The best thing about being white at Dartmouth is that you don't have to think about it. Well, maybe that's changing. We have gently scratched the surface of understanding what it means to be part of white society. Going any deeper may hurt a little, but I've always believed in that little clich about pain. So let's look at some hard facts.
Dartmouth, like many similar institutions, has made a real buzzword out of "diversity" lately. There's been talk of writing it into a new mission statement and there's been a World Cultures Initiative, but as admirable as these efforts have been, I feel we're missing the opportunity to learn from diversity where its potential is greatest. The College expends a tremendous amount of effort to draw and put together a diverse student body. Are we really making use of our diversity, interacting with and learning from people of different backgrounds, or does it say enough that Dartmouth has its own clich about racial division? You know -- the one about every race having its own table in Food Court.
It's too easy to shift the blame off on minority groups for "self-segregating" (a third clich), as if they are, in that act, deciding to let differences divide them from mainstream culture. There's nothing wrong with the fact that we tend to congregate with those who are similar to us. There is, however, something wrong with the presumption that only minorities let race affect their social culture, that "mainstream" culture has nothing to do with race.
Mainstream culture has a whole heck of a lot to do with race, and with the "whiteness" that many of us have been discussing over the past week. Nowhere is this more obvious than in our Greek system. Looking at the numbers, white dominance of the Greek system is in staggering disproportion to the percentage of whites on campus. These numbers, however don't even begin to tell what percentage of Greek membership excluding the historically minority-affiliated houses is white. But what do the numbers mean? Certainly not that half of this campus is racist. It's more complicated than that.
The culture of any Greek house is, intentionally, self-perpetuating, very slow to change and contingent upon the exclusion of those who don't quite "belong" or "fit in." Lots of factors contribute to the social identity of a house. Take athletics, for example. Many fraternities are known as being largely composed of members of certain teams. That doesn't mean that every member of a given house is on the corresponding team, but it helps to characterize that house. Anyone who rushes the bobsledding house has to be comfortable spending a lot of time with bobsledders and their shared identity.
Is race a comparable factor? We know that minority-affiliated houses are aware of and open about their appeal to their specific minority cultures, but can it be said that mostly white houses project a white cultural identity? As many of us started to discover at last week's Community Hour and as I wrote in Tuesday's issue of The D (Dan Rothfarb, "The Importance of Being White"), we cannot presume that we are "normal" people who are not affected by race or who are a default group, lacking race. So does "whiteness" figure into the identity of exclusive social groups? You bet your bobsled it does. And what's most surprising is that the members of these groups have perpetuated white identity without even realizing it existed.
How is that possible? We've already seen how "whiteness" goes unnoticed and understood only as the norm. Greek houses depend upon obscure, subjective norms as ways of defining themselves. While skin color is not likely to be a norm taken into consideration, culturally influenced characteristics such as personality and interests weigh heavily into the equation. This fact cannot be denied by any organization whose membership is subjectively determined, exclusive and lacking any clear definition of what its members should be. (Groups based on service or campus leadership, for example, are somewhat different in that they have a less than arbitrary definition)
Furthermore, if the character of an exclusive organization is so dependent upon culture, members of different cultures may not feel comfortable rushing a house whose identity is so disparate from their own. Not all members of a certain race will feel this way, but one who doesn't feel sufficiently assimilated into white culture will probably not want to be part of a group that is based on sharing culture that he or she does not feel part of. The possibility of diversity is, in many cases, limited before the selection process begins. And the problem is not solved by the introduction of minority houses, which serve a good purpose as long as the other houses exist, but neither changes the social division on campus nor matches the privilege inherent in white male domination of student-controlled social space.
Every house, every pledge class, every member of the Greek system is different and no one is singularly accountable for the way things are. I have no solution for the problems I see in the Greek system without calling for its eventual end; for the meantime I can only suggest that we take some long, hard, personal looks into what brings us together and what can bring us together in the breadth of our diversity to stand together as the sons and daughters of old Dartmouth.
