Oberlin Microaggressions

I’m writing as co-chair of the Oberlin College Sexual Offense Task Force in response to the post “‘Micro’ My Ass” (trigger warning for sexual offense/sexual misconduct/rape at the link).  I’d like to say to the poster and to everyone affected by this incident how saddened and upset I am to learn of it, and to offer whatever help I can—you can reach me at meredith.raimondo@oberlin.edu or 440-775-5291.

The Sexual Offense Policy Task Force is working to propose changes that I hope will make members of the Oberlin community feel more confident in reporting incidents of sexual misconduct.  We are aware that there is a serious trust problem at this time.  To address these concerns, we are proposing to separate the support and disciplinary aspects of the policy so that the first questions that someone would be met with on reporting would include, what do you need?  What can we provide to support you?  This could include housing, mental and physical health care, support with academic courses etc.  This kind of support would be open to all members of the community, including people who are friends with those affected by sexual misconduct who would like to talk about what they need.  Under this proposal, which we’ll be sharing with the Oberlin community this summer, the college would seriously consider the wishes of the person reporting sexual misconduct in evaluating whether to procede to a disciplinary process.

If someone did not want to proceed to a hearing, then the college would balance that request with its obligation to create a safe community and the seriousness of the misconduct.  We see the duty to report as a tool for social justice, because it helps the college identify patterns of sexual misconduct—such as the role of alcohol—and target interventions accordingly.

In the meantime, the Office of Student Wellness has a good list of local resources (http://new.oberlin.edu/office/oswell/sex-health-violence/resources/).

I also want to make sure people reading the post, as well as those involved, know there are confidential resources on campus not bound by the duty to report.  These include therapists, clergy, rape crisis counselors.  Resources locally include the Oberlin College Counseling Center (440-7758470), the Oberlin College Office of Religious and Spiritual Life (440-775-8103), Lorain County Rape Crisis (800-888-6161), and Cleveland Rape Crisis (216-619-6192).

Sexual misconduct is a serious social justice issue because of its impact on a person’s access to the full educational and employment benefits of the college.  If you have concerns, want to discuss these issues or any of our proposals, or if we can help in any way, please don’t hesitate to contact me or any member of the task force.

best,

Meredith Raimondo
Associate Professor, Comparative American Studies
Co-chair, Sexual Offense Policy Task Force

trigger warning for sexual assault/sexual offense/rape.

a girl I know hooked up with someone. afterwards, while she was asleep and naked, two of his male friends came in to the room and took a picture of her on their cell phone without her permission. another girl was in the room and tried to stop them from taking the photo, but one of them physically held her back while the other took the photo.

i don’t know what i would have done if i were her. i could say that i would press charges or at least go to someone in the administration about it, but i’m not entirely sure. I understand her decision not to do anything, to turn the other cheek; after all, we live in a world where the steubenville perps are pitied on CNN. the victim has already been humiliated enough by the incident. surely the scandal would be all over the front page of the oberlin review, bringing her way more shame than the people who did it. nobody would say out loud (oberlin is too PC of a place), but they’d say in whispers, that she “shouldn’t have gone home with a guy who had friends like that in the first place—geez, have a little discrimination.”  the guy who took the picture deleted it and apologized over facebook (he said he’d do so in person, but is too cowardly as of yet to actually do it. he should be kissing her feet).

People like this make me sick. I used to go on this website and wonder what good posting an anonymous complaint would do, but now i understand. words have power, and seeing this story in black and white makes it that much more real, even though i am keeping names anonymous.

you know who you are.

the guy who took the picture blames alcohol. alcohol is not an excuse for treating a human being like an inanimate object. if anything, this social lubricant reveals character. they say a drunk man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts. i hope the guy who took the picture, and his friend, both see this and feel immense guilt for what they did—objectifying, sexualizing, and humiliating another person without provocation, simply because they feel entitled to do so. I myself am ashamed, because i’m part of a community (Oberlin, the broader culture) that permits/creates/encourages such behavior, and for whatever reason, i am not doing enough to change it.

marfmellow:

0) White privilege, like whiteness itself, is intangible.

1) The problem with race in America is that people from all sorts of backgrounds coast through life without realizing how race still matters. They will make blanket statements like “we don’t have slavery anymore” or “there’s a black president now” or, even worse, “all of that stuff happened so long ago.” But that’s just it – it didn’t happen all that long ago, actually, and it is still happening. Cultural amnesia.

2) Whenever “diversity” or “race” comes up as a way to create opportunities for minorities, someone will say, “Race shouldn’t matter as much as merit. I don’t think people should be judged based on the color of their skin. Everyone should be judged without regards to their skin.” And they’re exactly right.

