College Presidents Say Race Relations Are Just Fine (Students, Not So Much)

Parent Cafe
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@moooop, you can’t genuinely say that we’re in “good shape” because you’ve never had to live this life and you don’t know how it feels. The bottom line is that even if ethnic minorities have it better than our ancestors who were lynched and pelted with fire hoses, we still have worse experiences in these areas than our white counterparts who don’t have to deal with it every day. If I could slip my skin off and have you wear it for a month, I would).

Yes, I do agree with you that most white people go out of their way not to be rude to other races (or anyone). That doesn’t mean, however, that some people still aren’t racist and horrible. The fact that a minority does it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, and the fact that you’ve never experienced it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. (In fact…the fact that you’ve never experienced it kind of proves the point, no?)

And that’s the comment I came to make about the college issue. A lot of people on this forum and in the media in general have accused these students of blowing things out of proportion, misrepresenting the issues or completely fabricating their experiences. First of all, these have always been the first line of attack against those who speak out against injustice, including the knee-jerk reaction to try to invalidate and minimize people’s experiences by saying they are “not that bad.” No, trust me, it’s pretty bad to get followed around in a store because someone thinks you’re going to steal something, pulled over by the police repeatedly when you’re not doing anything, worrying that wearing your hair in it’s natural state will make people think you’re “militant,” or treated like you’re stupid or the help because of the way you look. I can tell you about it, but there’s also a wealth of decades of research done on this that shows these things happen far more frequently to ethnic minorities (as well as other more extreme things like police brutality, mandatory sentencing, random deaths and discrimination in housing, employment, and education) AND that it’s stressful.

Buuuut secondly…what incentive do these students have to lie and protest? They simply get vilified in the media, dismissed by their own schools’ administration and sometimes rejected and reviled by their classmates. Protests aren’t easy or fun. Most of the time, students don’t do them for kicks. They do them because from their perspective they are experiencing something real and painful. Yeah, some of the students are making ridiculous demands because they’re young and they don’t quite understand how this all works yet. But before I dismissed them I would at least try to understand a little bit more about what they’re experiencing and what they’re saying is happening on campus. And I’d also remember that college administrations have some agendas to serve when downplaying racism - or problems at all - on their campuses.

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I would further argue that one of the most insidious part of racism is the majority discounting of the minority experience That is one extremely effective way of silencing the voices of minorities. Just deny or belittle the legitimacy of their experiences. Then you don’t have to listen to them, never mind trying to understand or starting a dialogue.

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Suppose there is a white cashier in a store who is a real jerk, and is just plain rude to every customer. After each transaction with this cashier, the white people walk away thinking “What a jerk.” Some black customers probably walk away thinking “What a racist.” In other words, not every time a person of one race slights someone of another race does it have a racial element. Let’s call this “mistakenly perceived racism” (MPR). Keeping in mind that when most white people (even the racists, I would assume) get up in the morning, the very last thing they want in their day is an interracial incident, and keeping in mind that college campuses are not exactly the types of places that attract white racists, do you think the majority of perceived racial incidents on college campuses are real racism, or are they MPR?

Perceiving that the people who cut in front of you while boarding a plane did so because of racist reasons, to me, sounds like classic MPR. First, the pre-boarding scrum and cutting in line happens to EVERYBODY. Second, how does Party’s husband discern that when this happens to him, it is due to racism instead of just plain rudeness?

Party’s remark about worrying about your kids also struck me as odd. Show me parents of ANY race who don’t worry when their kids go out at night.

As for the racist white women holding their purses tighter when a black man approaches, etc. …I’ve heard black people say this claim is odd, because black people do these sorts of things all the time, and they call it being “street smart.” When white people do them, it is called racism. Again, MPR. (See Jesse Jackson’s famous quote about feeling relieved.)

Party tells her kids to get things in a bag. My parents taught me to always get a receipt for the same reason. My wallet is still overflowing in receipts for this very reason. Trying to keep your kids from being falsely accused of shoplifting is good parenting for all races.

Again, nobody is saying racist incidents are 100% extiguished. But we’re at the point where we can’t find a real racist incident, so we have to invent one as in Albany; where micro-aggressions are inflated because macro ones are in short supply; where accepting another’s culture is deemed offensive appropriation; where there isn’t actual subjugation but white people simply had a head start (white privilege); UCB linked an article that said something like “well, people aren’t performing racist acts, but they are THINKING about them” (mental racism). I’m not doubting, trivializing, or mocking the notion that Party perceives the infinite acts of racism she mentions. It’s not fair that people have to endure real or perceived racism, and my intent, as a member of the group she’s accusing, was to try to assure Party that things are not as bad as she’s perceiving them to be. I am asking if real, intentional racism was as omnipresent as Party perceives, would Albany, micro, appropriation, privilege, and mental even be in the discussion…would those concepts even exist?

I write this in good faith, in an effort to improve things, not worsen them (cue the scoffing). I’m aware I will get blasted, shredded, and accused of all manner of misdeeds.

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When it happens to him multiple times.

Do tell me about the white kids who get routinely shot by the police for the most ridiculous reasons. In fact, if I remember correctly, it’s them that do the shooting. Not being racist here, just stating “facts”.

Indeed. Doubly so when you’re kids have a statistically higher chance of being accused because of their skin color.

This is akin to saying that one girl falsely crying “rape” shows that there are in fact, a lot less rapes than reported, because of this ** one** fabricated incident.

@moooop Have you by any chance read @SlackerMomMD 's post? I suggest you do so again.

You may not be aware of it, but you really can have no idea of the racism black people face everyday unless you’re black. Saying you do would be like me trying to downplay the effects of PMS when I never had a Period in my life. So you might not mean to be trivializing, but you ultimately are.

