{"id":3318,"date":"2015-12-02T09:11:27","date_gmt":"2015-12-02T15:11:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=3318"},"modified":"2015-12-02T11:44:32","modified_gmt":"2015-12-02T17:44:32","slug":"what-if-diversity-is-our-liability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/12\/what-if-diversity-is-our-liability.html","title":{"rendered":"What if diversity is our . . . liability?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Up to now, I\u2019ve refrained from commenting on the protests by black* students at American universities, not wanting to simply chime in with what\u2019d be a repetition of other commentary out there. \u00a0You know, the sort that advises the reader to take a gander at TheDemands.org<\/a>, see if their alma mater is on the list, and excerpts some of the students\u2019 demands, which they aim to see realized via sit-ins and other campus protests. \u00a0Demands such as these, taking Michigan State as an example:<\/p>\n

\u00a0We DEMAND that Michigan State University establish a College of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Class Studies by Fall 2017. This college will be home to the newly created Department of African American and African Studies, and it would establish a Department of Chicano and Latino Studies, Department of Women and Gender Studies, a Department of Native American Studies, a Department of Asian Pacific American Studies, and a Department of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Studies. . . .<\/p>\n

We DEMAND an increase in tenure-stream faculty whose research specializes in Black Politics, Black Linguistics, Black Sociology, Black Psychology, African politics, Black Queer Studies, Hip-Hop Studies, African American Literature, African Literature, and Decolonial Theory. All these faculty hires must be approved by a panel of Black student leaders and will be tenured in the Department of African American and African Studies. . . .<\/p>\n

[W]e DEMAND the establishment of a new six (6) credit, Inclusion and Intercultural Studies General Education requirement for all students enrolled on campus. To fulfill this requirement, students will have to take two (2) three-credit courses in the new College of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Class Studies. . . .<\/p>\n

We DEMAND that the number of underrepresented students enrolled at Michigan State University from Detroit, Flint, Lansing, Benton Harbor, Kalamazoo, Saginaw, Pontiac, Highland Park and other urban areas from across the state and nation be tripled by the 2017-2018 academic year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(* Incidentally, \u201cblack\u201d is the label of choice by these students, or rather, \u201cBlack\u201d with capitalization.)<\/p>\n

Essentially, there are three categories of demands (I\u2019ve only excerpted a few above): \u00a0demands for more black-related academic programs; demands for social, psychological, academic, and financial supports for black students; and demands for increased numbers of black students.<\/p>\n

With respect to the first of these, these protests and demands aren\u2019t new, but part of a cycle. \u00a0Perhaps you recall sit-ins from your college years, depending, anyway, on your age, as they come and go. \u00a0Here\u2019s an article by the AP from last week: \u00a0\u201cBlack studies programs lose ground on campus\u201d \u2014 or rather, that\u2019s how it was titled in the local paper; online it\u2019s \u201cExperts: Black studies programs facing campus challenges<\/a>.\u201d \u00a0 In essence, the programs established as a result of student demands such as the one above, decline in size over time, and are cut or consolidated, until the next round of protests brings new commitments by the administration.<\/p>\n

For example:<\/p>\n

Officials at San Jose State University in California cited the struggle by its African American Studies Department to attract enough students to fill upper division classes and having only one full-time faculty member in a proposal to merge the program into another department.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Other examples were similarly cited \u2014 and the bottom line seems to be that these programs were established as a result of political pressure, in excess of actual student interest, so that when it becomes that their enrollment numbers can\u2019t support the number of course offerings, they fall prey to cuts. \u00a0And it\u2019s not clear to me (or perhaps I\u2019m not cynical enough) what the basis for these types of demands is: \u00a0are there students who want to study these topics at a serious academic level and are unable to? \u00a0Is an African American Studies Department a symbol, the establishment of which is required to communicate to students the university\u2019s commitment to equality? \u00a0Or is this a means of adding to the body count of black professors, another student demand?<\/p>\n

