I'm not sure where it is that all of these people have encountered so many discussions of race and racism, so many in fact that they feel as though they've said all there is to say. Perhaps I just wasn't invited.
Meanwhile, we attend a college that strives to create diverse classrooms. We know this because (and here is one of the few times when I actually encounter discussions around race-related issues) people frequently erupt over the question of affirmative action in college admissions-a policy in place because patterns of student achievement in this country tend to break down along racial lines.
We go to school in a town whose schools have diverse classrooms that struggle with questions of race and achievement. Many of us spend time in Holyoke, only a half-hour away, where issues of race do not escape the notice of the kids who go to school there.
I tutor in Holyoke at the Sullivan School, where well over half of the kids I work with are Puerto Rican. If we want to talk about race-and I do-I could call them Latino. There are also white students, black students and students of many other colors.
Most of my Puerto Rican kids speak Spanish. They talk to each other in this language, and I, with four years of high school Spanish and still-limited proficiency, understand only about half of what they say. They tell me that their teachers don't speak Spanish.
Most of these kids have had teachers they think are racist. They've been victims of racism in school and outside of school; problems in schools often mirror those of society at large. They know how to recognize racism even in its most subtle forms.
Race and racism for these kids is a serious matter. They say things like, "That's racist!" and "Why's this gotta be about race?"
Sometimes the kids' claims are well-founded. Sometimes they're not. One could argue that cries of racism obscure issues of personal responsibility and accountability. However, the validity of this argument is not the issue here. My point is that these kids are not afraid to talk about race. Sensitivity about race is at the core of their identities.
The kids that I tutor are in middle school. When I tutor in Holyoke, I hear more about race in a few hours than I do in a month at Amherst. I don't understand why these little kids are more than willing to cry race when our attitude seems to border on the belief that race in this country has become a non-issue.
Whether or not we like to acknowledge it explicitly, we do wrestle with issues of race. Problems of diversity in the classroom begin the first day a child walks into school and continue right up through college and graduate school. We struggle with this issue as students, and our college struggles with it as an institution.
Our country struggles with it, too. No Child Left Behind, in its demand that all students and schools be held accountable to certain standards, requires that school districts disaggregate their student test data by ethnicity.
I don't believe that we never talk about race. Professors teach classes on racial and ethnic identity. Affinity groups on campus organize discussions, dialogues, panels and presentations around these same issues. I say that we don't-regardless of public perception-talk about it enough, and that we are entirely too afraid to acknowledge that it's a real issue, both inside the Amherst bubble and outside in the rest of the world.
Perhaps we're tired of discussing race because we're afraid. But fear shouldn't make us stop talking. Fear can be where the conversation begins: Fear should motivate us to start talking.
The same not-so-many students who take race-related classes and attend the workshops and discussions do so despite this fear. Not so many isn't enough. It's about time that more of us began to engage in this issue.
Levinson can be reached at
halevinson@amherst.edu