In the Back of Your Mind

In any dispute, one of the quickest and most effective ways of shutting up your opponent is to accuse them of being irrationally hypersensitive. “Honestly, you’re taking this entire situation completely out of context. Once you lighten up and learn not to take everything so personally, maybe we can talk.”

For evidence of this thought process in action, we need to look no further than the response to the incident in the Quad this past weekend, when members of the Association of Black Harvard Women (ABHW) and the Black Men’s Forum (BMF) found their right to use the Quad questioned by members of the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) after a group of individuals on the Cabot House list decided—no questions asked—that they did not “look like” Harvard students, and must be trampling the Quad’s precious grass without permission.

Members of the organizations expressed concern that the swift assumption that a large group of black people couldn’t possibly be Harvard students—and the resulting decision to call HUPD on the “trespassers”—betrays some students’ underlying prejudices about the acceptable race of the average Harvard student. In the ensuing e-mail debate on numerous lists, such complaints were dismissed as touchy and divisive by a disturbingly large number of people. That’s right, they pulled the “playing-the-race-card” card.

Unfortunately, however, this is not an isolated event. Despite the abundance of instances just like this one, in which black students find their presence here under scrutiny, no one is willing to admit that maybe, just maybe, there’s a trend of unconsciously racist perceptions that is stringing them all together. There’s no denying that anyone living in America is living in a racist society. That’s not some alarmist, extreme characterization of what’s going on—it’s simply a statement of fact.

While much of this racism may not manifest itself in the most overt ways—explicit racial slurs and exclusion are rare—the very history of this country, and the ways in which minorities continue to be portrayed by the media, undoubtedly affect people’s subconsciously held ideas about race. It is extremely foolish for anyone to think that Harvard and its students are somehow above this tainted environment.

Despite your much-vaunted intellectual superiority, chances are that, whether consciously or not, even you, the enlightened Harvard student, have some ideas about race and who does or does not “look like” your fellow student. Yet, rather than acknowledge any of this, in the wake of the Cabot incident, many people simply accused the concerned ABHW and BMF members of unnecessarily “playing the race card,” and bringing a racial component into a situation that clearly did not merit it. Some even expressed concern that discussion of this sensitive issue was too divisive, and would breed tension on campus that would damage the precious “community” we all hold so dear.

Ultimately, arguments about hypersensitivity and race-baiting seem like nothing more than attempts to stifle productive debate or rational progress in changing people’s attitudes. Discussion should not be off-limits because it holds the potential to make some people uncomfortable, not only with the people around them, but with themselves.

Instead of this knee-jerk reaction (“You totally called me racist! I am not racist! I have black friends!”), people would do well to entertain the possibility that, despite what we’d like to believe, Harvard is not a bastion of racial harmony, and we students are not pure and perfect in our unconscious beliefs. The problem might be more subtle than it used to be, but there’s still a long way to go before we reach real racial understanding.


Ashton R. Lattimore ’08, a Crimson associate editorial chair, is an English and American literature and language concentrator in Dunster House.