Volume CXXXIII, Number 13 January 25, 2002 f

Reflections on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
EIDER GORDILLO

Monday's ceremony of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day gathered various members of the Bowdoin community at Pickard Theater for songs, a video of King's life, a tune played by Bowdoin's own Professor Robby Greenlee, and a talk by Bowdoin alum and trustee Dr. Robert Johnson-the first president of the African-American Society at Bowdoin.

The tunes resounded in the pretty-looking auditorium, and it was special that people actually showed up-something that does not surprise me. I want to reiterate the importance of such a gathering. To be frank, I did not learn much, or feel something particularly new. Still, the symbolism and potential effect of such a gathering, which ended in the traditionally African-American struggle chant "We Shall Overcome," may either disappoint or enrich this community in the coming years.

To be clear, I believe it speaks to the new face of Bowdoin, its current struggles to "diversify," and the paths we shall continue. In the past years, students have been in awe at the slightly more brown and yellow faces suddenly appearing as each class arrives (like, "Where did you pop from?" or, "Am I still in the same Nalgene-carrying, varsity-tripping, Newsweek-climbing, L.L.Bean funding-school?"

The international community may resound: "Stop making such a big deal! Why don't you just get over the race thing and be a 'healthy' community?!" This happened last semester with interesting email battles. To this I say that the realities of racial inequality, gender inequality, and all the other terrors of inequality are yet to be addressed in Bowdoin College. We cannot go to a country and expect that the current discourse does not apply to us in some fashion or another, or that it is simply "political." If I go to Ireland, especially Northern Ireland, I cannot expect to enter and avoid being surrounded by the tumult and frenzy between Catholics and Protestants. Consequently, I could not tell them to "stop making such a big deal out of it," and that, "you're both seeking Jesus, anyway!" No. The problem is larger, and it blesses or curses those of us that are here as if it were a nylon umbrella--whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, now or later.

I contend that there is still more room to explore the steps that Bowdoin has taken towards being a college that is inclusive and representative of people who make up this country, including immigrants. And these steps I deeply applaud, for it is an echo of the College's decision in the early '70s to welcome women. During that time, black students were also recruited from New York City, among other places.

And all of this for what? To fulfill the Common Good ideal in terms of inclusion? To bless the network that was already here and to better prepare them for the "real" world? I don't quite know. I do think that it is not to "prepify" minorities of sorts. Rather, the extensive and difficult effort seems to create an environment that is intellectually stimulating from various standpoints. Perhaps things felt incomplete or boring.

My contention to the discourse of cultural diversity is basic: To continue the success of a culturally diverse intellectual body, we must continue conversation about it. Not just, "how has it been for you?" or "tell me more about yourself so that I can tell my friends back home that I met you!" Instead, let's, you and I, meet halfway. Yes, my friends, I hate to sound cheesy or unoriginal, but I can't help to motivate such simple things as "keep talking."

For this, of course, it requires that people move out of their racial comfort zones. I say "comfort" carefully. Many minorities (or as the school addresses them, "people of color") understandably find comfort with people of similar racial/ethnic identities. There comes a time, though, where the lack of interaction will lead to a lack of understanding, cultural or otherwise. A lack of understanding will lead to fear and conflict. Fear and conflict, whether within a particular group or outside of it, will lead to escalated racism and assumption, which are the very things the College is trying to avoid (by College I mean not just administration). Indeed it is a harmful cycle that may face Bowdoin if discourse does not continue/expand.

What I speak of, I think, is very real. Bowdoin, with its Maine qualities of isolation, may find some of these "issues" to be irrelevant, as mentioned earlier. The reality is that issues of social equality continue to be at the forefront of American discourse, be it of nationality, policy, justice (take the Supreme Court's appointment of Justice Thomas), or otherwise.

Furthermore, I hold that the "issues" that are dealt with on MLK Jr. Day, a day that a good chunk of the nation has off, are everyday concerns for minorities, and for some of the majority. The concern is clear: civil equality, as granted by the Declaration of Independence. Let's have our women make the whole dollar that men make (rather than roughly half); let's establish college admissions criteria that include rather than exclude, while maintaining the "quality." Etc., etc.

Social equality is a concern for many, not because people really want to be concerned with apparent fallacies of identity, or because there's nothing else to do with their silly selves, but because the way one looks racially and one's economic background are often intricately connected to one's everyday interactions (Words like "dawg," for example, are often strange to Bowdoin). It has to do with where one was born. And they aren't just about race, as some may pretend. They are almost entirely not about that. Race, as we know, complicates sexuality, gender identity, ethnic constructions of identity, and even good ol' patriotism, which is losing its charge as Arizona drinks and Domino's remove their "God Bless America" stickers. If Bowdoin is to continue to expand with this sort of glory, of diversifying, as it were, which I believe will go beyond visual landscapes and numbers, social class-and the conversation of it-becomes central.