What Goes On
A lot of people (and by a lot of people, I mean my circle of friends from WPHS who keep xangas, who are the only people who read this thing) have been musing lately about the nature of xangas: should they be serious or stupid? I like to keep mine stupid, because I'm a stupid sort of person, and because I really keep it just to keep the folks back on the East Coast updated about stuff going on here with me at UChicago, and to rant and rave occasionally. Usually, I keep the serious musings to myself, or only tell it to others when it's 4 AM, or I've had too much to drink, or both. But this time I'm actually going to write about something serious; in fact, I'm actually going to post it on livejournal too because I'd like to get feedback on it from everyone. It's really long, but it's relevant, so bear with me.
Every Sunday night I go to a meeting for the Chicago Shady Dealer (shadydealer.uchicago.edu), our satirical newspaper. I decided to write articles for them this year, and at the weekly meetings aritcle headlines are tossed around and developed, and people volunteer to write the articles that go with them. Zach, our editor-in-chief, likes to have everyone think of things that have gone on on campus during the past week, things that everyone is familiar with, and have us come up with ways to make fun of them. At this meeting, he talked about an event that I hadn't heard of. It seems that this past weekend, in Max East (the dorm next to my old one), a group of girls had a party in their suite with the theme "Straight Thuggin'", with rap music and guests dressed in baggy jeans and all that. Zach said that the OBS (Organization of Black Students) had found out, gotten really pissed, and made a big deal about how it promoted stereotypes. Zach felt that they had blown the whole thing out of proportion; while the OBS had the right to be angry, they didn't talk to the girls before making a fuss, the girls hadn't meant it to be racist, only to have a theme that people could dress up for and that would have music to go with it. My friend Lauren suggested an article entitled "Vodka Served at Party; Polish Students' Association Outraged" and Emily, who has an obviously Polish last name, volunteered to write it. Just then, a black student who had been sitting nearby (we meet in an open, lounge-type area), came over and told us to watch what we were saying and laughing at, because he found the party theme offensive. Zach tried to calmly explain that all we were doing was expressing our view, in a satirical way, that the reaction to the party was extreme, and that we were not racists and not trying to offend anyone. The other guy said that people assume that because he's black, he's from a ghetto, when in fact he has more money than most of the people sitting at our table (and how does he know that, I wonder?). He asked Zach if Zach would be offended if black students had a "cracker party", and Zach said no; he'd think that was pretty funny. Other people tried to explain that we like to satirize everyone for entertainment and to make people think about things, without hate or discrimination for everyone, but the guy wouldn't listen and walked away.
Back at the apartment after the meeting, I was eating dinner with Lisa, Hanna, and Brette, who came over for the evening, and I told them about what had happened. Hanna told me that one of our friends is friends with one of the girls who hosted the party, and that a black student had shown up at the party, taken pictures, and sent the pictures, along with a report about the party and a list of everyone in attendence, to all of the school's cultural organizations and the university administration. The girls in the suite are now not allowed to attend class and will probably be kicked out of housing (which may mean expulsion from the school, because you're required to live in housing as a freshman, but I'm not sure). They receive hate mail and have had to take down their facebook profiles, remove the signs with their names from their door, and now hardly leave their suite out of fear. I was shocked; I understood how black students could be offended by what went on, but I thought that the girls, who must have already felt awful and apologetic about what happened, were being treatly too harshly in proportion to what they did. I sent an email to Zach suggesting that maybe we should hold off on the article until things calmed down.
