Becoming Multiculturally Responsible On Campus

Chapter 3 - Recognizing and Overcoming Privilege

Introduction

College is filled with unique experiences. For students of traditional college age, the college experience often means having more freedom, getting a credit card, making new friends, staying up as late as you like, eating whatever you like, going to parties, and taking road trips. For students who are older than the traditional age or students returning to college from the workforce, college can be unsettling and different from the workforce. Academically, colleges can provide open access to faculty and administrators, offer seemingly endless learning opportunities, and point you in the direction of either the career you have always wanted for yourself or the career you had not thought of before. As in the larger society, most colleges are explicit about their policies regarding respecting campus diversity and the rights of all students. But before students believe that college environments are as free and protected as they could be, they should consider the following list of real incidents that have occurred on American college and university campuses in recent years:

1. At a large university, a Pentecostal preacher wandered around campus and asked students questions such as "Which is worse, a queer or a murderer?" Another day he said that the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) stood for Eve Ruined Adam. Police asked him to leave for his own safety, rather than because he was breaking any laws.
2. A major national bank offered students T-shirts that read, "10 Reasons Why a Beer is Better than a Black Man" in exchange for applying for a credit card. Subsequently, the college chairman fired the firm handling their promotions and the college announced a solicitation ban.
3. A fraternity chapter organized a party where males dressed as GI's, and women dressed as Vietnamese prostitutes. Fraternity officials apologized.
4. A popular clothing manufacturer offered T-shirts that read, "Wong Brothers Laundry Service-Two Wongs Can Make It White" and depicted two smiling men with slanted eyes wearing conical hats. This triggered an e-mail and phone boycott of the company, which led to the shirts being removed from stores.

What is Privilege?

Consider this scenario, which illustrates racial privilege: Bandages are passed around to each student in a first-year humanities classroom. The instructor asks the students to raise their hands once the bandages are placed on the backs of their hands. The instructor reads aloud the label on the box, which says "blends with skin." But of course the bandages clash with many of the students' skin tones. The instructor explains that the closer a person's skin is to the color of the bandage, the more respect that person receives from the general public. The further a person is from the color of the bandage, the less respect that person is likely to encounter in his or her daily life.

The following list highlights some examples of privilege on a typical American college campus:

• The library is named after a White male, reminding students that they are attending a White college.
• Brochures about the campus are in English, and there is no mention of materials being made available in any other language, including Spanish or Braille.
• Social events conform to majority culture in that they focus strictly on heterosexual dating.
• Pizza parties are held on Friday evenings, paying no attention to the food/Sabbath restrictions of certain religious groups (Jews, Seventh Day Adventists, etc.).
• Courses focusing on racial, ethnic, and cultural groups (e.g., African-American literature, LGBT history, etc.) are considered "electives" rather than being core components of most degree requirements.
• A number of buildings on the campus are not easily accessed by students in wheelchairs.
• The food in the dining hall is representative of the majority culture ("ethnic food" consists of tacos, chicken chow-mein, etc.).
• Cultural events such as films, special lectures, musical events, and theater are held in the evenings, meaning that only those students who either live on campus or are able to get to campus in the evenings are able to take advantage of these educational events.
• The football team's mascot is based on a Native-American stereotype of the brave red warrior.

As the previous examples show, privilege is about more than race. Privilege exists in terms of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, culture, physical ability, socioeconomic class, and religion. It may be true that the library is named after a White man because 30 years ago the college president was White, true that some of the buildings are very old and that making them wheelchair accessible would be difficult and expensive, and true that standard "American" meals such as baked chicken and meat loaf are easy and cost-effective to cook in mass quantities in school cafeterias. However, not talking about these examples of privilege allows privileged students to maintain their privileges and biases because they are not challenged to "see" other cultures.

Types of Privilege

The following sections explore the various forms of privilege further, illustrating privilege in terms of race/ethnicity, ability status, economic status, gender, and sexual orientation.

