Oberlin Microaggressions

SO people may have heard of the Arlene Davila speaker event that happened tonight in celebration of Latino Heritage Month. Thanks to all who came out but especially thanks to those who cancelled their intramural soccer games, and Thursday night bong parties to come a support the Latino Community.

Hours before the event I got an email from a member of my soccer team (Pussy Whipped, that has way too many white people on it for me to ever show up again. Aside, I already learned last semester when I failed Co-ed indoor soccer that I would never play soccer with white people when I couldn’t even bear it enough to show up for half a credit (aprox. Worth $1,000)). Anyway, the email said: 

“Hey that talk looks pretty great, but on the off chance you aren’t going or would rather play futbol instead the club team wants to go!!”

Ok. 1. Thanks for you thinking that the talk is “pretty great”. I appreaciate your white male validation. I see that it isn’t interesting enough for you to actually take your ass to the talk. 2. Who said it was ok for you to say futbol? It’s Latino Heritage Month, your telling people not to come to the talk, but want to use our language? Trick NO! White students appropriating the Spanish language, dropping it in when convenient, never ok. Keep my heritage language out your mouth! If I’m not allowed to speak it, if my dad’s not allowed to speak it, then bitch you definitely are not supposed to be speaking it. Especially in this context.

So I thought it would be a good moment to tell this guy off, and also get some things off my chest about why I will never show up to intramural again, why during our first game I was completely blown that he was not passing the ball, stealing at the wrong times. Learn how to play like a community member! Why I am being pushed out of another space in Oberlin. I even quit last year too!

So here is what I said:

This email is rude. I organized this talk. Thanks for undermining a good attempt to get people out. 

1. Your not latino, call it soccer. You don’t play futbol. Futbol is played with people (LATINO) who know how to engage in community soccer, as somebody who grew up on the cancha (soccer field) I know what playing futbol is, and the way you take up space, steal the ball, don’t pass, is far from how my culture plays ball. 

2. I’m not playing intramural once again this semester because you and your cis-dude, non passing the ball, stealing the ball from beginners, spanish-mocking, white cohort has ruined it (for the second time). Unless I find another team you won’t be seeing me. 

3. I don’t care if this email is over the top or mean. So complain to whatever white friends you want about it. You’re never going to know what its like to not be able to your own heritage sport comfortably because of your gender/race/ethnicity. 

And then I get this long ass email (warning it gets full of white guilt and really boring white liberal shit, so I will highlight the fucked up parts about it)

Heres the Response:

I thought we were somewhat of friends (nope) and thats why I feel I need to respond - but mostly, I’m sorry that I detracted from your event.  Do you really think people who were going to go to the talk changed their mind because of my email? I don’t think so, and that was not my aim at all - I wanted to give those people who had been looking forward to playing soccer on Thursday a chance to do that.

You do not get to define who I am. Fuck off. Clearly you only see me at face value and yes I’m white and male, what do you want me to do about that? (LEAVE THE SOCCER TEAM) I have a second family that I have spent a good portion of my life with. My brothers Paco Rafa and Diego my mom Julie my grandmother Margo and my father Arnoldo. Technically their my god-family but for all intensive purposes they are my family, call me their 4th son, and I am extremely close with them. My father came from Costa Rica as a fourteen year old boy, living, working and studying through an education program jointly coordinated by the catholic church and UC Berkeley. My 2nd family is Costa Rican, and I am a part of that family no matter what you say. I’m not claiming to be latino and I don’t think I’ve ever claimed that, but I do have a latino family and you trying to separate me from them, to create distance that doesn’t exist based purely on how you incorrectly perceive me, is terribly offensive.

(WOWWWWWWWW SO YOUR NOT RACIST BECAUSE YOU HAVE A “SECOND” LATINO FAMILY, SECOND! We need to talk about tokenizing brown friends/family and taking them in to identify with POC’s (or avoiding accountability for being racist).

