February 1, 2015 - 12:33
When I first came to Bryn Mawr last year, I was still under the naive impression that I was entering an informed, enlightened, forward-thinking environment of the Bi-Co where things like racial equality were common sense and actively practiced. However, my idea of the Bi-Co as a liberal haven (and not just a white liberal haven) went out the door within my first month at this school. I witnessed and heard about many occurrences of microaggressions and slightly more overt racist commentary and actions, but the piece that shocked me the most was a story I was told by my roommate. Several years ago, she told me, there was a certain Halloween on Bryn Mawr's campus where some male Haverford students thought it would be a good and/or funny idea to put on blackface and attend a party with the costume of "Black women."* From my undertanding, the perpetrators were indeed brought to the Honor Board, but the consequences they faced were very mild compared to the severity of the offense.
When I first heard this story, I was pretty shocked. Blackface? In the Bi-Co of all places? And the fact that there were minor repercussions taken upset me even more. I almost couldn't believe it.. But again, that was when I was much more naive to the moral integrity and racial equality in this place that we call "home." Since learning about The Muppets case, my and (more predominately) my friends'/classmates' encounters with racism has been consitent and in some cases just as aggressive. Even though we in the Bi-Co typically think of ourselves as somehow more intelletually and morally superior than the rest of the non college educated country, I have come to learn that there are constant instances where racial inequality is reinforced both socially and structurally. Why is it that before I came to Bryn Mawr, I was under the impression that overt racism wouldn't be an issue? Sure, I was aware that there would probably be more subtle acts of racism like microaggressions (which actually happens 100x more than I thought it would), but never aggressive acts or words of white supremacy. Did I believe this because I am white and generally more ignorant to the realities of people of color? Yes, that is part of the reason. But I also blieve that there is a very false image of the Bi-Co that is sold to the public, and even to the students who go here today. I am willing to bet that the majority of people in the Bi-Co would say that we do not have a "race problem" in our consortium, in spite of the fact that we very clearly encounter racism every day -- whether a coded racism in the hiring processes of faculty and staff, a covert racism through microaggressions in the classroom or in daily discussions with peers, or an overt racism in instances such as The Muppets blackface or 2014's very own Confederate flag controversy.
*While I had trouble accessing the Honor Code records due to username/password problems, I found the abstracts of the cases from that year (2004) and the title of the violation is "The Muppets." (In case you wanted to do some research!)
Comments
Blackface in the Bi-Co
Submitted by jccohen on February 1, 2015 - 21:49 Permalink
rosea,
Your comment that when you arrived at Bryn Mawr you were under "the naive impression that I was entering an informed, enlightened, forward-thinking environment of the Bi-Co where things like racial equality were common sense and actively practiced" points up the sometimes painful gap between expectation and actual experience. And perhaps even more problematic, or at least more fundamental, is the attitude you describe that Bi-Co folks think ourselves "intelletually and morally superior than the rest of the non college educated country." In fact, it seems to me that this very feeling of superiority would likely get in the way of the kind of "active practice (of) racial equality" that you talk about here. How would you envision that we could take these issues on - deliberately and actively - as a learning community?