Racial and Ethnic Privilege

While most colleges are racially and ethnically integrated, students still remain segregated in many ways. Unfortunately, the racial and ethnic divide does not seem to be closing. This becomes clearer on campuses that offer large social organizations and clubs for their students. For example, one of the authors of this book recently asked members of a White fraternity about forming an alliance with Black fraternities on campus. Members of one White fraternity said that the idea sounded good but that they could not see where the White fraternity would benefit. The White fraternity members said that they already had their fraternity house, a financially stable bank account, and great political connections, so they wondered what they had to gain via an alliance.

In an attempt to counter the arguments, the author pointed out that the White fraternity would gain several advantages by allying with Black fraternities, including:

• the expansion of the perspectives of both the White and Black fraternity members,
• the acquisition by members of both the White and Black fraternities of inter-group communication skills, and
• the development of skills needed to live in an increasingly multicultural world.

However, though these benefits sounded noble, they were not powerful enough to change the attitudes of White fraternity members who did not want their comfort to be disturbed in order to connect with members of a Black fraternity.

These issues of racial and ethnic privilege exist across other social organizations, and not only in the Greek system. For instance, campus Christian groups often will not reach out and ally with campus Jewish or Muslim organizations, perhaps out of the perceived notion that Christian religions are dominant in American society anyway, so what would be gained other than religious confusion by allying with other religious groups? Similarly, in most U.S. colleges and universities, campus literary magazines and newspapers tend to be staffed by mostly European-American students, who do not actively solicit minority staff/contributions to these publications, perhaps assuming-as reinforced by the mostly White U.S. publishing and news industries-that literature and news are primarily the domain of White editors and writers. Lack of communication by student groups on university and college campuses creates a racially and ethnically separatist attitude.

Unfortunately, these racially and ethnically separatist attitudes still dominate college campuses. Such separation can be observed clearly in common campus areas such as the cafeteria, where students of different races and ethnicities eat at separate tables; on fraternity and sorority row, where White fraternities and sororities are clearly differentiated from racial and ethnic minority fraternities and sororities (if the ethnic minority Greek systems even have their own houses); and even in classrooms, particularly humanities classrooms, where students perceive that certain courses (e.g., African-American history) are for one group and that certain courses (e.g., literature of Arab diasporas ) are for another group. Signs of racial privilege can be observed among the faculty and administration of many American colleges as well. For example, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (www.Tolerance.org), minority representation among full-time faculty members at American colleges and universities is only 13.9%. In addition, 88.6% of full professors at American colleges and universities are White. Clearly, the lines among racial groups are sharply drawn. These lines need to be erased so that students have opportunities to expand their education to include contact and involvement with people from races and cultures different from their own.

Ability Privilege

In addition to racial and ethnic privilege, ability privilege clearly manifests itself on college and university campuses. While those of us who are not persons with disabilities rarely notice our ability privilege, consider how such privilege can become painfully clear at an institution in a region where it snows. After the first ice storm, slips and falls leave college students in the position where they need to wear casts, use crutches, or sometimes even need the assistance of a wheelchair. These students quickly realize that their institutions are not physically available for them. Stairs are the most difficult access route for physically disabled persons to negotiate, yet they are typically the favored route into a building. To conform with federal regulations, most institutions have added access ramps, but they are often at the back of buildings. Aisles in libraries often are not wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair or crutches. These are just a few of many examples in which persons with disabilities must live with restricted access.

Furthermore, ability privilege goes beyond the physical structure of an institution. Consider how our ways of speaking tend to reflect unawareness of or disregard for people living with disabilities, such as "Stand up when your name is called," "Raise your hands," "Do you see what I mean?" In addition, people continue to use catch phrases to tease each other, such as "Are you blind!?," or "Are you deaf?" Instructors often employ handouts or PowerPoint slides written in fonts that are difficult for students with visual impairments to read, or speak too quickly for some people to physically take notes (such as students struggling with spinal cord injury), or require off-campus research that is difficult for students with disabilities to complete, as it may require significant off-campus travel.