Christien Tompkins

During last semester's hunger strike, one of the strikers called one of his fellow students "white." While to this student and some others this was a shocking expression of racism and insensitivity, I understood that the striker was trying to say that someone who is white might have different perspectives on the hunger strike and issues of race and racism due to white privilege. This seems like a reasonable point and an entrée into questions that could further the dialog between the striker and his white interlocutor. Instead, for the questioner and some who heard about this exchange, it shut down the debate. I find this dynamic repeated constantly and tragically on campus and in our society at large. Certainly there are unproductive ways to talk about race, especially as it is taken as an immutable biological or cultural phenomenon. But to call out whiteness as a social fact—dynamic, normative, and potent—is a necessary step in any process whereby all people can honestly confront the problems of racism and understand how it relates to our daily lives and campus events like the hunger strike.

"The struggle is eternal. Someone else picks up and carries on."—Ella Baker

Though I remain ever suspicious and critical of mainstream electoral politics in the United States, there is a significant part of me that really wants to believe in Barack Obama. His eloquence and message of change and hope are terribly seductive compared to the stale and petty politics of Hillary Clinton (Plagiarism!? Are you kidding me?), even though I know better than to be sucked into such fantasies. And really, it means a hell of lot to me that we could really have a black president. I never really expected that it might happen so soon, like a whole lot of other black folks who turned to Obama in droves when it appeared that white people might actually give him a shot. However, at the same time that Obama's candidacy can make me proud and hopeful for America (and make no mistake, he would be a significant upgrade over Clinton, John McCain, or George W. Bush), his historic run for the presidency is heart-wrenchingly painful.

Yesterday, five students began a hunger strike, depriving their bodies as the worst aspects of Columbia University have deprived all of our minds, hearts, and spirits. If you listen to them speak or read their literature or Web site, you will see that they are striking in order to pressure the university to act on four broad areas: the Core Curriculum, ethnic studies, administrative reform and support, and the West Harlem expansion. None of these focus areas or the specific proposals put forth by the strikers and their supporters are new. This disheartening repetition begs the question: are we headed for another round of spectacle, whereby students make demands and, if they are disruptive and insistent enough, the University acquiesces to only some of them?

I am at the breaking point. The events of this semester and student, staff, faculty, and administrative response have convinced me that most of my efforts as a "student leader" and/or "student activist" have been an absurd charade, and I must not be the only person on this campus that feels this way.

This spring marks the 40th anniversary of the building takeovers and student strike of 1968, events that are often referred to with great passion from multiple perspectives. For some, they are a great black mark on Columbia's history, which sent our prestige and donations down the drain for decades. For others, they have become the high point of Columbia's great protest tradition, from a time when students really fought for what they believed in and put their bodies on the line. Many other folks don't particularly care one way or the other, as the past is in the past. But no matter what your take on 1968 is, going forward this semester, there seems to be a lot at stake in how we commemorate the events that shook this campus. For while 1968 may have been a long time ago, protests and confrontations have continued on this campus, this year being no small example, what with Ahmadinejad, the expansion, and the hunger strike. Taking a long look back at our most famous episode of student protest will perhaps cause us to ask, "What is it about Columbia that gets people so riled up?" While the commemoration ceremonies won't be until April, it's not too early to think about how our community should mark this anniversary.

When applying for a column in the Spectator, I jokingly told my friends that I was thinking of naming it "Race Man." I thought this funny because of its multiple layers of signification. In a much older sense of the phrase I would be in the tradition of using the written word to "fight for the race." Or perhaps, like the term "race music," my writing would be written off as something only targeted toward black people and other folks of color. More cynically I had a feeling that no matter what I called my column that I would be painted pejoratively as a Race Man, someone who can't see beyond race. Ironically, this view comes from an inability to see past a limited conception of race and racism.

At a meeting with "student leaders" last Thursday, University President Lee Bollinger assured us that the purpose of hosting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, would be educational, that the event would be an intellectual engagement with a very controversial world leader—a showcase for academic freedom and freedom of speech. He emphasized that contrary to student events, University and faculty sponsored events must have an educational, and not an expressly political purpose. However, after seeing nearly a week of organizing, panic, frustration, and grandstanding, and having witnessed the speech on South Lawn with my peers, by such educational and intellectual standards, this event was a colossal failure.

In the spring of 2006, I was a member of Stop Hate on Columbia's Campus (SHOCC), which formed in the aftermath of the "Ruggles Incident" and created a platform of initiatives for making the campus more inclusive, safe, and just. The group found many supporters and faced many questions. But we also found ourselves the target of quite a bit of ridicule, see: BWOG comments. I believe that some of the scorn and opposition that we faced came from not recognizing the importance and accomplishments of student activism in the history of this University.

Bobby Womack's 1972 hit "Across 110th Street" describes a Harlem that is both very different and strikingly similar to the one that many of us at Columbia (don't) know. Needless to say, this Harlem is a black space, but Womack also takes us to streets filled with pimps, pushers, prostitutes, and people trying to make it out of the ghetto to escape soul-crushing poverty. This space is no unfortunate or unique accident, but a produced and necessary part of the United States' racial and economic order, as Womack reminds us when he croons, "The family on the other side of town / Would catch hell without a ghetto around. / In every city you find the same thing going down, / Harlem is the capital of every ghetto town." Of course this imagery cannot capture the richness and depth of Harlem, even as a snapshot in Blaxsploitation time, but it remains potent in Columbia's consciousness. You know this if you've ever been told at orientation to make sure that you transfer to the 1 at 96th Street and don't end up at 116th and Lenox. I have found in my experience at Columbia that this disconnect with Harlem persists throughout our four years. I don't think this fact can crudely be attributed to most Columbians being scared of poor black people, but rather to subtler and more institutional efforts. I've found in discussions with other black students that our connection to Harlem can be frustratingly shallow, reduced to shopping, dining, or community service. Even as we might desire to really know Harlem, developing meaningful relationships and spending time in the area are not easily achieved. From these conversations, I've gotten the feeling that even though Columbia claims to be "in the city of New York," that the kind of New York that the geography of Morningside Heights points you to is very class-specific. Excepting my stay at Columbia, I've lived my whole life in similar neighborhoods, yet still often experience Harlem more as an idea than a place. This idea of Harlem, or Harlem World, as Mason Betha and anthropologist John Jackson call it, is terribly important for the African Diaspora, but also "extends and exceeds" Harlem's physical boundaries. However, this idea can also change and mean different things for different people.