Also, soccer is not a spanish invention and you do not get to claim the sport for yourself. (SORRY DID U SAY FUTBOL OR SOCCER?) For one its an english invention (RIGHT PRAISE THE COLONIZER) and two its the world’s most popular sport played as a lifestyle by more peoples than just latinos. Soccer was the language that allowed me to make friends with people my own age when I studied abroad in Zanzibar. (RACIST)

Your anger with the white male patriarchy is justified, (THANKS!) and the social system of America perpetuates injustice by giving unfair advantages to white people, to wealthy people, and to men. Now i realize I’m getting into your area of study, and not mine (OR MY LIFE), but these systems are perpetuated because of human tendencies to favor people like themselves (ABSOLOUTELY WRONG AND RACIST, WHAT IS COLIANLISM AND WHAT IS CAPITALISM) - and because positions of power in this country are generally held by white males, white males receive huge advantages.  Advantages that they do not deserve.  Growing up as a white male in this society, I have benefited countless times from these advantages that I did not and do not deserve, but growing up I was generally not even aware that I was gaining an advantage - it was the only reality I knew. This is a question I have truly struggled with through my life - I don’t deserve these advantages, but they exist for me, I never sought them out, I didn’t want them and cant give them away, what am I supposed to do? How can I feel like any of my efforts are the product of my own effort and not simply my unequal social status? This made me very depressed for a time, (WHITE GUILT, TEARS) I didn’t want to do anything because everything I did do was the product of those advantages. (LOL). Eventually I decided, that was almost more disrespectful, to do nothing despite having these advantages. It is a fact that I have those advantages, but I cant let that stop me, I can do a lot of good and use those advantages to do positive things and chip away at that unjust structure. (BUT UR NOT OPEN TO FEEDBACK)

My area of study is Environmental Studies, a field dominated by white males. But also a field whose main work is building equality and dealing with the geo-spatial injustices of our present world. I am going to use what I’ve been given (even if its unfair and unjust - the fact remains that IT IS at least currently, which is all that matters for now) to do the most good for the most people that I possibly can. This sounds absurdly hokey, but honestly that is what motivates me. Would you prefer that I do something else?

Maybe this gives you a little bit more insight into who I am so that you can make more informed judgements.

Again I’m sorry to distract from your event today.

OKOKOKOK. So white people with “brown” associates can’t be racist, or appropriating, or take up space, and make space uncomfortable and unsafe for people of color and women. BASIC. Second, did you once address how you take up to much space and make this space unsafe? Did you once consider leaving this space? I’m glad you’ve recognized your not latino, how hard was that? Did you ever think  that you shouldn’t speak or advertise your Spanish because your white. How hard is it to understand when a member of the latino community comes out and says, DO NOT APPROPRIATE AND FETISHIZE OUR LANGUAGE. GET OFF MY CANCHA!

edmonialewiscenter:

Board Members & Office Hours

Lexy: monday 7pm-9pm
Elena: tuesday 3:30pm-5:30pm
Kaela: wednesday 10am-12pm
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Kiki: wednesday 12pm-1pm, friday 3pm-4pm

follow the edmonia lewis center’s blog to get updated on programming at oberlin for women and trans* folks

http://edmonialewiscenter.tumblr.com/

long story short…

the elc board is a collective that seeks to create a safe space for women and trans* people. the board does programming on Oberlin’s campus that deals with intersectional oppression.

Ever since the incidents of open anti-Semitic, racist, and queerphobic violence erupted this spring, outside journalists like the Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross have stated that these incidents were nothing more than a “hoax.” We write this letter to address both those who have doubted the “reality” of these incidents and to our friends and fellow community members who are the survivors of these attacks.

The events that culminated during the week of March 4th - including defacement of posters and walls with hate speech, threatening notes attached to the doors of students of color and Jewish students, and a student reporting an individual dressed in a KKK robe and hood walking around campus - were no hoax. There is nothing fake about threats against the life and safety of another human being. There was nothing fake in the response from those who were targeted. Racist, anti-queer, and anti-Semitic hate speech is violence, and the effects felt by our friends were based on centuries of very real violence which continue to affect our world today.

This violence affects all of us, and it extends far beyond last spring. The events in February and March were the visible tip of a much larger iceberg of violent oppression that benefits some members of our society while keeping down others. Oberlin College is not immune from this, because we are a part of a larger world. Each of us is a part of this system and are complicit in it. However, we can be a part of building a world free from oppressive violence by allying ourselves with those affected by it.

