I think one of the biggest misunderstandings about race and how it operates in America is that American society and culture aren’t merely racist, but white supremacist. Public integration is great and all, but what we forget is that when it comes to social integration, just because people of color (PoC) are “allowed,” whatever that may mean in any particular context, doesn’t mean (a) that we are welcome, (b) cultural exchange will be a balanced two-way street, and (c) that the various cultures different groups of American PoC have cultivated over the years won’t be abandoned.
I might attend the white university that infamously and quite literally had a white man stand in front of a pair of doors to prevent a black woman from entering, but that doesn’t mean that when students sign up for World Lit II, the curriculum won’t be whitewashed and authors of color grossly underrepresented, if they merit a mention in the first place.
It’s sickeningly cute that while all of the white people are busy doing their self-congratulatory kumbaya dance in celebration of the so-called desegregation of the white greek system, all of them conveniently forget that the The University of Alabama already has an integrated greek system. While powerful and moneyed white kids frolicked away in blissful ignorance until a couple of black girls took their funny mirrors away, the Divine Nine and other multicultural social organizations on campus have always welcomed their melanin-challenged classmates into their spaces. “We’re not racist! See? We have black kids in our frats and sororities!” white greeks will say now, as if they actually deserve national news for being dragged kicking and screaming into the Social Justice 101 classroom.
Look, I don’t doubt that those on the selection committees genuinely wanted the black women who rushed. But what everyone is ignoring is the ugly fact that while they deemed those black girls “good enough” for their sororities, it’s never ever the other way around. What white girl has ever looked twice at Delta and AKA and said, “Gee, I’d really like to join them!”
The bottom line is that integration and assimilation is a one-way street: it will always be okay for PoC to want to “join the mainstream,” but it will never be acceptable for white people to look at communities of color and want to join them. They will fetish-ize, token-ize, appropriate and sexualize, but never actually want to take on the culture wholesale.
That would be degradation, a purposeful subjection to a distinct lack of privilege. I, for one, am not a fan of social integration. At best I’m ambivalent. I’m not at all interested in being someone’s token and another’s pawn, to be exploited by an administration who needs my brown body for its political redemption, for them to parade me around as if that would “prove” that we live in some mythical post-racial society. We don’t, and don’t let anyone ever dupe you into thinking that we do.
Samaria Johnson is a junior majoring in history.
