While there are signs up in the elevator for cultural shows, confirming that my dorm’s residents do, in fact, care about ethnic solidarity ...
Are these shows actually about solidarity? It seems like solidarity the way your using it also implies balkanization. At my school, these shows are about celebrating and sharing one's culture with the rest of the university, so solidarity isn't really an issue. It's funky at first to have that many white people in a soul show or in a performance salsa group, but after while you realize that it's your own horizons in need of broadening, not those of the people joining with those of their own heritage.
I tend to agree with you on a gut level. However, many minority students need minority-specific support, just to level the playing field. The problem seems to be that it seems nearly impossible to understand that need to the extent necessary to really sympathize with it unless one also feels the same need. I was homeschooled, by someone with a degree in education (from the same place I went as an undergrad, but earned back when the school had a real ed program), so I don't have any of those issues to deal with -- I have to force myself to recognize that other people do and that their need to have others around, to see that people like them can and have made it through, is a necessity just for them have a chance to succeed.
Right on, Phoebe. College should be about stretching and growing and, yes, sometimes being uncomfortably challenged. Seems adolescence is being prolonged more and more. I was a sheltered kid, who never left home until mom and dad dropped me off at college. There I found the diversity that my white ethnic Catholic working class neighborhood lacked. My first experience of preppy WASPs, a dominant group, was one "aha" moment. We were all mixed together for freshman year at least. Self-selection (personal choice) took over during room draw for sophomore year. But at least that was at the room and not the dorm level. I thought that the U.S. was moving away from black/ white/ Latino/ etc. categories and toward a multiracial mix? Or are they all on that bus mentioned in NY Times and WWPD the other day?-- JM
While there are signs up in the elevator for cultural shows, confirming that my dorm’s residents do, in fact, care about ethnic solidarity ...
ReplyDeleteAre these shows actually about solidarity? It seems like solidarity the way your using it also implies balkanization. At my school, these shows are about celebrating and sharing one's culture with the rest of the university, so solidarity isn't really an issue. It's funky at first to have that many white people in a soul show or in a performance salsa group, but after while you realize that it's your own horizons in need of broadening, not those of the people joining with those of their own heritage.
agm
I tend to agree with you on a gut level. However, many minority students need minority-specific support, just to level the playing field. The problem seems to be that it seems nearly impossible to understand that need to the extent necessary to really sympathize with it unless one also feels the same need. I was homeschooled, by someone with a degree in education (from the same place I went as an undergrad, but earned back when the school had a real ed program), so I don't have any of those issues to deal with -- I have to force myself to recognize that other people do and that their need to have others around, to see that people like them can and have made it through, is a necessity just for them have a chance to succeed.
ReplyDeleteagm
Right on, Phoebe. College should be about stretching and growing and, yes, sometimes being uncomfortably challenged. Seems adolescence is being prolonged more and more. I was a sheltered kid, who never left home until mom and dad dropped me off at college. There I found the diversity that my white ethnic Catholic working class neighborhood lacked. My first experience of preppy WASPs, a dominant group, was one "aha" moment. We were all mixed together for freshman year at least. Self-selection (personal choice) took over during room draw for sophomore year. But at least that was at the room and not the dorm level. I thought that the U.S. was moving away from black/ white/ Latino/ etc. categories and toward a multiracial mix? Or are they all on that bus mentioned in NY Times and WWPD the other day?-- JM
ReplyDelete