Yup, I'm at work. Just for another hour, which I plan to kill online and with a good book.
I just gave a presentation to a group of students. Great kids, great questions...honestly, I don't mind being here if I get to work with a good group. One question, though I knew it was coming, always throws me for a loop:
From the group's advisor (a white woman): "What kind of support services do you have for multicultural students?"
Part of me always wants to answer by telling her these kids are just like every other kid who leaves home for the first time and finds him or herself in a new place, meeting new people and encountering new challenges. Does a different skin tone really make leaving home any harder? So we don't discriminate by offering support systems to specific groups, but rather to our campus community as a whole.
Oh, and an African-American themed dorm, lady? Isn't segregation wrong, and wouldn't that completely conflict with the whole idea of a campus community?
At what point are you lending someone a helping hand, and at what point are you convincing them they can't overcome hurdles without your help?
2 comments:
Lemme just say this: If there's an African American-themed dorm, then I want a "Caucasian American-themed dorm" as well. Or would that be racist?
Ever see the episode of the original Star Trek series where they pick up two warring factions of people from an alien world, and they both have half-black and half-white faces, and when Captain Kirk asks them what they have against each other, the one alien says indignantly, "Don't you see? His face is black on the left side!"
...Yeah.
-Ryan
I totally agree with Ryan. Why is it okay to have the million man march, where African American men meet and march in protest? Isn't that racist against white people?
There is no such thing as reverse discrimination. If you're catering to certain ethnic groups (whether a minority or majority), you're discriminating against the rest.
~CH
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