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“At least half of African-American and Latino students at these schools said they had experienced discrimination in the form of verbal comments.”

The part that I don’t like about CC is that people seem to forget that it’s not just the AA kids that are discriminated against.

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“Party’s remark about worrying about your kids also struck me as odd. Show me parents of ANY race who don’t worry when their kids go out at night.”

Here’s the difference.
Scene: two white coworkers, parents of teenage boys.
K is married to a white man, white teenage son, affluent suburb.
L is married to a black man, teens are black, racially diverse suburb.

K recounts a funny story about a game her son is participating in, whereby kids are hiding near one another’s garages and then playing “gotcha”, shooting one another with water guns and so forth. Kids are getting creative with hiding in bushes, knowing when the family will be driving, etc. Most of the class is participating, there are points on a board at school, ha ha isn’t this fun hijinks. There’s no vandalism except maybe someone’s flowers get trampled, it’s all light hearted fun blah blah blah.

L quietly speaks up and says she could not let her son participate in this game. She simply cannot take the chance of her black son hiding in bushes to “accost” a fellow student. It just takes one nutty neighbor to call the police or tote a gun and then her son is in danger. He simply cannot afford “high spirited hijinks” that is cute among white suburban boys but menacing when done by black boys. And like it or not, there is a different reaction to “my kid’s classmate is hiding in our bushes waiting to shoot us with a water gun when we pull out of the garage” when it’s a white kid vs black kid.

That’s the kind of thing people are talking about, moooop.

Though I do agree with you that sometimes there is an assumption that if you’re white, you move through life seamlessly with only pleasant encounters, and truly, sometimes the rude cashier or the jerk who pushed ahead of you in line is just a jerk to everyone.

Yesterday I was in a line in a coffee shop. The man in front of me was a Mexican blue collar worker. It was unclear by where he was standing whether he was in line or not, so I asked him. Now, maybe internally he thought “wealthy white lady thinks I dont belong at a fancy coffee shop with overpriced lattes, microaggression alert” but I really was just clarifying whether he was in line or not. Later on, he sort of angled the line in a way that blocked other people and because I’m a stickler for this kind of thing, I put my hand up and said to him that he really needed to move, he was making the line block other people and we needed to angle ourselves more flat and not block the other patrons. Again, it’s quite possible he perceived it as a microaggression of a wealthy white lady telling him what to do because he’s Mexican, but really, I’m just correcting someone who wasn’t showing common sense irrespective of race. I’d have done the same thing with a fellow wealthy white suburbanite.

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Pizza, is L worried about any of the neighbors overreacting, or just the white ones?

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@moooop, a good way to test your theories is to talk to interracial couples. You’ll find plenty who can speak to the unequal treatment they receive when doing the same things and dressed in the same way.

My husband’s college roommate is Pakistani-American as is his wife. All of us have the same level of education, have kids of the same age and dress in the same way. In 2001 my husband and his Pakistani friend worked in the same industry and we all travelled quite a bit. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks our friend, traveling alone or with his family, was frequently the subject of “random” searches. My husband and I were never “randomly” searched once. You can’t even chalk it up to Islamophobia because he’s Christian and has a Christian name.

I live in a wealthy, overwhelmingly white community. It’s a very liberal town so I would be shocked to see overt racism, but that doesn’t mean minority residents and visitors don’t have experiences different from that of majority white residents. Good friends of mine, an interracial couple, lived here for a few years. They said that when they walked around together or she walked through town alone stopping to check out their new community they were pretty much left alone, but when he walked through town without his wife doing the same stopping and looking he was often asked if he needed help with directions. Someone might say that people were being more friendly and helpful to him, but there was a darker subtext at work here-the message that while she belonged and could find her way around without help he must not be from the community. No one was unfriendly but they were still unintentionally sending the message that he was an outsider.

I agree that sometimes people mistake plain old rudeness for racism, but half the point is that those of us who are white and of European descent don’t often have to wonder if the unequal treatment we’re getting is because of our race, do we?

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Funny you should ask that, moooop. L and her family (interracial) are actually part of an ongoing documentary (I think Spike Lee is behind it somehow).

I don’t know whether she’s “more concerned” about the white neighbors or the black ones, but her point is completely valid. k’s white son would not be at risk of getting stopped by a cop or getting shot at by a gun-toting freak the way L’s black son is.

Last year, a young black man went door to door in my neighborhood selling something. He was dressed in khakis and was polite. I was in my driveway talking w him and inquiring what it was he wanted when a squad car pulled up. Apparently some neighbor had called the cops. I guarantee if my white son had gone door to door, no one would have called the cops. The cops respectfully questioned him and ascertained he wasn’t trouble, but it was very upsetting to our family as we realized that indeed we would be treated differently.

This isn’t rocket science. There are plenty of stupid micro aggressions that people whine about but there is also truth in disparate treatment.

I think often about the fact that if I as a white woman schlep out of the house with my hair pulled back, no makeup, sweatpants, etc. I’m just a sloppy white lady - but I’m not perceived to be a representative of or discredit to my race.

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Yes, with respect to interactions with the police, it sometimes is the case that the racism problem is not always with the police (though it sometimes is), but with the people who call the police.

Given the recent well reported (every few days in different states) anonymous (mostly) surveys showing substantial support for racist policies among the general population, this may not be too surprising.

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Pizza, if L is worried about neighbors of all races overreacting, then it wouldn’t seem to be racism that is the motivator. In other words it’s quite possible that people of all races might react similarly to those kids in their bushes. In which case their concern isn’t necessarily motivated by racism.

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God almighty. The chances that the cops are going to be called for the black kid in the bushes are higher than the chances for the white kid.