Segregated ghettos or extended families

Semester after semester, the program house battle is, pretty much, stomped into molded vapors. One more foot added to the mix can't hurt. On one side of the idyllic arena for the idle-timed Oberlin students, are those proclamations and whispers that Program Houses are isles of exclusivity - supposedly, they're like-minded, segregated ghettos for warped people of color. The arena's other side sustains a chant that program houses provide students with cultural living spaces of safeness, freedom, comfortability and some form of commonality. Here we have echoes of the extended family galvanizing around similarity and making communities' bonds stronger.

Surely, we've all heard these arguments. And really, they seem pretty much for naught. Oberlin College will always have and maintain program houses. Why? So much of the college's history and reputation are tightly hanging from the ideas of freedom and healthy choice for its folk of color. Obliterating program houses would severely dent this perception of freedom and choice. But, if this is so, one can't help but wonder if those who have problems with program houses have problems with all program houses or simply the programs houses of folk of color. Is Afrikan Heritage House, for example, looked at, understood and critiqued with as much disdain as French, German, or Spanish House? Why not? Is it okay and secure for people speaking the same language to share and live together, yet not people of the same race and/or possible political convictions? Do the same people that charge Afrikan Heritage House and Asia House with exclusivity, level similar charges against the residents of Johnson House? Seems that the idea of program houses is fine until one talks about non-white students uniting, sleeping, eating, and fellowshipping together away from the dominant gaze. That's when racial nonessentialism ends and selective perception begins.

And, besides all that, every dorm on campus has some assumed identity. Hence, the charge of exclusivity, or wanting to live with those you're most comfortable with, could be assessed to everyone, except first-years who might be oblivious to these dorm identities. Also, people opting for off-campus housing, obviously choose to live with people like themselves, be it based in language, sex, race, ideology, or dress. Are they segregating themselves too? There's generally more distance between off-campus people and than program houses and campus. Is this self-segregation? Why this selective perception?