(Editor’s Note: This article was written by Jessica Blank ’11)
Author Tim Wise used humor and a lightning-fast approach Monday night at Love Auditorium to discuss a difficult topic: race and white privilege.
Wise is the author of five books, including White Like Me, Between Barack and a Hard Place, and Colorblind. His appearance was sponsored by the Black Student Union and served as the closing event of Black History Month.
“We do not have a white history month because we have several. They go by the names of May and June and March, to name a few,” Wise said, as students and faculty in attendance nodded in agreement.
The anti-racism activist discussed the legacy of white privilege and the ways in which it has been passed down through generations.
Wise also spoke about the different social, political, and racial lenses that each individual sees others through and encouraged everyone to acknowledge distortions in their lenses in order to correct racial issues and bring about social change.
Wise believes that if dominant groups are oblivious to their own distorted lenses, improvements regarding social issues will never take place.
“When we are aware of our lenses and acknowledge them, the more it translates into equitable action,” Wise said.
Wise discussed the roles that political and pop culture figures sometimes play. He argued that when protesters picketed with posters representing President Barack Obama inappropriately, the president denied that it was racism, and instead claimed the picketers were simply protesting his economic policy.
Wise believes that the denial was due to the fact that no one wants to talk about the issue of race and white privilege, since it is often so uncomfortable.
But Wise was more than willing to push the students in the lecture to think outside of their comfort zones.
“Everything he said was true, even though it was difficult to hear and digest,” Melissa Seipp ’11 said. “I feel that as a sociology major, I may have had more exposure to issues of race in my class studies, but it is still difficult to know how to fix the issue.”
When asked for his reactions on the lecture, Black Student Union president Leeander Alexander ’12 was full of praise.
“It is something that the entire campus should have heard. He took white privilege and race, something that is a huge issue in society, but at the same time, is something we don’t like to talk about, and he slapped it right in our faces. I appreciated it and hope a dialogue continues,” Alexander said.