I, We, You and Me

The opponents of a multicultural student center on the panel convened last night at Ticknor Lounge, namely Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III and Peninsula hack John C. Appelbaum '97, conceded, in the end, that life itself can be unfair with regard to race and that Harvard too can act in a racist fashion. The admission was honest and true, and no doubt personally felt by both the Dean and the columnist. But for some reason their (different) understandings of the problems surrounding race at the College and in this country did not translate for them into the desire for action demanded by the majority of students present: space for the promotion of culture and specifically of the cultures which are not part of the dominant WASPy ethos embodied here.

Epps' answer to the students' pleading was an unwavering commitment to "integration." The situation at Harvard is much improved now from when he first arrived in the late 1950s, Dean Epps says. And it is. Minority students benefit culturally from the Harvard Foundation and from their many social clubs. So they do. Remaining feelings of uncomfortability are endemic to all students, and minorities particularly, in a diverse College community. What?

The problem with this approach to the racial situation on campus is that it tolerates the status quo and says that what is is the best that there can be. It claims as beneficial the tension experienced by minorities here because such thick skin is what it takes to make it in the real world. But a double standard of comfortability seems to be at work in this mean logic. Certainly WASPs have the need to feel comfortable on this campus, and no one faults them for retreating into their final club lairs. (I know, I know, you have a black (two!) Hin those clubs, and a handful of Jews.) Of course, women also have such a need, and no one faults them for getting together in the Lyman Common Room. And surely Jews have the same need, and they are not faulted for spending time at Hillel.

For all its passivity, Epps' strategy for race relations on this campus does embrace the idea of programmatic action through the Harvard Foundation. Contrast this tack with that of Appelbaum, whose negativity last night proved overwhelming. Aside from admitting that there was a problem, he saw nothing that could be done to alleviate it. This is the worst sort of mentality, the resistance to change for the better. It is not worth detailing his many awful statements (such as calling the proposed multicultural student center a "cage"), but suffice to say that his do-nothing attitude reflected a bent uninterested in solving any problems, of working toward anything better than the present, and in this regard it was a step removed from the position of Epps--a long step.

When Appelbaum was questioned by Grace K.L. Katabaruki '99 about the his cynicism, he rolled his eyes. But Katabaruki had something good to propose. Appelbaum would have none of it, and offered only a laissez-faire manifesto in response to her very human pleading for a "safe space" for minorities on this campus. Katabaruki recognizes daily in her personal experience the undeniable role of each of our races and cultures in the daily grind. And on this campus, that's not always such a pleasant experience for black people Katabaruki seeks space to relax those who share experiences similar to hers.

What is so wrong with comfort? For Epps, it is not comfort itself that is bothersome, but the idea of making comfort possible through connecting that part of the 'I' which is a member of 'we.' For Appelbaum, it is comfort that is bothersome because the level of comfort to be delivered by a multicultural student center is an acknowledgment of the existence of a 'we' apart from his own self-created white conservative 'we.' Congruently, the other College Republican on the panel, the more moderate William D. Zerhouni '97-'98, was--in his patronizing manner--perhaps friendly to the idea of a multicultural student center precisely because of its limiting potential, that is limiting the 'I' to a 'we.' But the 'I'/'we' divide isn't so strict, and we are all as much of one as the other. It is this very cross-hatched identity which is the rationale behind the proposal for a multicultural student center and why it should be created.

Joshua A. Kaufman's column appears on alternate Thursdays.