September 12, 2016 - 10:44
Hearing about Bryn Mawr from the authentic and various perspectives (students, professors, faculty) included in “Slipping” makes this school feel so much more real to me. While I wasn’t happy to learn that recent challenges on campus hurt community members and made people feel unsafe, I was glad to hear that there are challenges on this campus being grappled with. My first two weeks here have been pretty idyllic; the students are friendly, the professors are accommodating, the events are welcoming, the parties are fun. And I am certainly grateful for all of that. But I was starting to worry that things here are too perfect, or that things get covered up or ignored in order to keep it that way.
In my high school, there was often this sentiment from administration, and even some students, that we had done it, that we had achieved diversity. It is true that the racial, ethnic, socioeconomic diversity of the student body was superb, on paper. But in action there were always issues, issues which many people stopped trying to solve, acting as though we could check the box next to “Achieve Diversity” on the To Do list and move on.
To use Sarah Ahmed’s words (which were particuarly powerful in this chapter's discussion), equality was definitely our aesthetic. Being the largest and the most urban high school in our county, I heard staff and students alike brag to others about how great our diversity was and how politically correct the student body was compared to the county’s more homogenous - and therefore less "accepting" - schools. I took pride in these aspects of my school as well, but the general sense of pride distracted people from what was actually going on in the hallways and classrooms. Students were being racially profiled by faculty and security staff. Teachers were silencing minority identities. “Slips,” like Emily Elstad described, were rampant but with no further analysis, leaving the people most hurt or affected by the microaggressions to clean them up themselves. Our overall “success” in diversity was actually due to racially segregated programs within the school, established specifically to combat white flight and to attract white and asian students to the school. But most people acknowledged none of this, because we had “achieved diversity” and the numbers looked good. I appreciate how Chapter 8: “Slipping” asserts that this is not actually the case, and that covering up these biases is a disservice to education. "Diversity" will soon be more of a challenge to education than an advantage if we continue using the term as a bandaid solution for our problems.