Also note that\u00a0the new sets of demands seek to solve the demand issue by mandating that all students enroll in these courses as graduation requirements, but any university that created graduation requirement specific enough to require\u00a0all\u00a0students to study two semester\u2019s worth of black history and popular culture would struggle to keep its enrollment numbers up. \u00a0And any university that demanded incessant and burdensome \u201ccultural sensitivity\u201d training sessions of its faculty and students would find that this would be similarly rejected.<\/p>\n

With respect to the demand to increase the student body representation, the MSU student body is currently 8% black, according to their own data<\/a>, while the state is 14% black, according to the census bureau<\/a>. \u00a0That compares to 5% at the University of Michigan, or 11% at Western Michigan (less selective college in Kalamazoo), 21% at Wayne State (in Detroit), and 7% at Central Michigan. \u00a0And some further demographic context:\u00a0if black students were represented exactly in proportion to their share of the population nationwide, they\u2019d be 13% of the population<\/a>. \u00a0And that proportion is forecast to stay pretty stable, even as far as 2060, climbing only slightly to 15%, again\u00a0according to the Census Bureau<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s an article from the New York Times, giving the perspective of the students involved in the protests at Amherst College, \u201cWith Diversity Comes Intensity in Amherst Free Speech Debate<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Students said that as they gathered at Frost Library on Nov. 12, emotions poured out. One young woman said she went to sleep at night wishing she would not wake up. Imani Marshall, a senior pre-med student from Chicago, who is black, felt a shudder of recognition and started to cry.<\/p>\n

Ms. Marshall, who went to a selective public school in Chicago and came to Amherst on full financial aid, said she had felt unprepared academically and socially for Amherst. Yet she felt that by asking for help, she would undermine not just her own standing but that of her entire race.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like an impostor,\u201d Ms. Marshall said the other day over lunch at the central dining hall. \u201cI close myself off a lot of times from help. I always feel like I need to prove to other people that I\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0belong here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mercedes MacAlpine, a black senior, who attended the Chapin School, an elite all-girls school in Manhattan, said, \u201cYou can walk into a room and have it look 50-50 and still not feel valued.\u201d<\/p>\n

Racially ambiguous students said they had trouble fitting in. \u201cI\u2019ve been called Rachel Dolezal,\u201d said Kaelan McCone, a freshman from Greensboro, N.C., referring to the white civil rights activist who identified as black. Mr. McCone, whose father came from Ireland and whose mother is African-American, said classmates had demanded that he show them family photos to prove that he is black.<\/p>\n

Sanyu Takirambudde, a sophomore from South Africa, who is black, said she felt like a token. \u201cI never felt so stupid,\u201d Ms. Takirambudde said of her experience in her science and math classes at Amherst. \u201cEven when I say the correct answer, no one\u2019s going to listen to me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The ethnic mix at Amherst? \u00a0According to Forbes<\/a>, black students are represented nearly in proportion to their numbers in the population at large, 12%.<\/p>\n

The tweeter who linked to this article originally a couple days ago observed that the insecurities and the feelings of not fitting in, are not limited to blacks, or underrepresented minorities, or poor kids, but are more common that not, for all students as they enter the college environment, with its requirements to manage classwork and finances independently, get along with strangers as roommates, and find your place in a place that seems to increasingly demand that you have a \u201cplace\u201d and an \u201cidentity\u201d rather than just going about your day.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the struggles that black students disproportionately face are not matters of racism on campus. \u00a0They are disproportionately poor, and these students, despite the large number of earmarked scholarships, still struggle with finances and with the effects of having grown up in poverty, or, at any rate, low-income-ness, and in low-income communities. \u00a0And those who arrive at the university from middle-class communities and middle-class families are pressured to find their identity through their race and through these new identity groups, transforming stray comments that\u00a0may otherwise have been nuisances into \u201cmicroaggressions\u201d and deeply-felt grievances. \u00a0At least, that\u2019s what I see from the outside. \u00a0(Hmmm. . . thinking back to college, I never really did much more than go to class, study, and hang out with friends; I never found an interest group to get involved in. \u00a0Perhaps I never looked hard enough, perhaps there just wasn\u2019t much in the days when your club could, at best, hang up a few signs on campus and hope for some word-of-mouth turnout. \u00a0Are there alternatives at universities for getting to know other students, besides dorm living, or the Greek system, or ethnic-based groups?)<\/p>\n

