United Against Racism
As students at Hampshire, we have noticed that although there are many classes that discuss race and racism, there is very little activity on campus to address such issues within our own community. It seems that it is often assumed that at a “progressive” school like Hampshire, there is no issue of racism or that it is being dealt with in class and individual work and that is enough. This is untrue: racism is present and pervasive. In our experience, much of the conversation in classes takes place in a theoretical and inaccessible way, only teaching students how to talk about race on an academic setting. As white students, we have struggled to find our place in working against racism at school. We participated on and off in the white anti-racist groups that have existed in the past and tried to take leadership roles, but the group fell apart. We want to start a totally separate project that is based in anti-racism, but that engages all community members at Hampshire. We hope that many people will participate, thus creating a large, diverse group which has a reputation on campus of being open and accessible.
We see this issue as beginning with the lack of communication about racism on campus. So, our idea is to put out questions to the entire community regarding race and racism, encouraging everyone to answer and thus participate in a conversation. We will begin by putting out a note in all campus mailboxes and big sheets of paper around campus that have a short mission statement and then asks for ideas for topics/questions that people would want to discuss/ask. Then, every week we will put out one question to the community, and explain that the questions came from ideas of people at Hampshire. At the end of each week, we will have a group meeting to discuss that particular question and what it raised for the community as well as how to address the issues it raised. We will have rotating facilitation of the meetings and it will be expected that the facilitators will come prepared with ideas to prompt conversation, some background research if necessary, etc. Detailed notes will be taken at each meeting, and all responses to the questions will be collected. We have created a blog that will house all the responses. We hope to create a publication at the end of the semester that can be distributed to everyone at Hampshire. So, part of what the group will do is edit down the responses and discussion notes for the publication. Hopefully this project will allow many voices to be heard and encourage a broad, yet grounded conversation about the personal and political implications of race and racism.
Some ideas for questions are:
- Do you think that enslavement still exists in the US? Explain.
- What do you know about modern day drug laws in the US? Do you agree with
them? - What do you know about the conditions and demographics inside modern day US prisons?
- What does the word "criminal" mean to you?
- What do you know about modern day immigration laws in the US? Do you agree with them?
- Do you ever get questioned about your citizenship?
- What does the word "terrorist" mean to you?
- How has race been discussed in your home? How has this influenced your
feelings and thoughts about it? - Have you ever had a close friend whose racial background was different from
yours? - How have your friends spoken about race and racism? How has this influenced
your thoughts and feelings on it? - In what ways have you learned about race and racism in school?
- Have your teachers ever addressed race and racism in class? If yes, how?
- What did you learn about race and racism from growing up wherever you did?
- How racially diverse was the place where you grew up? How has this influenced
your feelings or thoughts about race? - How often do you think about your own racial identity? What usually makes you
think about it? - Do people ever ask you about your racial/ethnic background? If yes, how do
you usually respond? - When describing someone's physical appearance, how often and with whom do you use their race to do so?
- How do you respond when a racist comment is made in your presence?