The idea that this was a “hoax” used to promote a progressive agenda completely misses the point. We will never know exactly what the perpetrators of this violence were thinking, and in the end their intentions are irrelevant, just as the intentions of anti-Jewish pogrom leaders in 19th century Europe, racist lynchers in 20th century America, and anti-gay terrorists in Russia today are irrelevant to the fear and destruction that they caused.

Ultimately, what matters is not the intent of these individuals, what matters is our response. We cannot control every person, but we can work to change Oberlin College and our world. Racism, anti-Semitism, and the oppression of LGBTQ people can only be stopped if we act together in solidarity to transform our institutions into truly diverse and inclusive places that empower marginalized communities and break down the walls of fear and hate that divide us.

In solidarity,

Mary & Steve Hammond, Pastors of Peace Community Church
Alice Beecher, Student Labor Action Coalition
Zia Kandler, Oberlin College Anti-Frack
John Bergen, Oberlin College Anti-Frack
Natali Terrari, Responsible Investing Organization
Caroline Mills, OSCA Housing Coordinator, Editor-in-Chief of Headwaters Magazine
Bridget Flynn, Sustainability Fellow

A group of students have compiled an alternative history and narrative of Oberlin called Disorientation 2013. If you are interested in reading it online, you may do so here. If you would like to print out the zine with your print quota on campus, you may do so here.

If you have any questions, you may e-mail Oberlin Disorientation at oberlindisorientation@gmail.com.

I don’t really know what form of marginalization this would qualify as, but the first thing I noticed at Oberlin was the mass amounts of New Yorkers, Bostonians, Californians, and people not from the southern portion of the country.  When I started to work with the admissions office, specifically the MVP program, I noticed how to program aimed to get minorities only from basically, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Chicago and Washington DC via their fly-in programs.  In other words, nowhere that is considered to be the South.  This bothered me, being from North Carolina, a fairly populous state (10th in the union), but there is next to no representation of the state compared to that of the other places where Oberlin students tend to come from.  It also bothered me that the south, in general is not represented at Oberlin.  I acknowledge that New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago are the largest cities in the nation.  But this does not mean that you should only recruit students from only those places and no others.  Charlotte, North Carolina is the 17th largest city in the country, larger than Boston and Washington DC (excluding the metropolitan area population).  San Antonio, Texas, also the American south, is the 7th largest city in the nation, larger than Boston, Washington DC, and San Francisco.  Despite the fact that there are population centers everywhere in the United States, it seems that Oberlin would rather recruit international students, than students from the same country but below the Mason-Dixon line.  When I asked my peers about it, I received answers such as these: 

a)Southerners are too conservative for a school as liberal as Oberlin

b) The south is too far away to garner recruitment

c) Southerners do not want to leave home to go to school

d) There isn’t any interest in Oberlin from Southern students

There is very little proof justifying any of these statements mainly because:

a)  People are more likely to be liberal in cities, and cities do exist in the south, the assumption that everyone in the region is conservative is prejudicial in itself.

b)  California and other countries are much farther than any southern state.

c)  Southerners DO leave home to go to school, I do admit that Southerners tend to stay close to home but Oberlin doesn’t advertise nearly enough to say that Southerners won’t leave home to attend an out of state school.

d)  As stated in the previous point, Oberlin does not advertise in the region nearly enough to say without a doubt that there is no interest.  

The point of this submission (should you choose to post it or not) is not to say that I want the campus to be dominated by Southerners or that Oberlin needs to put fly-ins in other places, but to say that Oberlin falsely claims that it is diverse in all areas when it is obviously not as diverse as it could be geographically, and that if students really want to be informed and break the cycle of oppression, the assumptions about the South and its people need to stop.  These prejudicial ideas about people that only seem to apply to southerners apply to people everywhere and that fact, however unfortunate, needs to be acknowledged.  Being a student at this geographically homogeneous school makes me feel that, as a southerner, my people are outsiders who do not belong anywhere outside of their home region because they are too conservative, and as though the state and the region I am from is not as important as just one Northern city.  This school needs to do more to change that, if I, as a student of color, have the right to fight to end racism, why can’t I, as a southerner, also fight to end the blatant marginalization of the underrepresented south and the end of prejudiced views of southerners at Oberlin?