The reality is that black students will always be in the minority in America \u2014 at least, as long \u00a0as blackness is counted as a \u201cdifference\u201d to be marked and measured and made the key to one\u2019s identity, rather than an incidental characteristic, like the particular origin of the immigrant forefathers of students of European ancestry. \u00a0For most whites, \u201cethnic heritage\u201d means, at most, enrolling your kid in Irish dance lessons or taking them to German school, or Polish school, or Greek school, on Saturday mornings, or maybe having a special recipe or two passed down from grandma. \u00a0To be sure, our ancestors may have suffered discrimination upon arriving on these shores, but, heck, a restaurant called DayGo Dogs \u2014 with a dog with a \u201cwife-beater\u201d t-shirt and chain \u2014 opened up and no one felt microaggressed.<\/p>\n

Instead, at our universities, we\u2019re seeing a perpetuation of segregation, this time voluntarily, in academic disciplines, in dormitories and \u201csafe spaces\u201d and the like, and the insistence that one\u2019s race is one\u2019s key defining characteristic. \u00a0Surely this is a path towards more, not less, alienation, even if the students who prefer this think it provides them comfort.<\/p>\n

Yes, I know that the notion of \u201ccolor-blindness\u201d as an ideal has been discarded. \u00a0We\u2019re told that it\u2019s bad to aim for it, and that we should preserve and emphasize and celebrate our differences, in a glorious multicultural tapestry. \u00a0But this simply won\u2019t work. \u00a0It can\u2019t work. \u00a0Differences divide us. \u00a0To ask us, as a society, to emphasize difference, and yet achieve equality, is to make a demand that goes against human nature. \u00a0We\u2019re all quite fond of saying that children are naturally accepting and have to be taught to be racist, so that if only we teach them a new ethic of multiculturalism, all will be well. \u00a0But it seems to me that quite the opposite is true, that our human inclination is discrimination of those we perceive of as \u201cnot like us,\u201d and the only remedy is to work towards a future in which those characteristics which seem to be deep gulfs of division now ultimately become as incidental as whether you celebrate St. Patrick\u2019s Day or Oktoberfest.<\/p>\n

Everyone likes to parrot insipid lines like \u201cdiversity is our strength.\u201d \u00a0But it\u2019s not. \u00a0It\u2019s a legacy of our history in the United States as a country of immigrants, and our slavery past, but \u201cdiversity\u201d has been an impediment to our well-being as a country. \u00a0To the extent that this impediment has been overcome, it\u2019s because we have encouraged assimilation and emphasized a common culture and shared values.<\/p>\n

And \u2014 by the way \u2014 part of the reason for the \u201cmulticultural\u201d ethic has been the feeling that something is lost everything an immigrant assimilates to American culture, because we in America perceive non-American cultures as vibrant, with traditional music and dance and food and clothing, and think of American culture as really so bland as to not even be a culture at all. \u00a0Maybe we should all start celebrating square dance \u2014 that is, adopt a mind-set that there is, or can be, an American culture that can itself have value.<\/p>\n

And now: take a deep breath before you jump into the comments to tell me how awful I am for not appreciating the plight of minorities. \u00a0I\u2019ve tried to word this as carefully as I can and yet know I\u2019ll catch it from someone. \u00a0But what is blogging about, if not trying to work through an issue?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Up to now, I\u2019ve refrained from commenting on the protests by black* students at American universities, not wanting to simply chime in with what\u2019d be a repetition of other commentary out there. \u00a0You know, the sort that advises the reader to take a gander at TheDemands.org, see if their alma mater is on the list, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat if diversity is our . . . liability?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Up to now, I've refrained from commenting on the protests by black* students at American universities, not wanting to simply chime in with what'd be a\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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