THE ISSUE has been thoroughly and thoughtfully debated, and it turns out most University students agree: racism is a bad thing. But if we seek to eliminate racism -- as the myriad pamphlets and posters around Grounds seem to indicate -- then perhaps the proper strategy requires stepping back, abandoning our typical response of forming an interest group, and thinking for a while. If we do, we might discover that the target of our "end racism, embrace diversity" campaigns is a problem that has been tacitly ignored.
You don't often meet self-affirmed racists. Maybe people aren't willing to admit that they're racist, but then, are there clandestine racists secretly poisoning the Academical Village with their bigoted hate speech? It might be nice, in this case, to separate racists from the tolerant masses. If only there were some distinguishing feature that we've been missing all this time. Bowties, perhaps?No, our efforts to expel racism have only marginally succeeded because we keep looking for that elusive racist rather than wondering (and attempting to fix) what facilitates his racism in the first place. Dare I ask then, where does the racial tension come from?
Much of our commentary about diversity and racism involves the innumerable student organizations that represent a racial minority group: the Arab Student Organization, Asian Student Union, Black Student Alliance, etc. The most common accusation of these groups is that they are self-perpetuating, that minorities "self-segregate" themselves. However, this statement is as moronic as it is unproductive.
Anthropology Prof. Richard Handler points out, "'Self-segregation' is the most obscene word in U.Va. language
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