ALANA Community calls for sensitivity
ALANA students in a March 31 open forum recounted the pains of attending a predominately white UVM and demanded that the campus confront the racism they say is widespread here and in the Burlington community.
The noontime event, "A Call to Action: UVM Community Meeting: Improving the State of Race Relations," was sponsored by the Commission on Racial Equality and Multicultural Education. It was held in response to three incidents on campus in February and early March in which people of color received notes containing death threats and racial slurs.
But in account after account Friday, African-, Latino-, Asian-, and Native-American UVM students described the overt racism, innuendo and lack of diversity they experience daily. They were joined by ALANA faculty and staff from UVM; several students from other colleges; and members of Burlington´s ALANA community. The almost 70 ALANA people sat in a circle facing inward, passing a microphone back and forth, as some 450 mostly white students, faculty and staff sat in rows behind them, listening for two hours.
The ALANA students expressed the anguish of being the only people of color in a sea of white faces, the burden of being expected to educate whites at UVM about the ALANA experience, and the frustration of being confronted daily with the symbols of white American history, from the Ira Allen statue to a plaque donated by the "Kake Walk"; committee.
Said one young woman, who added that she was tired of trying to enlighten her white peers in her "Race and Culture" class: "We didn´t come here to be warriors; we can here to be students. We have all these responsibilities and pressures."
James Agbai, an engineering student, said his first year at UVM has been disappointing.
"While other students, white students, have to worry about whether the slopes are going to have snow, I have to worry about a test, I have to worry about being the only black male in the engineering major, and I have to worry about my momma putting so much time and effort to get me into college..."
"If this American society goes the way it´s supposed to go, you work hard, you get a good job; but unfortunately that´s not how it is. So sometimes I feel I don´t know why I´m even here."
Many of the students said UVM´s white community is not truly committed to ALANA concerns, including:
* White students don´t join the push for ALANA student recruitment, one woman said. And when UVM does seek out potential black students, Agbai said, officials look to prep schools and the suburbs, not the inner cities.
* A residential-hall adviser said that when she showed films on races relations, only ALANA students attended.
* Most of the "Race and Culture" classes are taught by whites, one woman said.
* ALANA students are intimidated to ask for money from the mostly white Student Government Association, another woman said.
* ALANA students aren´t asked by administrators how to increase diversity, said Daren Mooko, a graduate student and member of the Commission on Racial Equality and Multicultural Education. "We have white people telling us what they´re going to do for us while they´re lying to us and ignoring us," he said. "I´ve got a problem with that."
For now, many ALANA students said, they must draw on each other´s strength to get through UVM. Angela Cooke, assistant director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs, in an opening statement before the forum, urged the mostly white audience to pay heed to ALANA concerns.
"I´m asking you: Can you and will you see us as we are? Will you commit today to take the time to hear what is in your midst....?"
"Anything done by the university in the effort to improve the climate of people of color must be grounded in the social reality of the peoples in whose names those very things are being done.
"Anything attempted in any other way is less than just deceitful; it will ultimately result in the extreme danger which has brought us here today."
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