When Alex Mason first ran into Phil Keitel during fraternity rush, he thought the loudmouthed, aggressive Keitel was a big jerk. As seniors four years later, Mason and Keitel share a house, a tight group of friends, an extensive collection of inside jokes, leadership of a non-profit organization, and a bond that few have with another person.
Keitel is white. He describes himself as a "straight-up Caucasian." Mason, whose mother is white and father is black, is aware that he is seen "strictly as black." And because of this contrast, their friendship is a novelty at Tufts.
"I really like that we're the exception at Tufts," Keitel said.
These two don't have any overwrought stories about hurdling barriers to become friends - instead, they crack jokes about their uniqueness. They can even point to one other pair of friends on campus - two junior males, one black, one white - as "little Alex and Phil," since they too are an exception to a pattern most students take for granted. They know they stick out, and in this school, in this country, they can also point out a few reasons why.
For Keitel and Mason, race is not an issue that falls under the auspices of political correctness. They joke, often in a raunchy way, about their backgrounds, cultures, and upbringings - lifestyles that, in some respects, can be viewed from opposite ends of the spectrum.
"We had a lot of common interests, but in actuality, we still have essentially different personalities," Keitel began.
"Which are a result of different backgrounds," Mason chimed in, finishing the thought. They tend to do that a lot - finish each other sentences, complete each other's thoughts - as best friends often do.
Although Keitel and Mason see their friends, mostly other males from the class of 2001, as a diverse group in terms of black and white, their friendship is still prominent.
"We would be the closest set of two. We're kind of inseparable," Keitel said.
Although they're alike in many ways, they don't quite share a brain. Girls are a point of contention. The oversized poster of a bikini clad blonde in the living room shows Keitel's preference, which is completely different from Mason's - and he'll just leave it at that. Another difference: White, upper-class suburbia surrounded young Keitel. Mason grew up in a diverse Philly neighborhood. And their opinions on race don't quite mesh all the time.
The uniqueness lies here. At a school where certain tables at Dewick are referred to as the "black hole" because of the race their occupants; where the Greek system is overwhelmingly white; and where some students feel they can't relate to students of other races, their brotherhood is almost an anomaly. Race can make or break friendships in this way. The color line is the barrier.
"I think people avoid friendships [with people of different races] because they're afraid of what their other friends will think of them," Mason said.
With these two, it's a matter of comfort. "It really does come down to the fact that we don't really care where we are from," Keitel said. "Race was never a factor - we just didn't really think about it."
Building bonds
When many students of certain racial or ethnic backgrounds first arrive at Tufts, they're not even freshmen yet. Many come as pre-frosh to April's Students of Color Outreach Program (SCOPE) weekend for accepted applicants. Friendships form here, and are later solidified during orientation, when the African-American, Asian-American, and Latino Centers take trips to introduce new students to other freshmen students of color.
"For black people on campus, the first people they really get to chill with are black students [on the orientation trip]. You come in and meet everyone, and you just naturally stay friends," Mason said.
During the African-American Center's trip to Cape Cod, Mason met the guys he would later join to form "Coco Tufts" (CT), a collection of 16 or 17 black men in the class of 2001. Together they made a pact not to drift apart, a seemingly legitimate concern in light of past occurrences.
"We were beginning to see how black men on campus didn't stay together as the years went by. There would be disassociation within the black male community and we didn't want that to happen," Mason explained, adding that through the years, "it has worked very nicely."
Mason, though, had never considered race when forming relationships. "Race hasn't ever been an issue with me, and I've caught sh-t from the black community for it all my life. In high school, people asked me if I thought I was white," he said.
Others see a similar racial background as grounds for possible friendship. Relaxing at Capen House, their home for the year, sophomores Gennifer Miller and Joan Williams, both African-American, recall meeting each other during SCOPE weekend. Although their first impressions weren't so great - Williams laughs now, remembering Miller as "snobby" - they both found acceptance and understanding from other black students as freshmen.
"It was easier to be friends with black people - it was those people who opened up to me first," Miller said, relating this to bigger issues. "African-Americans, because of their history of enslavement, go through an America that is different from other people's. No matter how many times people can say they identify with what we go through, they can't understand. Black people can understand."
On the other hand, when Mason comes home pissed off because a bouncer wouldn't let him in a club on the basis of his skin color, Keitel automatically has his back, urging him to call a lawyer, to write The Boston Globe, to do something - because he knows it's wrong too.
"I don't think it's really color that makes people understand you more, it's also just a matter of where you're coming from as an individual," Mason said.
Indeed, a common color isn't always a sure way to form tight friendships. Miller remembers a high school life where other black students ridiculed and made fun of her because they grew up in different types of neighborhoods.
Similarly, sophomore Jillian Beirne, also African-American, remembers negative experiences with black students during high school. During freshman year of college, Beirne recalls, "I was an 'incog' - I didn't have any black friends in high school, so I thought the black people here would hate me. I was gonna be friends with anyone I saw."