I can't put a price on the fact that I was raised in White Plains, and this is another time that I'm thankful for those thirteen years. I've met people (one in particular, cough cough) who are ashamed to have grown up in the suburbs instead of New York City and try to cover up that fact, I've been told by the kids from Scarsdale and Rye that I'm from "ghetto White Plains", and I've gotten expressions of pity from New York City kids, but I wouldn't have wanted to grow up anywhere else, and one of the reasons for that is that I grew up in a city that was racially and socio-economically diverse. It wasn't only that I had friends of all different backgrounds; it was the fact that that diversity was virtually inescapable. Kids who lived in the wealthy, white neighborhoods of Gedney Farms and Rosedale had to drive downtown to go to the movies or to Barnes & Noble, and the kids who lived in the poorer areas downtown had to drive uptown to go to CVS and Italian Pavillion for lunch. At home, Mexican guys came once a week to mow the neighborhood lawns and the little kids on the block had black nannies, but when I drove to the library or the Galleria I passed the housing projects. At school, people of all races filled the halls. Of course, at the same time, there was blatant racial tension: many people "stuck to their own" when it came to choosing friends, and several incidents that occured while I was in high school, the most prominent one involving a chemistry teacher and an email joke, highlighted the hostility that existed. There was the ever-present dialogue about the lack of minorities in honors' classes and their over-representation in Regents' prep classes, the under-representation of minorities in the faculty, and the low test scores of minority students that some complained were keeping our school district off the US News & World Report list of the best public schools in the country (white, wealthy Scarsdale, Rye and Edgemont always made the list). When a friend of mine moved to Chappaqua in ninth grade because his parents didn't like the public schools in White Plains, we all *knew* what that was about.
But I guess what made this particular incident on campus stick out for me is that in White Plains, everyone, black and white, seemed to embrace, even in a small way, what one might call "ghetto culture". White kids wore baggy jeans and Ecko Red shirts and used rap slang in conversation, everyone blared rap from their cars in the parking lot, attended the schoolwide Jiggy Showcase (featuring both black and white students and organized my senior year by a white teacher who was popular with everyone), and spoke with pride about "Dub P". And no one cared if it was black culture or white culture, everyone just did it and no one raised an eyebrow. That's why I was so surprised at the extremity of the OBS's (which represents the very small number of black students on campus) reaction: I understand that being part of an overwhelmingly white student body, they felt victimized and stereotyped, but I felt, from my own personal experience, that the "ghetto culture" of rap videos has become so mainstream (over 70% of rap records are bought by whites) that the idea of white kids dressing up in street clothes and singing along to gangsta rap isn't racist, it's just ironic and laughable. I know that Zach and our other top dog at the Dealer, James, come from racially diverse neighborhoods (in Atlanta and Detroit, respectively) and that was probably part of their reaction too. I think that the OBS has a right to be angry if they want, but their reaction, especially in light of the fact that they didn't seem to talk to the girls who hosted the party before reacting publiclly, was far too extreme. An open and honest discussion would have been the appropriate thing to do. There is real, blatant racism in this country and at this school that needs to be confronted before we waste so much energy on this; the girls who hosted that party did not drag James Byrd from a truck until he was dead, they did not hoist the Confederate flag over their door. They may have been insensitive, they may not have thought about how their actions would effect people, but I do not believe they were trying to offend anybody.
The university, which already has a hard enough time attracting black students, has been over zealous in their reaction to this, for fear of being labeled racist by the OBS. Expelling the girls from housing or class will not address the question of racial tension, it will only anger more people. And the university itself is guilty of far more widespread discrimination towards the blacks in the local neighborhood (for those non-U of C people, the school itself practically sits on top of a ghetto). For years, the school promised not to expand into certain areas, but now they are eyeing the areas south of the Midway for student housing. In an effort to gentrify up the neighborhood for students and to assuage the concerns of parents (to be fair, this is an unsafe area after dark and I know of lots of incidents of muggings and beatings of students, including friends, by local people and the theft of university property by local kids), the university is trying to buy up all of the property in Hyde Park they can find, but this is driving up the price of local housing and pushing non-university residents out. The University of Chicago employs thousands of local black people as food staff, janitors, security guards and hospital workers, but how many of them can afford to send their kids to this school? There is lots of rightful resentment that that situation has created.
If I've been rambling in this entry, it's only because I have a lot to say and I feel strongly about racial issues. On one hand, I think that racism and racial hostility need to be addressed, openly and honestly and continuously, and not be allowed to boil under the surface until something like this happens and sets everyone off. On the other hand, I believe that the punishment does not fit the crime, and what could be used as a valuable opportunity to have a productive discussion has turned into a gigantic mess. Obviously, feelings have been hurt, and that cannot be ignored, and it cannot be belittled. However, we all need to examine our standards of prejudice and racism. I wasn't at that party and maybe I'm being naive to think those girls didn't mean to offend anyone, but where I come from no one would have batted an eye at that party theme, and I would be deeply saddened to think that I've always prided myself on being tolerant and open-minded but that singing along to "And Then What" by Manny Fresh and flipping my hand back and forth makes me a racist in the eyes of others.
