t feel right telling stories in that survey, but I did it because it matters to point out the things that go on here. It’s a great campus, but not one without problems. All campuses have some problems, particularly in this day and age with this political climate. In particular, people of color have trouble with institutional racism and women have trouble with sexual assault. Calling that “campus climate” sort of minimizes it, though.
The other article illustrates exactly what sorts of things are happening on campus. If you read it, and you take everyone at their word (which I do not recommend), apparently a student referring to other students with “the n word” didn’t realize how wrong that was, a sure indicator that with that student we’re failing at educating. And in the responses to the article someone claims to not see the evidence that things like that happen all the time at Miami, illustrating that some people don’t realize how logic works (not seeing people showing examples doesn’t mean something doesn’t happen) and also that coming from a position of having never been in the situation, some people don’t know how hard it is to talk about being racially or sexually discriminated against. It’s difficult to speak up.
So let me offer a few examples, just to make sure people don’t think I’m trying to slide by on one incident:
- Even though the university acknowledged what a problem it was and replaced the Redskins mascot, some athletic facilities (bleachers sitting out in public view, for example) have still not been repainted or replaced decades later, and the bookstores now sell Redskins merchandise as “throwbacks.”
- When we ask people to talk about diversity, people don’t answer the survey
- With a rare exception, most (should we call them “domestic?” what is the counterpart here) students don’t approach international students when forming groups in classes.
- Look at the photos on any of our promotional material. Tell me what image you get of Miami. When you see a POC, it often looks staged. I’m not saying that they were (in fact I bet they weren’t), but it feels sometimes like the POC are wedged into the photos. That it can feel that way tells you something about the reputation and history of the campus.
I could make lists of the small things I see my students do to each other. I could write a book about the things my students say/do in relation to me that at the very least are disrespectful (and are usually racially unaware and racist in their impact).
I’m not saying it’s as bad as it is some places. The university, on a whole, is doing a good job to try to increase and nurture diversity. But there are small pockets that still ooze with racism, and when people attempt to talk about them, someone white (almost always someone white) tries to shut them up with hollow arguments and double-talk. I had someone in a faculty meeting years ago say that if they considered me, a Cherokee, to be diverse “what’s next, an Irish guy from Boston?”
I’m proud of the place where I work, and I’m proud of my students and coworkers, but part of being in college, of being educated, is to learn about interacting with other people and how to be part of a society.
We simply have to do better.