3) Because race isn’t about skin color. Race is a systemic, governmental, juridical set of processes rooted in history that have stabilized racial inequalities. So, for instance, race isn’t that I’m white and you’re black. Race is the law that says we can’t drink out of the same water fountain or that you have to sit in the back of the bus. Race is the law that says we can’t get married. Race is the fact that if you were black in the 1950s you had limited home-buying opportunities. Race is the common stereotype that if a black family moves into a neighborhood, property values go down. Race is targeting minorities for expensive, subprime mortgages.

4) A person’s white privilege is reflected they second they wonder why people are still talking about race.

5) But it is reflected even more if they act offended, angered and annoyed if another person calls out and interrogates their whiteness/white privilege. They feel that talking about whiteness is reverse discrimination.

6) There are 2.3 million incarcerated people in the United States. African American men count for more than 1 million people in jail. Black men are jailed six times more frequently than white men.

7) “I don’t see race” or “we should all just look past race” are two general statements that can only be said by a person for whom race is not a daily struggle/issue/negotiation.

8) White privilege is a kind of narcissism because it is the ability to see if not continuously demand images of whiteness in all representational media. White people are already everywhere. In one of the sociology classes I took this semester we talked about black and Latino gay culture via Paris Is Burning and one of the white gay male students in the room said, “I feel left out. Where are all the white gay men in this story?” Really?

9) White privilege is the irrational fear that affirmative action programs are going to pave the way for minorities to take over, or more specifically to take “your spot” at college or in the workplace. White privilege is the assumption you have a “spot” to begin with. Affirmative action was launched with an Executive Order signed by President Kennedy in 1961. In the past 52 years, what has changed on college campuses and work places? How has affirmative action shaped access to top jobs and schools in America?

10) There are 315,755,000 million people in the United States. 13.1% of them are black. 5% are Asian. 16.7% are Latino. 78.1% are white.

11) 7% of Harvard undergraduates are black. 16% are Asian. .1% are Native American. 43% are white. At the University of Texas at Austin, 4.6% of undergraduates are black, 17.9% are Asian, 20% are Latino, 50% are white.

12) Have you waltzed into an investment bank recently? A law firm?

13) White privilege means never having your intelligence questioned or, for that matter, having to work 20x harder just to buffer yourself from negative critique when you achieve greatness. It happens when a minority person you know achieves something amazing, and you secretly think, “Well, it’s because you’re (race).” Whenever I get into debates with my white friends about the merits of affirmative action programs, the thing that always comes up is, “Well, if they were held up to the same standards as white people…” It annoys me that the racism of that kind of blanket statement can slip past a person of any given racial background.

14) A white person doesn’t think of themselves as white. We are just people.

15) When we talk about white privilege, we’re not talking about bank accounts and elite status. That’s where class comes in. But we are talking about a set of non-tangible advantages, like never being asked why we speak so well. No one has ever told me that I have good diction or that I speak well because I’m white.

16) There is always the black or brown student in the class whenever race comes up, and everyone looks at that person to speak for their entire minority race.

17) You can appropriate aspects of black culture or Native culture or any other brown culture on Halloween or as some kind of joke, but at the end of the day, when it’s all said and done, you still get to return to whiteness.

18) I was sitting in a cafe on my college campus and this guy sat at a table across from me was talking about how he grew up “rich” and his family was a member of the elite country club in his home town. “I never had to encounter the blacks before, but then I went on a church mission where I fed the homeless, saw poverty, and that was my first exposure to blacks.” Think about just what he’s saying.

19) Not all white people are racist, but all white people have white privilege.

20) Recognizing you have white privilege is part of the fight against racism. I know I have white privilege, and that definitely impacts how I relate to the world and it shapes the kinds of relationships I cultivate. When you understand your own white privilege, you’ll be better equipped to see and understand systemic discrimination and inequality

fairkid-forever:

obiemicroaggressions:

Yesterday some acquaintances of mine were commenting on their friend’s sunburned back, and went on for a couple of minutes about how his sunburn made him “look like a Republican from behind.” I come from a small town about the size of Oberlin and much further from any major city. I have learned here that nobody is less progressive about regionalism and rurality than progressives from New York City and LA. I’m really looking forward to the day when Oberlin students stop conflating being rural and poor with being conservative, Republican, willfully ignorant, and hateful.

This is important not because we need to stop making classist jokes about one another’s sunburns but because we need to critically examine how we as privileged college students interact with our geographical location. This strain of classism was also apparent in the popular theory that being in rural Ohio made it more likely that someone other than an Oberlin student was responsible for the racist and queerphobic graffiti and events. This theory was built on the classist assumption that people from rural areas are innately more racist and queerphobic than the Oberlin student body, which on average is much richer and more urban than the rest of Lorain County.