Every Sunday night I go to a meeting for the Chicago Shady Dealer (shadydealer.uchicago.edu), our satirical newspaper. I decided to write articles for them this year, and at the weekly meetings aritcle headlines are tossed around and developed, and people volunteer to write the articles that go with them. Zach, our editor-in-chief, likes to have everyone think of things that have gone on on campus during the past week, things that everyone is familiar with, and have us come up with ways to make fun of them. At this meeting, he talked about an event that I hadn't heard of. It seems that this past weekend, in Max East (the dorm next to my old one), a group of girls had a party in their suite with the theme "Straight Thuggin'", with rap music and guests dressed in baggy jeans and all that. Zach said that the OBS (Organization of Black Students) had found out, gotten really pissed, and made a big deal about how it promoted stereotypes. Zach felt that they had blown the whole thing out of proportion; while the OBS had the right to be angry, they didn't talk to the girls before making a fuss, the girls hadn't meant it to be racist, only to have a theme that people could dress up for and that would have music to go with it. My friend Lauren suggested an article entitled "Vodka Served at Party; Polish Students' Association Outraged" and Emily, who has an obviously Polish last name, volunteered to write it. Just then, a black student who had been sitting nearby (we meet in an open, lounge-type area), came over and told us to watch what we were saying and laughing at, because he found the party theme offensive. Zach tried to calmly explain that all we were doing was expressing our view, in a satirical way, that the reaction to the party was extreme, and that we were not racists and not trying to offend anyone. The other guy said that people assume that because he's black, he's from a ghetto, when in fact he has more money than most of the people sitting at our table (and how does he know that, I wonder?). He asked Zach if Zach would be offended if black students had a "cracker party", and Zach said no; he'd think that was pretty funny. Other people tried to explain that we like to satirize everyone for entertainment and to make people think about things, without hate or discrimination for everyone, but the guy wouldn't listen and walked away.
Back at the apartment after the meeting, I was eating dinner with Lisa, Hanna, and Brette, who came over for the evening, and I told them about what had happened. Hanna told me that one of our friends is friends with one of the girls who hosted the party, and that a black student had shown up at the party, taken pictures, and sent the pictures, along with a report about the party and a list of everyone in attendence, to all of the school's cultural organizations and the university administration. The girls in the suite are now not allowed to attend class and will probably be kicked out of housing (which may mean expulsion from the school, because you're required to live in housing as a freshman, but I'm not sure). They receive hate mail and have had to take down their facebook profiles, remove the signs with their names from their door, and now hardly leave their suite out of fear. I was shocked; I understood how black students could be offended by what went on, but I thought that the girls, who must have already felt awful and apologetic about what happened, were being treatly too harshly in proportion to what they did. I sent an email to Zach suggesting that maybe we should hold off on the article until things calmed down.
I can't put a price on the fact that I was raised in White Plains, and this is another time that I'm thankful for those thirteen years. I've met people (one in particular, cough cough) who are ashamed to have grown up in the suburbs instead of New York City and try to cover up that fact, I've been told by the kids from Scarsdale and Rye that I'm from "ghetto White Plains", and I've gotten expressions of pity from New York City kids, but I wouldn't have wanted to grow up anywhere else, and one of the reasons for that is that I grew up in a city that was racially and socio-economically diverse. It wasn't only that I had friends of all different backgrounds; it was the fact that that diversity was virtually inescapable. Kids who lived in the wealthy, white neighborhoods of Gedney Farms and Rosedale had to drive downtown to go to the movies or to Barnes & Noble, and the kids who lived in the poorer areas downtown had to drive uptown to go to CVS and Italian Pavillion for lunch. At home, Mexican guys came once a week to mow the neighborhood lawns and the little kids on the block had black nannies, but when I drove to the library or the Galleria I passed the housing projects. At school, people of all races filled the halls. Of course, at the same time, there was blatant racial tension: many people "stuck to their own" when it came to choosing friends, and several incidents that occured while I was in high school, the most prominent one involving a chemistry teacher and an email joke, highlighted the hostility that existed. There was the ever-present dialogue about the lack of minorities in honors' classes and their over-representation in Regents' prep classes, the under-representation of minorities in the faculty, and the low test scores of minority students that some complained were keeping our school district off the US News & World Report list of the best public schools in the country (white, wealthy Scarsdale, Rye and Edgemont always made the list). When a friend of mine moved to Chappaqua in ninth grade because his parents didn't like the public schools in White Plains, we all *knew* what that was about.
