Friday, October 22, 2004
I'm not a person. I'm black
Disclaimer: I am not black
That's the message I hear, anyway.
This seven-year dropoff in numbers has led the black student community to learn how to cope with increasing strains on their student groups and how to face the campus at large...
One possibility is to start talking to people who aren't black. You know, mingle. Say "Hey, I'm not just black, I'm a person, too."
UC Berkeley student Arlena Ann Ford disagrees, saying that it would lend weight to misconceptions about black students.
“A united black community perpetuates stereotypes,” she says. “People are told that they’re not black enough or that they’re too black.”
Indeed, black students say it becomes harder to fight stereotypes with less enrollment each year.
“As a black student, lots of people automatically assume that you’re either militant and against everything else going on at Cal, or that you’re a student athlete,” says Obi Amajoyi, coordinator of Kappa Alpha Psi, a black fraternity which organized the week’s events.
This must be another queer English trick. "Person A says 'A is true.' Indeed, Person B disagrees." Anyway, people think you're militant and against everything else when you try to speak with a "cohesive black voice" instead of with an "individual human voice."
“Lots of times you’re walking down Sproul and people don’t hand you flyers that they are handing other people, or you walk into the res halls and people look at you like you don’t go here,” [Freshman Arthur Jackson] says. “It takes a lot to get past that.”
People skip handing me flyers, too. I consider that to be a boon. But yeah, once, I saw this black guy walk into one of the units, and the security monitor was all, "Dude, I have to see your ID." What racism.
With the classroom comes expectations that all black students will represent the viewpoints of the black community. As the only black student in her anthropology section, UC Berkeley senior Josie Hyman felt a huge burden to be a standard-bearer for her race, as her GSI tossed around the N-word in discussions about graffiti and marginalized communities.
“She turned to me to say sorry, but now that’s a lot more pressure on me to account for her ignorance,” Hyman says. “It’s kind of like working two jobs —it’s that in addition to worrying about the class and the work.”
Haha. Hahahaha. Hyman. Anyway, there's a simple solution to this problem. "Umm, teacher lady, I'm not the black race, I'm a person who just happens to be black."
Anyway, yay! Black students unite with one voice to fight stereotypes!
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