Panel Discusses White Privilege
BY EVAN KELLEY

On Monday, March 12 in Wilder Main, students and faculty gathered before a panel of speakers who addressed the problem of white privilege in higher education. The nearly 150 observers who packed the aisles heard Adrian Bautista, interim director of Oberlin’s Bonner Scholars program; Pam Brooks, assistant professor of African-American Studies at Oberlin; Adrienne Lash-Jones, emeritus associate professor and former head of the African-American Studies department; and Peggy McIntosh, associate director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women. 
The four speakers talked about their backgrounds and experiences, and spoke at some length about the subtle but serious problems that exist within the academic community regarding the suppression of people of color’s voices. 
After the speakers had shared their experiences and commented on the situation of white privilege, they opened up the floor for students’ comments and questions. 
Suddenly Bautista, who had been near tears already while telling a personal story about the oppression of Mexican-Americans during his childhood, was notified that his father had been rushed to the hospital to be treated for complications resulting from a recent triple-bypass surgery. He left, abruptly leaving the three women panelists and a tense air in the room as the dialogue became a question and answer session. 
Students flocked to the microphones with comments and questions, some bemoaning the absence of Asian and queer voices on the panel, others asking McIntosh questions about her position as a white academic advocate for people of color, while still others called loudly for majority students to acknowledge the privileges available to them at Oberlin and in American society in general. 
The meeting continued for over two hours, with students growing louder and more impassioned as they identified problems more local to Oberlin. The major issues that came up were the significance of white people’s voices compared with the voices of people of color in American society, the futility of ‘white guilt’ if not accompanied by positive action and the difficulty of adjusting to Oberlin’s academic rigors for people who come from underprivileged educational backgrounds.
“It’s so easy to define racism, and not go any further, not dig any deeper,” said Lash-Jones at one point. “I hope this is the beginning, not the end.” Digging deep was definitely a focal point of the evening, as people told their stories, opinions and fears about racism, in the world and in themselves. It was soul-searching time for everyone involved, and it was difficult to be in the room without examining what systemic prejudice means in many subtle ways. 
In response to one white woman’s testimony that she feared prejudice in herself, simply because some prejudice is so subtle and deeply ingrained in the human consiousness, McIntosh used the metaphor of the mind as a computer operating system, one which inherently contains the hardware of prejudice and inequality.
“But I can choose to run alternative software off that system,” she 
said, “I can choose to combat that.”
McIntosh described the absence of female voices and the voices of people of color in a prestigious Harvard publication which had asked her to publish an article she had written. She used this example to demonstrate the subtlety of the entire academic system, whose canon consists mainly of the works of white men, and which simply cannot accommodate alternate voices. 
First-year Aaliyah Bilal, responding to a query about the realizations by white students in attendance of racism and prejudice in their own lives, said, “I think being white affords the individual with a certain awareness of race in that the culture in which they are surrounded doesn’t label them as ‘other.’ Though she may not consciously practice racism, by the nature of the system of racism/white supremacy, she does, and will continue to benefit from its institution. When she and other people in her situation acknowledge this, hopefully it will create a sense of duty and purpose in their lives.” 
Similar sentiments were articulated by many people of color at the panel, many of whom expressed annoyance at what they perceived as the token efforts of whites at Oberlin to alleviate their guilt about racism in showy but insincere ways. 
Exotification and ‘volunteerism’ were brought up as examples of white guilt in action, where paternalistic instincts disguise an unspoken system of inferior-superior between developing and developed countries. 
Lash-Jones, a respected professor and member of the black community at Oberlin summed up the feelings of the group, saying, “Race has defined my life… I could make you cry if I wanted to, talking about racism in the South... But there are ways we can overcome. I think we can make this a better place.” 
Ultimately, the meeting ended with a sense of cleansing, an unburdening of issues that had weighed down the community, and which had finally been revised. It was certainly only a beginning, however and for many people who attended, it signified a long journey in the fight against systems of underadvantage… in Oberlin and in American society at large.