Southern Methodist University is taking an unusually direct approach to combat racial stereotypes: It’s asking people on its campus to own up to them.
In an internal survey the university poses questions, many of which indulge racial stereotypes, about different ethnicities, and asks participants to indicate whether they would want the questions answered. Among the questions: “Why are black people so loud?” “Do Asians really eat dogs?” “What is the difference between white trash and white people?”
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Southern Methodist University is taking an unusually direct approach to combat racial stereotypes: It’s asking people on its campus to own up to them.
In an internal survey the university poses questions, many of which indulge racial stereotypes, about different ethnicities, and asks participants to indicate whether they would want the questions answered. Among the questions: “Why are black people so loud?” “Do Asians really eat dogs?” “What is the difference between white trash and white people?”
Maria Dixon Hall heads up the university’s Cultural Intelligence Initiative, which produces the survey. And she said since it was first administered, in the fall of 2017, the project — called the “Ask Anything Survey” — has not drawn any complaints from students or faculty members.
“People want to ask things, but they are afraid that they’re going to sound racist or homophobic or sexist or whatever,” Dixon Hall, the senior adviser to the provost for Campus Cultural Intelligence Initiatives, told The Chronicle on Thursday. “So rather than having people stumble around in the dark, we’re going to actually answer the questions they’ve always wanted to know.”
The survey is administered through the online polling site Survey Monkey, and anyone could see it on Thursday morning. But by the afternoon, it had been removed.
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What Needs to Be Taught
Dixon Hall said the project was based on input from minority groups and from anonymous questions from people on the campus. The goal, she said, is to learn what her office needs to teach.
For example, the survey includes a question about the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, so officials added some links to information about the season on the university’s website, Dixon Hall said.
She said she didn’t worry that the questions would be taken out of context, given a warning that appears at the beginning of the survey.
“Some of the language used in this survey is explicit, and some people may find it uncomfortable, but it is important that we ask the questions in this way so that you are clear what we mean,” the warning says. “While it is appreciated that you complete the entire survey in order that we understand the entirety of your perceptions, you may skip questions or terminate your participation if emotionally distressed.”
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Participation in the survey is voluntary. And because it’s a tool for the university, Dixon Hall said there’s no plan to publicly post the survey results.
For the fall semester, Dixon Hall said, the goal is to have members of minority groups on the campus answer the questions that survey participants said they wanted answered. For example, she said, she planned to have her graduate-student assistant, who is Muslim, take on the question “Do you wear the hijab in the shower?” (She will say she does not, and explain the tradition, Dixon Hall said.)
If people were unfamiliar with the initiative, Dixon Hall said, it might seem as if the university was perpetuating stereotypes, but the goal is really to take a different approach to promoting understanding among racial groups.
“Why some people would feel uncomfortable with it is because traditional diversity and inclusion has put us in the dance of politeness,” Dixon Hall said. “We’re not allowed to ask these questions. What we’re allowed to do is be talked to and lectured rather than recognizing how can I work better with you.”
Chris Quintana was a breaking-news reporter for The Chronicle. He graduated from the University of New Mexico with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing.