Well folks, it appears that the living situation at Duke has become the cause celebre of the year-with the omnipresent and ever-sensitive race issue as its centerpiece. Yeah, yeah, I know I wrote about this last time, but too many things have since been said that cry out, heck, practically get down on their knees and beg for my profound and penetrating insight.
At the crux of the issue lies a race/group identity myopia among well-meaning, but misguided people not only at Duke, but across the nation. We are in the midst of a prosperous, relatively calm decade, in which all of the "great causes" of the past (socialism, foreign wars, civil rights) have faded into the sunset, leaving disillusioned Gen-X liberals searching desperately for a cause. According to writer Charles Krauthammer in the Jan. 6, 1997 edition of Time Magazine, "The most prominent destination for the shipwrecked left is racialism, or, more generally, identity politics... and racialism, like socialism, offers an alternative vision: an America of 'empowered' racial, gender, and ethnic groups rising up to create 'real' democracy."
This type of thought does two things, neither of them positive: 1) It bestows a philosophically invalid and vapid sense of accomplishment and pride based solely on the fact of membership in a group. 2) It alienates the majority by attempting to create a sense of guilt and preoccupation with the past.
Indeed, the relentless campaigning of the left to promote race-consciousness has resulted in a racial divide as great today as ever.
Make no mistake, I am not some angry white male whose only motivation is to squelch any discussion of the issue, so as not to disturb my fragile sense that everything is dandy in America. The sensationalist and provocative tack of this camp wouldn't frustrate me so much if I didn't care about equality and diversity.
The concept of equal rights is one of my primary precepts; but it is based on equal rights for individuals, not groups. I support diversity. I harbor, however, the seemingly absurd notion that there are other factors in diversity other than skin color, income, and sexual orientation-factors such as thought, ideals and backgrounds.
The "Race Day" proposed for Friday is an example of the malady of group-obsessed politics. We are all plenty "aware" of race and race issues, but that doesn't change the evolutionary reality that all animals, including humans, tend to group with those most like themselves.
Incidentally, the holders of this meeting, in this year's best display of irony thus far, have opened themselves up to charges of racism by holding the meeting on West, where whites will have a pleasant, 200-foot walk, while Trent and Central-bound minorities will have to trek some 4/10ths of a mile to make an appearance (I'm being facetious here, people).
A flyer which you may have seen around campus proclaims "the New Jim Crow," citing the fact that only one black student was admitted to the Cal-Berkeley's incoming law school class. Is this fact indicative of an inherent problem? I like to think the accepted students were, gasp, more qualified than those who weren't. About 60 percent of the California school system is Asian-should we assume that the system is slanted toward Asians? No, we should congratulate them and find out why whites and blacks can't keep up. But do-gooder leftists grasping at straws for a cause stubbornly refuse to look beneath the surface of statistics in an attempt to discover the truth.
The sad fact is, we are so soaked in race consciousness and identity politics, that it has become harder and harder to attack the true causes of America's-and Duke's-problems.
The truth, ladies and gentleman, will not be found when you attend a meeting to decry the "New Jim Crow;" it will not be found in a courthouse where a woman who was denied a job she clearly was not qualified for is awarded millions of dollars just because she is a woman. The truth won't surface in a discussion on diversity in housing where diversity indicates only the most grossly superficial characteristics; and the truth will most certainly not be lurking behind an ill-conceived scheme to boycott the classroom (funny, I thought that was why we were here) in favor of a "Race Day" in which we all became more and more aware of such important traits such as skin color.
No, real truth will be brought to light only when we call an end to the project to make racial, ethnic and gender-consciousness the very center of American life, when we have the courage to address inequity and iniquity as individuals, without the shelter or crutch of group identity.
Parker Stanberry is a Trinity junior.
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