She made friends with another black freshman, who then brought Beirne to meet all of her friends. "I never had more fun than the first night," she said, although building these new friendships came with some insecurity. "When I started meeting the rest of the group, I was really uncomfortable at first. Besides my family, I'd never been around black people."
The difference between her experiences in high school and at Tufts is that here they built, as Beirne puts it, a "100 percent support network," among black students.
"I found a community of black people who were all on the same level - who were taking classes, making inroads," Williams said in agreement.
And although their group is predominantly black, the girls acknowledge that there's always room for others. "Anybody can be introduced into our group," Miller said.
Down the street and around the corner on Latin Way, Asian-American students at the Start House express similar sentiments about friendship building. Junior David Jen also found few friendships with other Asians during his high school career.
"I never hung out with Asians before I came to Tufts," Jen said. But he also finds that who he hangs out with isn't a consideration. "I just had friends who knew friends who happened to be Asian."
Jen's high school class had 81students, two of whom were Asian, including himself. Now that Jen is integrated into an Asian community at Tufts, however, he feels more of a connection with his culture.
"I always felt weird because my customs weren't the same and I felt like an outsider. I feel more comfortable with Asian people as a result. It's nice to have someone who shares your customs," he said.
Although junior Kristen Kawachi now embraces the Start House as her home away from home, the transition was not so easy. In fact, Kawachi came to Tufts with a mindset similar to Beirne's. "I had a lot of negative feelings toward the Asian-American Center and the concept of having peer leaders," she said.
Similarly, when sophomore Caroline Park applied to live in the Start House, she expressed some reservations to the center's leader - she didn't understand why Asian-American students seemed to stick together. Park got a response that still resonates for her: Why aren't these same criticisms voiced when a group of white people sits together in the dining hall?
"Nobody accused anyone of having a white table at Dewick. They don't have [designated] tables or houses because they do have it - every dorm can be a white dorm," Kawachi said.
Freshman Pete Schaefer hasn't accused anybody of this. Schaefer, who doesn't like to identify his race, but realizes that others see him as white, says that he notices when groups of solely Asian or black students walk around campus together. However, when it comes to white students walking around in groups, it's just not so obvious. Shaking his head, Schaefer admits that he doesn't know why he doesn't notice as much. He really couldn't say why.
Sticking together
There have been incidents that Mason and Keitel just laugh about now. There was that bar where Mason took Keitel, where Keitel stood out completely, sitting on the receiving end of harsh glares from black men. Then there's the ski resort where Keitel took Mason, where Mason was the only black vacationer, and where he was surprised to hear hip-hop music bouncing off the white snowcaps.
They admit it - their experiences, their cultures, and their skin colors have primed and equipped them to encounter very different situations in life. For that reason, they continue to go through it all together.
"I think we feel really comfortable being able to do all the stuff we do and see a lot of the different environments there are. We've put each other in the funniest places," Keitel said.
Some of Keitel's experiences have come with being integrated into "Coco Tufts," because of his friendship with Mason. There, Keitel is the exception: eating meals in the dining hall, rolling a dozen deep to a club, going to parties, and just kicking back in a group of guys where Keitel is often the only white male, has given him a new perspective on racial interactions at Tufts.
"I didn't really think about it. I sort of ended up getting along really well with the black kids instead of the white kids. It wasn't because of their color, [instead it was] their demeanor and the way I could chill with them," Keitel said.
And so it happened that, instead of black students cocking an eyebrow when Keitel plopped down at their table in Dewick, white students questioned it instead. "It was white people who were like 'huh?'" Keitel said, donning a confused expression while imitating his white questioners. "Some [white] frat brothers would say, 'You think you're black.' When black people say it, I know they're kidding, but when white people say it, I know they're serious."
This tendency to assign such distinctions - and to expect people to stick to them - has to do with human nature, according to Gennifer Miller. "This society is very concerned with categorizing people. People in general find their groups and it becomes us or them. It's human nature to categorize people and to align with them," she said.
This could be one reason why white frat boys, as Keitel refers to them, seem to feel threatened by his close friendship with black students - something they don't have, for one reason or another. As Miller, Williams, and Beirne acknowledge, it may be that some white students don't feel comfortable sitting at a table full of black students during dinner. At the same time, they feel that many don't realize that blacks are equally uncomfortable at a table full of white students.
"You get sick of being the token black person if you're out with a group of white people. [With black friends], there's already a certain level of things that you can talk about, that you don't have to explain. It's so much more convenient and it's less awkward," Beirne said, the other girls agreeing. Around each other, they don't have to explain how they take care of their hair, they don't have to be representative of every other black girl - they can just be.
They also echo other students' sentiments that because they are black, they are more visible. Latino students, on the other hand, feel that they are less visible as a group and instead, tend to classify their connection as a cultural one.
