Not Just BLACKS and MEXICANS

Every spring students admitted into doctoral programs fly across the United States to be wooed by faculty and graduate students. Before these prospectus students, as they are known to us, arrive to campus they have talked to at least one faculty members and several students. At the institution I attend the graduate students have a party (read: drink wine, eat cheese, and try to flaunt their knowledge). I’ve attended two of these damn things and left upset both times. Maybe I should stop going, clearly I’m not that smart.

 

As a prospective student I found myself in the corner of a small apartment talking to some fool from India and a flamboyant Mexican-American with a nervous laugh and an odd sense of humor. Having just visited schools in the US Southwest and seeing all white around me I asked about diversity. The Indian fellow replied, with a glass of red wine in the air, as if preparing to toast, “At Columbia, we have real diversity, not just Blacks and Mexicans, but real diversity. Folks from all over the world.” Then for no particular reason he elaborated on his reasons for coming to Columbia, “Chicago. Yes, I was going to go to Chicago. But you know, Chicago, it is, its in the GHETTO And nobody wants to be in the ghetto, people from the ghetto want to get out. We all know this.”

 

REAL DIVERSITY. PEOPLE FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD he said. These people from all over the world are privileged and getting folks of privilege together is something to be celebrated: raise your red wine everybody. The Blacks and Mexicans which he  flippantly discounted as real diversity represent the underprivileged of the state and neighborhood of this particular city. The university continues to push black folk out of their homes as they continue to buy more and more property for the benefit of its students: a real diverse bunch of folks. Blacks and Mexicans work behind the counters of the university restaurants and clean and wash the halls and bathrooms, while the police harass their kids and nephews. Yet for this Indian kid these Mexicans and Blacks are invisible. He doesn’t see them and sure as fuck doesn’t understand their plight. Diversity has been detached from any sense of justice. 

By: From the Basement of the Ivory Tower this is pocho enough