<p>From this weeks Swarthmore paper the Phoenix. Seems like these issues of race and class exist at many schools.</p>
<p>February 28, 2008</p>
<p>Swarthmore ideals fail to correct the problems of social justice
BY YOSHI JOHNSON | MY BIG NUMBER!
Last week, while conducting an otherwise routine triage of my inbox, I happened upon a most unexpected email from Mr. Anthony Jack, the recent Amherst graduate whose New York Times story, you might recall, I referenced repeatedly in a column last semester on Swarthmore’s financial aid and admissions policies. Aside from a congenial expression of camaraderie, Mr. Jack wrote to establish a rapport with me, interested particularly in my thoughts on the practices and policies of our all-too-similar institutions. </p>
<p>His questions about the on-the-ground realities of race and class at Swarthmore, though, had me at a loss as to how I might best respond, especially given Swarthmore’s precipitous capitulation on financial aid policies last semester, a commendable move in many people’s eyes. </p>
<p>And how fitting a subject to ponder — the truths about race and socioeconomic status as they play out on Swat’s campus — since tomorrow the sun sets on yet another Black History Month. This February’s commemoration, of course, is only the latest iteration of an innumerable many that have come and gone at Swarthmore. </p>
<p>This time around, though, we are graced with one more ‘tomorrow,’ a twenty-ninth day of recognition. Even this additional time for celebration, however, has not saved the month from its predictable fate of lackluster observance by a campus too indifferent or too preoccupied with itself to reflect meaningfully on blackness and black people. </p>
<p>Swarthmore’s ill-conceived approach to honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., likewise, passed somewhat under the campus community’s radar, and what’s more, it left ambiguous exactly what the College’s commitment to Dr. King’s legacy of social justice might be, especially since the institution’s effective stance was one of “observing without observance.” (Haverford, Bryn Mawr and Penn could spare that day; what costs were so great that we, at the last, could not?) </p>
<p>Still, in the end it is important to note that these efforts, while in no way commensurate with the causes and ideals they sought to honor, were commendable ones nonetheless … right? I mean, why frame my reflections for Mr. Jack on race and class realities at Swarthmore with such a dreary assessment when, however inadequate, these attempts are attempts nonetheless at engaging race- and class-related causes of social justice? </p>
<p>For the same reasons that I admonished Swarthmore and its half-hearted financial aid and admissions mandates do I now fault the institution for its failure to fully honor noble ideals in these past few weeks. My deep-seated love for the institution and its ideals has once again gotten the best of me. It makes all the more disheartening the letdown of encountering apathy and poorly formed understandings about what these days of remembrance and commemoration should mean for us. </p>
<p>As I have written before, at Swarthmore there is a way — certainly we have the means to do a great deal more than we do — but there is no will. The events leading up to last semester’s abruptly announced “no-loans” policy prove as much, particularly since we were told only weeks before that “the way” (read: the money) just wasn’t there. On the contrary, our “walking the walk” was not there, and it was merely that such a practice had suddenly become unfashionable. </p>
<p>I could hark back to a commitment the institution made to its students — and itself — forty years ago next January to better illustrate how these seemingly disparate issues —admissions practices and an apathy about black people, that is — are all symptoms of the same problem, but the word limit on this column unfortunately precludes me from such an explication. I have probably exhausted this excuse at this point, I’ll concede, but with the exception of my last column, it has always been a legitimate explanation for why I cannot treat a topic with the thoroughness it demands. </p>
<p>Suffice it to say, though, that I will report a good many more things to Mr. Jack, and I will revisit Swarthmore’s historic crisis in 1969 to demonstrate how, then as now, a singular problem persists, unresolved: the ‘good white liberal’ mentality reigns still at Swarthmore. In predictable fashion, a smug sense of self-congratulation prevails at the expense of real struggle, meaningful reflection, and fully realized ideals. What we get instead is a paltry substitute for justice. As soon as I can, I will make available an extended version of this column on my blog. </p>
<p>Dr. King, in his 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail, put into words what I and many others encounter when wrestling with the status quo and its keepers, not only at Swarthmore or Amherst, but everywhere. Dr. King, you see, also confessed his grave disappointment with a certain mindset, that of the “white moderate … who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” </p>
<p>He concludes, “Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will,” and admonishes those who believe that they can paternalistically set a timetable for social justice. For Mr. Jack and me, I think, this problem bears directly on the matter at hand: how our institutions choose to admit and aid students; how they treat issues of race and class; and how they honor causes of social justice more generally. </p>
<p>The way in which Swarthmore’s no-loans policy came to be is representative of this larger problem. You will forgive me, then, if I wax discontent when, with the means to an end so obviously within grasp, our dream remains inexplicably deferred.</p>