October 1, 2015 - 22:45
Just a few months ago, I found myself trying to choose a college to attend in the coming fall – similar to most high school seniors across America. As I compared academics and extracurriculars and student:teacher ratios and graduation rates, I tried reaching out to alumni of my high school who had gone to the various colleges I had narrowed down to. Surprisingly, no one from my high school had chosen Bryn Mawr College for several years. Very few students had heard of Bryn Mawr at all. After much probing, I finally reached my friend’s adult sister, who had graduated from Bryn Mawr College over a decade ago.
“So what was your experience like?” I recall asking her excitedly.
While she said the intellectual culture and academic rigor of Bryn Mawr were great, she also mentioned that there was a deeply ingrained racism within the administration and general student body. I was shocked to hear this. This was completely out of my expectations of what college might be like, and I didn’t know what to do with this new information.
So I ignored it, assuming this graduate must have had her own personal issues with Bryn Mawr College, and that the very notion of an institution having an ingrained racism within its leadership was preposterous. I continued the college process, came down to a few schools, and finally committed to Bryn Mawr.
The college seemed tolerant enough. The student body was relatively diverse, each dorm hall had its own Community Diversity Assistant, and the college seemed to be going to great lengths in attempts to make all kinds of people feel welcome. I did not see any racism on the surface.
In Anne Dalke’s draft chapter, “Slipping into Something More (Un)Comfortable: Untangling Identity, Unsetting Community,” the idea of “slippage” is introduced. “Slippage” describes the phenomena of unconsciously and unintentionally reverting to a prejudiced state that one may or may not have known existed. This means that slippage can involve discovering beliefs one did not think they were internally holding – beliefs that someone might be surprised to find out about themselves. If a person knows a certain part of them exists, then this knowledge does not qualify as an “unconscious” lapse, and therefore cannot be slippage. I believe that slippage can be a good growing experience, but this is only possible when one is willing to recognize that he or she is carrying prejudiced views, and is willing to try changing them.
Changing an ingrained, inherently discriminatory view is undoubtedly harder to carry out in action than theory. The question becomes how the process of changing prejudiced views in order to turn slippage into a good growing experience actually works. An individual must initially acknowledge and be willing to feel uncomfortable while learning about the histories, narratives, and experiences surrounding this prejudiced view. Perhaps most importantly, the individual must try to be as open-minded as possible through the process.
In her draft chapter, Dalke chronicles the confederate flag controversy that occurred last year. Two students, including Dalke’s student, Nia, hung the confederate flag in their dorm and taped down a Mason-Dixon Line in front of their door. Other students asked them to remove these items, but they refused – apparently the flags represented “Southern pride” to them. I definitely can agree with Nia that there is a problematic pressure at Bryn Mawr to conform to the cultural norm. Students ought to feel comfortable with their values and beliefs. But to value and honor a symbol of violence, hatred, and marginalization of another minority group — which is exactly what the confederate flag signifies for many African citizens — is wrong. This isn’t a matter of freedom of speech or conformity, because something like the confederate flag can affect surrounding atmospheres, cause pain in community members, and stir up potential outbreaks. Earlier, Nia said herself, “Bryn Mawr is above all else a sisterhood, a home, a community, and we must foster this sense of togetherness, by coming together and not isolating and discriminating against the variety of cultural identities which exist on our campus.” Yet hanging the confederate flag directly and cruelly contradicts this goal, and so Nia’s credibility is lost on me.
This incident was not slippage, because Nia and her roommate still stood by their confederate flag even after they were told it symbolized pain, hate, torture, violence, and oppression for Black members of the community. Slippage needs to be unconscious, which is the opposite of Nia and her roommate. They were proudly aware of their flag and tape, and meant to make a statement. “Good slippage” might have occurred if Nia and her roommate listened to the other students who told them that the flag made them uncomfortable, realized they were wrong, and respectfully took it down. But this didn’t happen. Even if the confederate flag could somehow be twisted to signify Southern pride, the Mason-Dixon Line was directly related to slavery. Even if we can’t completely discern what Nia and her roommate’s true intentions were while hanging the confederate flag, this tape effectively worked to isolate themselves from the rest of campus. There is significance in the doubling of their action – if they hadn’t put down the Mason-Dixon tape, perhaps we could still think that their intention was ambiguous. Nia and her roommate may have experienced slippage because they seemed to think their actions were not wrong. On the other hand, Nia and her roommate conceivably did not experience slippage because their combined actions were planned.
The confederate flag and Mason-Dixon Line controversy certainly stirred numerous
conversations and dialogues on campus that are still taking place today. Perhaps a parallel, more recent set of events would allow this examination to delve further.
Black at Bryn Mawr is a collaborative project created by Bryn Mawr students Emma Kioko ’15 and Grace Pusey ’15 in their senior year, as a direct response to the confederate flag incidence. In April 2015, Black at Bryn Mawr combined research and blogging to create their first walking tour. The purpose of Black at Bryn Mawr was to foster an institutional memory of the College’s interaction with racism, and to make black history at Bryn Mawr more accessible to the public.
The Black at Bryn Mawr tour is excellent for bringing historically racist issues to light. I’m glad that Bryn Mawr is trying to be honest and not hide its past. While many parts of the tour were shocking and difficult to hear, it is necessary for this information to be open and public in order for us to move past it and grow as a community. Black at Bryn Mawr should be used to pull out all slippages. We all need to be confronted by ourselves and others about the prejudices we might be holding deep within us. Events like these allow us to evaluate and take a second look at ourselves to determine what our true feelings and beliefs are. Only by welcoming discomfort can we become better, stronger, and more tolerant as both individuals and communities.
Pusey and Mercado's history of Bryn Mawr through the “Black at Bryn Mawr” tour demonstrated that our college has a social climate that’s not engineered to support everyone. We have a long way to go. Our tour guide mentioned that even now, the entire Bryn Mawr College faculty only has four tenured black professors. We need to emphasize Enid Cook’s struggle. We need to expand Black at Bryn Mawr to include the voices of black people. We need to start feeling uncomfortable.
Both the confederate flag controversy and Black at Bryn Mawr have forced us to become uncomfortable – in a good way. The discomfort that arose from these situations was valuable and productive, because it led to conversations that weren’t being held on our campus. Sometimes, only by becoming uncomfortable are we able to make worthy change and gain better understandings of the world.
Bibliography
Dalke, A. (2015). Slipping into Something More (Un)Comfortable: Untangling Identity, Unsettling Community. Draft chapter.