But I guess what made this particular incident on campus stick out for me is that in White Plains, everyone, black and white, seemed to embrace, even in a small way, what one might call "ghetto culture". White kids wore baggy jeans and Ecko Red shirts and used rap slang in conversation, everyone blared rap from their cars in the parking lot, attended the schoolwide Jiggy Showcase (featuring both black and white students and organized my senior year by a white teacher who was popular with everyone), and spoke with pride about "Dub P". And no one cared if it was black culture or white culture, everyone just did it and no one raised an eyebrow. That's why I was so surprised at the extremity of the OBS's (which represents the very small number of black students on campus) reaction: I understand that being part of an overwhelmingly white student body, they felt victimized and stereotyped, but I felt, from my own personal experience, that the "ghetto culture" of rap videos has become so mainstream (over 70% of rap records are bought by whites) that the idea of white kids dressing up in street clothes and singing along to gangsta rap isn't racist, it's just ironic and laughable. I know that Zach and our other top dog at the Dealer, James, come from racially diverse neighborhoods (in Atlanta and Detroit, respectively) and that was probably part of their reaction too. I think that the OBS has a right to be angry if they want, but their reaction, especially in light of the fact that they didn't seem to talk to the girls who hosted the party before reacting publiclly, was far too extreme. An open and honest discussion would have been the appropriate thing to do. There is real, blatant racism in this country and at this school that needs to be confronted before we waste so much energy on this; the girls who hosted that party did not drag James Byrd from a truck until he was dead, they did not hoist the Confederate flag over their door. They may have been insensitive, they may not have thought about how their actions would effect people, but I do not believe they were trying to offend anybody.
The university, which already has a hard enough time attracting black students, has been over zealous in their reaction to this, for fear of being labeled racist by the OBS. Expelling the girls from housing or class will not address the question of racial tension, it will only anger more people. And the university itself is guilty of far more widespread discrimination towards the blacks in the local neighborhood (for those non-U of C people, the school itself practically sits on top of a ghetto). For years, the school promised not to expand into certain areas, but now they are eyeing the areas south of the Midway for student housing. In an effort to gentrify up the neighborhood for students and to assuage the concerns of parents (to be fair, this is an unsafe area after dark and I know of lots of incidents of muggings and beatings of students, including friends, by local people and the theft of university property by local kids), the university is trying to buy up all of the property in Hyde Park they can find, but this is driving up the price of local housing and pushing non-university residents out. The University of Chicago employs thousands of local black people as food staff, janitors, security guards and hospital workers, but how many of them can afford to send their kids to this school? There is lots of rightful resentment that that situation has created.
If I've been rambling in this entry, it's only because I have a lot to say and I feel strongly about racial issues. On one hand, I think that racism and racial hostility need to be addressed, openly and honestly and continuously, and not be allowed to boil under the surface until something like this happens and sets everyone off. On the other hand, I believe that the punishment does not fit the crime, and what could be used as a valuable opportunity to have a productive discussion has turned into a gigantic mess. Obviously, feelings have been hurt, and that cannot be ignored, and it cannot be belittled. However, we all need to examine our standards of prejudice and racism. I wasn't at that party and maybe I'm being naive to think those girls didn't mean to offend anyone, but where I come from no one would have batted an eye at that party theme, and I would be deeply saddened to think that I've always prided myself on being tolerant and open-minded but that singing along to "And Then What" by Manny Fresh and flipping my hand back and forth makes me a racist in the eyes of others.