When Frances E. Kendall talks to college leaders about race, she tends to hear a lot of facts and figures about minorities.
Three percent black. Five percent Asian. Three percent Latino. And maybe one or two Native Americans.
And then the numbers stop.
“No one says, ‘We have this many white students,’” says Ms. Kendall, a consultant who works with colleges on race issues.
“What they believe they have is this many students of color,” she says. “And the remainder are not students of another color, but are just students.”
Whiteness is the prevailing racial atmosphere on most college campuses. Yet while students of color perceive that constantly, white administrators, faculty members, and students just don’t see it, says Ms. Kendall.
How to open their eyes? That is what Ms. Kendall was hoping to help college officials figure out this week during a two-day seminar here at the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education.
Having better conversations about race on college campuses does not just mean building multicultural centers and academic programs where students of color can learn more about their own racial identities, says Ms. Kendall.
It also means teaching white students that they are white.
Privilege and Struggle
Lately conversations about whiteness on college campuses have centered on the idea of “white privilege,” and they tend not to go very far. Last spring a white, male student at Princeton University took exception to being asked repeatedly to “check his privilege.”
The student fired back in an op-ed for The Princeton Tory, a right-leaning student publication, in which he described his grandfather’s struggle to build a life in America after being driven out of Poland by the Nazis.
“Maybe my privilege is that they worked hard enough to raise four children, and to send them to Jewish day school and eventually City College,” he wrote in the essay, which drew national attention.
That is a common response, says Robin DiAngelo, a former associate professor of education at Westfield State University, in Massachusetts.
Ms. DiAngelo, who recently left academe to serve as director of equity for a nonprofit service provider for senior citizens, says white students often reject the premise of white privilege by citing the various other ways that their people have overcome oppression. But that misses the point, she says.
“They see this as mutually exclusive, that you can’t have struggles and be privileged,” says Ms. DiAngelo. “You have to think of privilege as the lack of struggle in a very specific and profound aspect of life. It does not mean no struggle, just not that struggle.”
The toughest cases, according to Ms. Kendall, are not necessarily the students who dismiss the concept of white privilege, or even those who seem to celebrate their privilege. It’s the well-meaning white students who acknowledge the problem but believe they’ve already solved it.
“White liberals, they’re the hardest,” says Ms. Kendall. “They believe, and many were raised to believe this, that the best thing is to be colorblind. Which, of course, none of us is.”
Ms. Kendall, a slightly built 68-year-old white woman with short gray hair and the vestiges of a Texas accent, cultivates a disarming presence that is useful in her line of work. She was not shy about challenging seminar attendees when she felt they were being ignorant or disingenuous. But she always did so gently, and with reassurance — a method she referred to as “calling people in” rather than “calling people out.”
She knows how easily people can become frustrated and withdraw from discussions of race, especially if they sense that the conversation is happening on someone else’s terms. (White people are especially sensitive to this, says Ms. Kendall, because they are not used to it.)
“It’s definitely a balancing act,” says Ms. DiAngelo. “You want to push people right up to their learning edge, but not go past it so that they shut down.”
Puncturing Students’ Skepticism
During the seminar, Ms. Kendall asked the attendees how they might persuade white students on their own campuses to confront their whiteness in a productive way.
“Ideally, you have a place where the conversation can go for an hour or two and people feel comfortable,” said Alex Bruce, who helps manage residential programs at Indiana University at Bloomington. “Realistically, in my world, I don’t see that happening.”
Student-affairs officials might be able to use free pizza and other tactics to entice some students to such a workshop, said Mr. Bruce. Drawing in students who are skeptical of the very concept of white privilege is a harder challenge.
“In my situation, I picture my bros on campus,” he said. “How do I engage those bros in this conversation? That’s a tough one.”
It’s especially tough because most white students have the ability to opt out of any sense of racial awareness, said Sherri Benn, an assistant vice president for student affairs at Texas State University. “They can always escape back into just being white.”
Even for those who are eager to talk about whiteness — like, say, white people who flew to Washington for a conference on race and ethnicity and who chose to attend Ms. Kendall’s seminar — the conversation is not easy.
After several black attendees spoke passionately about how difficult it is to work on college campuses where white privilege reigns but is seldom acknowledged, Ms. Kendall asked the white people in the room to talk about how hearing that made them feel.
One woman tried to express her support, but struggled to find the right words. “Please, keep sharing your experiences,” she said, blushing a bit. “Keep persisting.”
At this Ms. Benn’s brow furrowed. Ms. Kendall noticed, and asked her to speak her mind.
Ms. Benn rose from her seat and firmly explained that she didn’t need any white person’s help or permission to “persist.” The comment had been condescending, she said. Good intentions are not going to solve any problems, and neither is guilt.
“I just need white people to own your stuff,” she said.
Steve Kolowich writes about how colleges are changing, and staying the same, in the digital age. Follow him on Twitter @stevekolowich, or write to him at steve.kolowich@chronicle.com.
