A recent editorial by the Managing Board argues that in order to respond to the “systemic racism” on Grounds, the University should take action, namely to implement a diversity requirement which is expected to inform and educate students on racial issues and to diminish the tolerance of racism. The argument is based on the claim that individual acts reflect systemic racism, which need to be addressed via proactive actions. An opinion article by my fellow columnist Nazar Aljassar in 2013 expressed similar points, explaining systemic racism as racism which “manifests itself in social systems and extant inequalities. It exists both by its inertia and by elite efforts to preserve power structures.”
While racism is certainly not extinct in our community, claiming racism is systemic is an exaggeration. Arguing racism is systemic implies the University is institutionally racist and that the whole University community participates in the spread of racism, which can hardly be a fair description of a community composed of 28.4 percent minority students. While individual acts are unlikely to be absolutely isolated from the general culture, rushing to label a community as practicing systemic racism is not conducive to a proper recognition of the problems minority groups are facing. Such labelling dismisses the supportive actions taken by the student body and the University, including, for example, the Minority Health International Research Training and career support for minority students seeking STEM careers.
The fairer way to describe the situation is that the community is influenced by cultural stereotypes of race. Racism involves dehumanization and discrimination against racial groups by labelling them as inferior, and thus it oppresses the abused groups. Racial stereotypes, on the other hand, are sets of beliefs about typical characteristics of certain groups and mental shortcuts that people employ to help reduce the cognitive efforts without the intent to dehumanize certain groups. Confusing racism with racial stereotypes would obscure the real issue and undermine prospects for promoting multi-cultural understanding. Racial stereotypes could instill inaccurate images of groups, but realistically they are unavoidable, and prohibition of such thoughts is both a violation of the freedom of speech and an impractical practice. What the University currently needs to address is prevalent racial stereotypes, which people tend to generate naturally from daily experience. Instead of prohibition or indoctrination, possible solutions include giving more support to minority student groups for holding student-sponsored cultural events, changing the procedure of residential assignment for first-year students to increase interaction and limit self-segregation effects, and increasing the representativeness of the traditionally exclusive spaces, including the Lawn, as an earlier Managing Board editorial suggests.
The editorial further argues that the University also needs to impose a diversity course requirement for students. The argument goes that requiring all students to attend weekly lectures on diversity-related issues will symbolize the efforts and achievement in addressing multicultural and racial awareness.
However, a diversity course requirement is unnecessary at the University and ineffective in general. First of all, it would be a repetitive area requirement. The University requires students in the College to complete a non-Western perspective requirement before they graduate. The Curry School requires most degree-seeking students to take courses on non-western culture, and McIntire students are required to take COMM 3050, Entry Strategies in Emerging Markets. There is no regulation preventing students from taking more non-western perspective classes, but putting an additional requirement on the University level will put unnecessary burden upon students with packed schedules.
In addition, the well-intentioned goal of combating racism, which has been overly exaggerated as systemic, should not be approached by adopting a wrong route — namely by emphasizing diversity courses. College is the institution where students are autonomous and encouraged to think independently. Diversity courses inevitably instill certain cultural values and emphasize the “correct attitudes” toward diversity; while students are free to choose to take such courses, they should never be compelled to do so. The non-western perspective requirement contains more courses that would accommodate a wider range of academic interest and political orientations, and thus does not violate the principle of college education, while a diversity requirement potentially could. The freedom from politics and ideology in the academic experience should be preserved for students of all backgrounds and political orientations.
Sasha Wan is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at s.wan@cavalierdaily.com.
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