On Issues of Race.

The somewhat charged content of the last fifteen minutes of today's class discussion reminded me of a story from some seven years ago. Particularly, it was Josephine's question of, "Why is it alright for an African American to want to segregate their community but not alright for a white person to say the same? Is it not wrong in either case?" (Correct me if I misunderstood your question, Josephine).

At my old college, I was very briefly involved in a minority-advancement club. As a first-generation immigrant I received an invitation to join the week I showed up to school, and as this was early in the semester when people are still looking for friends among strangers (and because I very much needed the work-study graphic designer job they were offering, and only offering to members of the club), I decided to visit a few times.

I was never very active. However, there was a definite sense among the core members of race being a major issue, even at this small, ultra-progressive New England liberal arts school. This came to a head when I applied for the position of club graphic designer. One of my interview questions was, "We're attempting to get a colored-persons only dormitory set up on campus, so that persons of color can have a safe place if they feel that they need one. How do you feel about this?"

I thought about it, and then I told them that I thought segregating the student body along lines of race would not do anything to solve any problems the college might be experiencing. However bad it might be, it would not get better by creating an insulating barrier, a place where certain people were allowed and others were not. I said that I understood and respected the desire to have a safe-zone, but that was what this club was. A dormitory was taking it too far, and I was not in favor.

I did not get the job.

However, I believe that this cuts right to the heart of the question Josephine posed in class today. And though I am personally against fracturing a population whether it is billed as separation or segregation, I can understand the impulse, and here it is: It's the difference between segregation, and creating a sense of community in shared experience/origin. The reason that it is never alright for a white person to suggest this to a black person (or, more generally, for a person of any skin tone to force a person of a different skin tone to go away, be elsewhere), is that in that scenario, a group is using that tactic to oppress, or belittle, or make less, in a Tocquevillian Tyranny-of-the-Majority kind of way. Contrast that with black separatists during the Civil Rights movement, or the Minorities-Only-Dorm activists at my old school. Yes, they're functionally calling for a kind of segregation. But it is not the action itself that is the moral quantity here. It is the reason behind it. In the latter scenarios, these groups are seeking a place of safety, seeking to forge a sense of community out of their shared experience of being a hounded, mistreated group.

That's really the fundamental difference. Now, we can argue (as I have mentioned I have) that any kind of separation is wrong. That only integration will truly ever begin to not treat, but actually erase racial tension (As Professor Davis paraphrased James Baldwin today -- I will stop thinking of myself as a black man, when you stop thinking of yourself as a White Man). But in doing so we must be mindful of the power dynamics that are involved when different groups attempt this same tactic, because it makes all the fundamental difference in whether this is a morally right, or morally wrong thing to do.