Before coming to RPI my only exposure to the notion of racial supremacy was when some idiots in white bed sheets felt obligated to hold a march in front of a statue of Martin Luther King, Jr., near my home in New Britain, Conn. In a city that made the UN look exclusionary, it never occurred to me that skin pigmentation or the language spoken at home could have ramifications beyond what cuisine children found in their lunch boxes or how much sunscreen they needed to apply when summer rolled around.
But like I said, this was before coming to RPI. Here, I’ve discovered that the campus has a knack for nurturing racial divides in a way that would make George Wallace and David Duke want to become trustees. Whenever students who are any more ethnic than a slice of Canadian bacon run the risk of falling under that dreaded generic category of “people,” a group pops up to prevent such a disaster. This is all done to the applause of people praising “diversity” (making a big deal out of race) which isn’t to be confused with racism (making a big deal out of race).
This diversity has proven pretty popular in recent years. RPI has lowered hiring and admission standards for it, hired personnel to address it and made students and faculty sit through seminars about it. Periodically, I’ve even heard the idea of setting up diversity housing kicked around. To this, I ask, why stop there? Why not establish diversity water fountains or diversity bathrooms, or perhaps diversity seating on the shuttle buses? And what if some unfortunate campus lacks adequate diversity—can we sell them some of ours? Or does this obsession with race bear too frightening a resemblance to a tragic past than to a promising future?
The foolishness of this situation is best exemplified by the limits on it. When does the promotion of a certain skin color—as done by the KKK—escape being branded racism, as it seems to with the NAACP (or Dr. Jackson’s cabinet)? Where does the difference between “black power” and “white power” lie outside of how each group’s basketball team performs? If someone’s skin must be darker than a color on a Sherman Williams paint chart (say, Toasted Almond) to receive this special protection, do people who are closer to Deep Mocha deserve even greater benefits?
Here’s a thought: in the interest of laying down a benchmark, I propose the formation of a White Students Alliance, where students can get together and discuss whiteness and eat white foods and listen to white music and work towards white advancement; the organization would mirror the actions of the Black Students Alliance, with only a single word change in their mission statement. We can then use the Institute’s willingness to embrace this new venture (the Black Students Alliance currently enjoys Union funding) to calculate just what shade a person’s skin must be to receive benefits based on race. Seeing as the WSA would probably end up having to pay legal fees for its right to exist (and therefore end up in the red), I surmise that the break-even mark would lie somewhere between Linen Off-White and Vanessa Williams.
These calculations aside, if the RPI administration has a problem with the establishment of a group exclusively based on skin color, they’re being hypocritical. And if they argue that students should be denied funding for an organization because of the color of their skin, well, folks, that would just be racist.
Editor’s Note: “The Elephant’s Peanut Gallery” and “Straight from the Ass’s Mouth” run biweekly and are opinion columns granted by the Editorial Board to the College Republicans and the College Democrats.
