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Essay by Jake Feeley |
Every day I attend class. I sit in class and listen to the professor. I listen to my classmates express their opinions of the material and express their ideas. More or less, this is what occurs each day of the school week for me and the rest of the student body. However the other day something happened which I was prompted to address. What prompted me to express it was my feeling that the following circumstance occurs everyday and is experienced by almost everyone here. The following event is true. I do not intend to offend any individuals. Rather I attempt to address a problem very pertinent to Oberlin College and the entire student body.
The incident occurred as I sat in class listening to a student give an oral presentation in class. At a particular point in the presentation, the student made a remark that brought me to the point of boiling anger. I felt the statement delivered to be incorrect and misleading and therefore detrimental to each individual in the class. However, I remained silent for I feared confrontation. Upon my reflection, I realized that my silence and fear of confrontation exemplify the intellectual passivity that characterizes the everyday dialogue of the Oberlin classroom. It is in my opinion that the idea of tolerance has been taken to the point when it no longer resembles tolerance but fear, of others, and of confrontation.
The events that took place leading me to arrive at the thesis of this piece are as follows: I was sitting in class listening to a fellow student give an oral presentation on the topic of who would win the state election (Clinton or Dole) in Minnesota. The presentation consisted of who would win, and why. Thus the presentation consisted of state characteristics. Upon addressing the social characteristics of the state, the student made a remark about crime in Minnesota as "not being very bad." Upon a remark by the professor claiming that reports of Cambodian refugees in association with gang activity and crack cocaine in areas of Minnesota had been publicized the student then stated that in comparison to California, "Minnesota was not as bad." And that was it; the presentation moved on and ended shortly after, leaving that particular instance embedded in its own space in time. It was at that point I felt some discomfort with this (in my opinion) misleading statement, that seemed to ignore an ongoing social problem throughout the nation. What I understood to be my anger towards this student for his statement was in fact, anger towards myself. He was not the idiot, it was I who played the fool, the silent fool.
What I felt important to acknowledge is that in the twin cities (as far as my own knowledge can allow me to express) gang activity in association with crack cocaine and murder is prevalent both in urban and suburban black communities as well as areas hosting a community of Cambodian refugees. I wanted to ask if this student has visited these areas and experienced these areas to assume that "crime wasn't that bad" in Minnesota. Check out issues of the Star Tribune on the Internet or microfilm and you to will encounter such accounts, not only in Minnesota but in Lorain County among Blacks, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans and in Wichita, Kansas within Laotian communities.
My own foolishness in not speaking up and confronting this student lead me to realize that my own silence exemplifies the tendency in Oberlin College to back down, to retreat within the comfort of our own thoughts, and thus be silent. This fear (self-consciousness) to confront issues in classrooms leads to the tendency to gloss over things, "sugarcoat." Thus not fully addressing issues that are worth the time to discuss.
The lack of intellectual confrontation is offensive to me. This type of tolerance for blatant, ignorant error, is a truly negative aspect of the Oberlin classroom. At Oberlin I feel as though intellectual confrontation is not given the justice it deserves, the fact that everybody's opinion deserves to be addressed is not negative, but when our opinions conflict, what do we do? We must take responsibility to confront one another, to step out of our every day bubbles of comfort and take risks even if it means experiencing discomfort and unpleasantness. In not confronting one another we extinguish any hope of social progress and change. Without a discussion that presents every aspect of an issue, whether we are "comfortable" addressing them or not, we will not move towards a justified conclusion. For social progress and change can occur only through the revelations, and then the actions of communities like ourselves. Thinking beings linked through dialogue will arrive at an understanding not as individuals or intellectual elitists but as forceful masses with the strength to exert meaningful change.
Copyright © 1996, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 125, Number 8; November 8, 1996
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