I come from an event I helped plan, a discussion with a difference on the freighted topic of race in American elections, an event for the whole first year class and part of a series of events which are supposed to build a sense of community and shared progressive purpose. (The topic of "race and diversity" was a mandate from the dean.)
If it wasn't a success (I'm not sure it wasn't), it wasn't for lack of ambition. The topic of race in American elections was forced on us (I'm not complaining!) by the historic candidacy of Barack Obama, which I think we were right to think merited a public discussion. We were right, also, I think, to try to make the event participatory, and to keep it in-house, with a panel of faculty and students rather than an outside speaker. An outside speaker would have made it so much easier, but would have contributed little. We might all have gone home energized or outraged, but would never have learned what I think we learned tonight (at least I learned it) about the sentiments in our own community, and the value of expressing and exploring them together.
We tried very hard to design an unscripted, open-ended event. Pia Lindman, a New York-based Finnish political artist who was to teach for us this semester, led us in a Soapbox Event, with soap boxes borrowed from a fantastic show on this week in the Park Avenue Armory. (This picture from the Times shows the exhibit; soapboxes are in the middle.)
Except that we were in our familiar somewhat outré auditorium (below), the place first year students last gathered as a group to hear the Orientation speech. 
Part of the challenge was to try to change the students' experience of that space from one where you sit passively and are talked at from the stage to one which you feel empowered to speak in and even reconfigure. So last night not the stage but the aisles between the seats were the platform for expression, and anyone could take a soapbox (Pia's specially designed some for this purpose), put it anywhere they wanted, step up on it, and say something - anything - for a minute. That's the soap box set up; the next person can stand on the same box, or pick up another and go somewhere else with it. One can also give one's minute (and one's box) to another.My greatest fear was that nobody would come up to speak, but it was quickly dispelled, displaced by another - that students would take this as an occasion to rebel against being preached at. The first speaker rather angrily denounced all those who assume the position of victims. Others said they were sick of talking about race, there are other issues, more important. This of course provoked some students (not only students of color) to argue that we don't talk about race nearly enough, that while it's one of a series of issues for many white students, it's something they have to deal with every minute of their lives. And on and on. This was not going where I thought it would - the soapboxes, and the energy in the room (the students placed their soapboxes deep inside the audience part of the auditorium), were not leading to consensus or even the pretense at it. Instead, we were hearing what students were really thinking, more emphatically than in any other format (though most students said nothing, besides cheering most of the speakers). I was relieved when we transitioned to the second part of the evening,
a panel discussion of faculty and students, though I know some present wish we'd canceled it and let the soapbox event play itself out.What I learned from the centrifugal soapbox discussion was that we can't stop talking about race in America and the Obama campaign because we haven't even really started. We talk about the way the "race card" is played by the opponent, about closet racists who tell pollsters they're going to vote for Obama although their neighbors aren't. We talk about the "historic" and "symbolic" character of Obama's candidacy. But we can't really make much sense beyond that. We can't even agree on whether he's an African-American, black or biracial candidate, and what that means.
Here's what I would have said, had nobody stood up. (I lie: what I would have said would have been something safe, a reminiscence of my first presidential election - also my first year in college - 1984, how disappointed and alienated I felt by the American electorate, and how it wasn't until 1992 that I even believed political change was possible, and how 2004 returned me to 1984 and leaves me ready to give up in heartbroken anger on November 4th if America proves not to be "better than this." What follows is what I should have said, had I said something.)
I support Barack Obama because of what he is, and I worry (and have worried all along) that this is a racist thought. (I also support him because the alternative is terrifying.) I grew up in California, where the language of black and white doesn't really make sense. Native America and Mexico and Asia feel closer than the Old South or the Puritans or Africa. And yet "black and white" names America's greatest problem, its original and besetting sin. If "black and white" can be addressed, then anything can.
But is it what Obama says or what he is? I would be lying if I said it was just what he says, or what he says because of what he is, although I think that he is able to see true hope for America because of (not despite) his experiences as a black person in America, and that that experience gives him a deeper understanding of the promise and perils of democracy than I have (or need to have) as a white person. The audacious hope his candidacy raises, and the abject horror I feel at the possibility that fear and prejudice might prevent him from winning, have something to do with him as a black (or biracial) person. But as I'm saying he has a kind of world-historical significance, I feel I am dehumanizing him. It's not because of his ideas (though his ideas flow from this; I wouldn't support him if looked the same but shared the worldview of the Governor of Alaska) but because I can't imagine a merely human solution to this greatest American problem, or a solution by ideas alone. Racism is sin, not just error.
Just as women are bedeviled by the Janus-faced misogyny of "Madonna/whore," so African Americans are bedeviled by the Janus-faced racism of "saint/animal." Is the magical power I seek in Obama - not his ideas, his blood - not still tied up with all that? I need Obama to win to believe that I can overcome my own internalized racism.
Whew. I didn't have the nerve to say this before or at the Soapbox event, but at least the event got me to try to put it into words, however tortured. Perhaps it had that effect on others, too.
