On Saturday, I had the privilege of attending the Emerging Black Leaders Symposium (EBLS) in Cabot Auditorium. As a senior who has attended many events on campus in the past three years, it was arguably the most well-put-together student event I have attended at Tufts.
The diverse set of speakers was comprised of celebrity politicians such as Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford Jr., Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick, and other panelists from a variety of organizations.
All of them had something important to say and left you hanging on the edge of your seat for their next word. The audience was also diverse in that students from different schools in the Boston area came in large numbers, and black activists and community members also turned out.
The only thing missing was our white leaders.
Getting numerous black students from diverse backgrounds together is not an easy feat. This is not a monolithic community, and everyone comes from different economic, ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds. In reality, the only thing common to the entire black community is their skin color, yet the EBLS board still managed to get a few hundred black students to set aside their differences and attend the symposium.
As I looked out at the audience, I realized that only myself and a handful of white students in a crowd of hundreds were apparently interested in hearing what our black leaders had to say. This was puzzling to me, given how impressive and pervasive the PR for this event had been.
It is sometimes not easy for me to attend events on campus, as I have a three-year-old son for whom I have to secure child care. But as someone who is a leader on campus, I felt that it was important for me to make the effort, because black leaders make important contributions. Black leaders lead everyone, not just white people. I cannot call myself a leader unless I know thoroughly the people I am leading. Many of my friends and fellow single moms are black, and this was a golden opportunity to better know them and their experiences.
It is important to recognize these leaders and learn from them and their successes. It is also important to try and help under-represented minorities gain access to leadership in the institutions that have controlled the gates of opportunity and have not embraced them in the past.
One thing that occurred to me as I sat in the audience, was that here at liberal Tufts, there is clearly a problem with segregation. We have become complacent to the supposed diversity of our student activities because no one is blatantly screaming racial slurs or holding anti-Semitic rallies. It is not hate that is dividing us so much as the convenience of not stepping over the line to assimilate ourselves into the majority of American life, which is black, Hispanic and Asian.
By the same token, white student organizations struggle to recruit minority members, and sometimes the minority members of student organizations inevitably fall into the trap of tokenization. We want minorities to come to our white events, but have not yet figured out how to make them feel comfortable when they want to attend or participate.
As a white woman, I know that I have a passport to go anywhere I want and not be regarded as suspicious. I will never know what it feels like to walk through life not knowing if discrimination has prevented me from reaching my full potential. I cannot change these facts, but I can do my best to acknowledge and validate the reality of those who face these challenges by learning from their experiences.
One thing I took away from this symposium is that, as junior Mitch Robinson put it, "our similarities are greater than our differences."
As Ford stated, "A mistake that people make these days is thinking that they have to agree on every little thing before they can work together to find a solution."
Kim Williams from the Kennedy School spoke of embracing our allies and using diverse leadership to advance the black community.
We can all do better to support minorities on this campus. We need to realize that the issues of the black community are issues for all of us. We need to support their events on campus by attending events like the symposium, and not just the ones that focus on hip-hop and entertainment.
We need to do a better job of recognizing the issues of the minority communities and integrating them into our student groups in a way that will encourage a solution to the problem of under-representation. We have to ask minority members of the community how they feel about issues and what would make them feel more included.
Actively seek out opportunities to attend minority events instead of waiting for them to come to yours. We cannot ignore the fact that we are a segregated campus in many ways, and that we do have the power to change this.
Many of us have spent the last four years training to be leaders out in the real world. The black community is not monolithic, and it will be a challenge for you to find ways to best meet the needs of the black community and work with its leaders. Do not ever forget that sometimes intolerance comes in the form of indifference, which can be a sign of ignorance.
Do not forget that in our global, cosmopolitan society, you will never be in a place or situation in which everyone is just like you. It is your duty as a leader to seek out ways of knowing the people you lead so that you can represent them and use your skills and knowledge to help other leaders emerge as well.
Anne Stevenson is a senior majoring in political science.