"A lot of times, you don't know who Latinos are; they tend to mix in. Black people stand out, Asian people stand out. Latino people don't stand out," sophomore Cecelia Almazan said.
Almazan and some other leaders of Association of Latin American Students (ALAS) don't feel that the majority of their friends are Latino, but that their friendships with other Latinos are based on having a similar culture and heritage.
"I didn't know that much about my own culture or much about Latino heritage. I wanted to learn more about it," sophomore Melissa Rosario said.
Being active in the Latino community, senior Carlos Lenz finds that he has to balance sets of friends. Some nights he finds himself going to two very different parties, consisting of groups of people that he knows aren't really aware of each other. "You know both sides, you see both sides of situation, but the two sides don't really come together or bridge that gap, because of culture or language," he said, referring to his Latino friends and his buddies on the sailing team.
Junior Angel Vail also has the precarious task of balancing friends from La Casa, her sorority, the Rainbow House, and various theatre productions. "My freshman year I'd see people stay with the same types and I used to get upset. I'm very idealistic, and I want everybody to get along, but that won't happen," she said. "People want to stay with people who are like them."
Dissing or missing out?
Looking at the sheer numbers, Tufts seems to be a fairly diverse place in terms of racial and ethnic groups. Although Keitel feels Tufts has a "pretty good mix," Mason has a different take on the subject.
"Tufts definitely is not diverse enough. It is more than most [schools], but for all the praise the University gives itself, there's a lot to go," he said.
But both guys adamantly agree that students segregate themselves by racial and ethnic groups. Mason breaks it down like this: "What happens is you have one group [of friends] that are majority white with one black person, one Asian person, and one Indian person."
"A lot of the black people center around [Capen] house, and all the white kids stick to frats," Keitel added. "I think the Indians pretty much stick to the Indians, and among the Asians, they're definitely broken down [into countries of origin]."
Kawachi doesn't feel that her friendships are based on race, but she finds strength within the Asian community, which she uses to deal with people of other races. When she first came to Tufts, from being the majority in her Hawaiian hometown, she found herself uneasy in situations where she was the minority, partly because she wasn't settled into her own ethnic group.
"I was uncomfortable in my own race or ethnicity, which is something I never questioned before. I found this community... to be more comfortable with my own race, which is an integral part of who I am," she said. Now, after "finding strength" in her community, she feels confident to speak out when she is the only Asian in a room.
However, some students on campus feel that friendships are built upon interests, and not race. Freshman Peter Markus, a white student who says that he has a diverse group of friends, doesn't really see racial or ethnic cliques. "People hang out with people with similar interests and hobbies. You can't be friends with everyone. If some people feel the need to remove themselves, then they're missing out on friends," he said.
Schaefer adds to Markus' thoughts. "If [someone] has met a lot of different people and then say this is who I want to hang out with [in terms of race], there's nothing wrong with that. It's different if it's based solely on race," he said.
Sometimes, it may be a little weird to see how things have changed for Beirne and Miller. They really don't keep in touch with all the white friends they kept through high school. "It's just really different," Beirne said.
"If it comes down to it, it's really good that we're so comfortable and there's security. At the same time, it's naturally going to constrict you in some ways," Miller said. However, Williams added that "each one of us has different friends outside the group."
But what if Williams decided to go out with some white or Asian girls on a Friday night, instead of with the group? Well, there might be a ruckus, but perhaps the same would happen in any tight group of friends. "I think by nature it's limited, but I've been to all-white schools and I've had all-white friends - I just see that being in the group that I am in, it's hard to reach out to people as I do with my black friends," Miller said.
"But that's the choice I made. That comes with any group - frats, sororities, any sort of organization. Part of being in a group is perhaps sacrificing the opportunity to be with other people," she continued.
Despite what's been said and done, Mason and Keitel formed their friendship beyond the black and white distinction. They've lived together for three years and they also came together to form the Westman's Association, a non-profit group which gives money to different charities such as Special Friends. They have plans to go into business together after they graduate, a venture that may place race, something they take lightly now, between them.
"I don't expect race relations to change that much in five to ten years... it's definitely a possibility that [Keitel] would have to become a frontrunner," Mason said, attributing this to his race. "It's actually really unfortunate that a fate of a business would have to rest on something - "
"As stupid as that," Keitel interjected.
"Exactly - as race," Mason said. "But, that's where we are right now as a country," Mason concluded.
For right now, these two guys can just chill. They're still in college living in a cluttered house where they can comfortably quote Chris Rock and rip on each other. For now, skin color is pushed to the side.
"Skin color plays into who people perceive as their absolute and real friends, who we all talk about as our best friends. Very few people have those that are outside their own race, that just happens to be who they confide in and trust," Mason said, glancing at Keitel, who, as always, nods in sync.