To clarify—by commenting on the sunburn, the person was joking that their friend looked like a redneck, and was then making a joke about the classist cultural assumptions that go along with being redneck (ie: dumb, mean, dirty and Republican.) Because I come from a rural area and have friends who call themselves rednecks and reclaim the term as a mark of pride in their mostly lower-income, mainly farming community, I was upset by a privileged Oberlin student joking about his privileged friend’s sunburn, and the conflation of identities (redneck, rural, poor, Republican) that went along with it.

Yesterday some acquaintances of mine were commenting on their friend’s sunburned back, and went on for a couple of minutes about how his sunburn made him “look like a Republican from behind.” I come from a small town about the size of Oberlin and much further from any major city. I have learned here that nobody is less progressive about regionalism and rurality than progressives from New York City and LA. I’m really looking forward to the day when Oberlin students stop conflating being rural and poor with being conservative, Republican, willfully ignorant, and hateful.

This is important not because we need to stop making classist jokes about one another’s sunburns but because we need to critically examine how we as privileged college students interact with our geographical location. This strain of classism was also apparent in the popular theory that being in rural Ohio made it more likely that someone other than an Oberlin student was responsible for the racist and queerphobic graffiti and events. This theory was built on the classist assumption that people from rural areas are innately more racist and queerphobic than the Oberlin student body, which on average is much richer and more urban than the rest of Lorain County.

In the fall semester of my junior year of college, I began taking a Social Science course with a professor whom I had not previously been familiar with but grew to like very much. Class conversation turned one afternoon to the subject of how race and class are often codependent factors in the social mobility one does or does not experience. The professor then began to discuss what they felt was the projection of social mobility afforded to those who work at the college. In what was intended to be good-natured complaining, the professor said, “You know, it’s getting hard to support myself on a professor’s salary. I’ve had to make sacrifices without the prospect of a raise.” I quietly chuckled along with the rest of the class.

According to 2012 data in “The Chronicle,” an Oberlin professor’s salary is a six-digit figure. My mother, who has worked all of her life as a public school teacher, makes approximately $25,000 a year. I should not have chuckled. I should have looked at my teacher and respectfully said, “No, I’m afraid I don’t know.” While I can understand that everyone is experiencing setbacks as a result of the economic recession, it offends and embarrasses me every time I have to pretend to empathize with someone who can’t acknowledge their financial privilege.

We, as a campus of students, faculty, and administrators, can’t afford to pretend that everyone who attends Oberlin College experiences the same financial affluence. We can’t afford to overlook or invalidate the financial and social struggles some of us have needed to overcome to live and learn on this campus, struggles which still pervade our daily lives and didn’t end with an acceptance letter. Failing to appreciate and be considerate of our different narratives contributes to a dominant campus culture which is intolerant and, in varying degrees of directness and indirectness, encourages the practice of silencing marginalized experiences.

I’ve grown weary of the constant feeling of needing to hide the financial difficulties of my background in order to spare someone from feeling guilty because of their privilege. It isn’t guilt that I’m asking for; it’s a little bit more awareness and consideration.

This is a forum for vindictive whiners, though. That threatening comment about names shows your real nature.

—

The comment about revealing names is to highlight that this forum isn’t meant for tattle-tales, since the whole point of tattling is about telling on someone.

What exactly about this forum is “vindictive”? By calling us vindictive, you’re implying that we’re seeking revenge against someone. You’re shifting the focus from the people telling our stories and the harm against us to the people perpetrating these acts. The point of this blog is to give space to the people who have felt marginalized, which it seems like you don’t understand.

If you must, please read the post about white guilt again and reconsider how your words are being constructive.

Of all of the “recent events” in February and March, I was admittedly most angered with the breaching of our safe space in the MRC (trigger warning at the link), yet most of the people who spoke out in the weeks following neglected to mention this at all. Derailers focused almost solely on the misreading of the KKK regalia. As a queer person of color at Oberlin, I felt that my safe spaces were under attack. Coming to the realization that anyone could enter my safe space, drop a note such as that one, and leave undiscovered, I began to feel that my only safe space was in my room.

To the derailers who tried to brush the “recent events” under the rug, shame on you. Shame on you for ignoring the many facets of extraordinary violence experienced by your peers within marginalized communities. Shame on you for ignoring the many facets of ordinary violence experienced by your peers on a day-to-day basis.

It’s only a shame to me that, as a result of this violence, I began to see who my true allies are.