Every morning, I sit down with a delicious Dewick breakfast, coffee and the Daily. As of late, every morning, I make it to the Viewpoints page and read a heart-warming article about tolerance, diversity and community. Then every morning, I roll my eyes, shut the Daily and reach for a newspaper from the real world. This morning, after reading that not enough white people came to the town meeting and that intro-level English classes should be turned into race relations classes, I have had enough.
As a senior, I have sat through four years of listening to people opine over "race relations" at this school. As a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed freshman, I even used to go to these community meetings or events where President Bacow would show up in our dorm in loafers and a sweater to have a fireside chat about "realizing the potentiality of integrational equalities" and the like. At one of these chats, I came up with an idea for how to make the school more racially integrated. Thinking my idea was fairly straight-forward and rather brilliant, I suggested getting rid of race houses. I don't think people around here would feel so thrilled about a white, male Protestant house on Professor's Row, so maybe some people feel that way about an African-American house. Maybe not. But no matter how you feel on the subject, surely race housing is an obstacle to this desired enhanced integration? My idea was not so popular, and after many icy stares, I excused myself.
I envy Ms. David's optimistic viewpoint. However after four years at Tufts, I have become a full-blown pessimist.
To explain why, I will have to start from the very beginning, and will have to drop a pair of taboo words: affirmative action.
I know that there are many students like myself for whom the college application process was surprising, confusing, blatantly unfair, racist and most of all, embittering. Embittering. That is the key word. I am going to serve it to you frankly: affirmative action undeniably embitters the students who were treated unfairly through the college process in the name of racial preferences, diversity quotas and tolerance, whichever words you want to use to dress it up and make it sound politically pleasing.
Disagree? Well, let's not forget the very issue from whence this controversial Primary Source carol sprang: affirmative action. While I am not going to excuse for one second the tastelessness and hyperbole that characterized the carol, I will say that the message or complaint that the Source writers were poorly attempting to decry is a valid one with which many students at this school struggle. For those of you who think I stand alone in these opinions, you need to understand that there are a lot of students, liberal and conservative, white, black or purple, who don't like affirmative action. Whether it's the pure racial delineations or the stigmas that come hand in hand with its admissions practice, it is the issue itself that breeds the anger and bitterness that was seen in the carol.
After the carol's publication, there have been whispers on this campus that the Source actually had a point, and that all this hatred and anger are a by-product of racial admissions practices and diversity efforts that divide and segregate. Why whispers? Because despite all this tolerance talk, the moment you agree with the base point of the Source, you are labeled a racist.
Even more insulting was the manner in which the administration entered the scene, at the height of the controversy, only to write off the entire debate as an act of intolerance on the part of a select few.
Not for one second did the administration recognize that maybe, just maybe, we should have a discussion group about whether or not the very issue causing all this strife needs to be revisited, and its embittering effect acknowledged.
When I came to Tufts as a freshman from a primarily white, evangelical town in Colorado, I was surprised to see the racial behavior here.
I had presumed that I was entering an elite world of educated, diverse exchange. I had never before heard anyone use the n-word in casual conversation, I had never seen a swastika drawn on a bathroom wall, I had never heard of an Arab and a Jew getting into a drunken altercation, and I never imagined that the guy living below me would assault a black policewoman physically and verbally.
Well I am no longer na've, and have seen more racism on this campus than anywhere in my life.
I realize now that there will always be ignorant people who spew epithets and there will always be that angry fool who etches a swastika into the wall. The sort of racism bred from ignorance will never go away. The question becomes, then, how best do we fight it?
While viewpoints that point fingers at this race or that group is a nice idea, they are clearly doing nothing.
Perhaps it is time that everyone realizes, just for a minute, that the first time anyone at this school sees you through a racial filter is the moment your application file is opened.
Why, you might ask, after countless diversity and tolerance viewpoints do I reach for a newspaper from the real world?
Because perhaps I am still optimistic enough to believe that in the "real world," I will not fall into a success calculation that includes my white skin or the black skin of the human being sitting next to me.
I would like to think that it is a battle of wits and intelligence out there, and that my days of checking the Caucasian box are over.
-Ashley Samelson is a senior majoring in political science and Spanish.
