The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/race/page/3/)
As I walked across the arts quad on a nippy Tuesday evening, I began to hear vibrations that resonated with the current zeitgeist of my soul. To love, to lose, to suffer, to love again. Toronto R&B singer Daniel Caesar’s debut studio album Freudian gives artistic form to that central pillar of being human. The album consists of 10 tracks, making it his first full length work. It was released on Aug.
“Maybe it’s a fact we all should face / everyone makes judgments based on race”. This lyric, from the musical Avenue Q, was one of the first things that popped into my mind as I walked out of Smart People at the Kitchen Theatre — a play that delves unreservedly into the difficult, yet ever so relevant conversation of race, prejudice and, most importantly, our fear of that conversation itself. Written by the award-winning playwright Lydia R. Diamond and directed by the talented Summer L. Williams from Company One Theatre in Boston, Smart People is wildly funny, gripping and remarkably thought-provoking at its core. It dares us into the daunting task of thoroughly reevaluating ourselves and the world around us. With an innovative opening sequence involving projections of various news headlines and the voice recording of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign announcement, the play unfolds around four main characters: Brian, a white neuroscience professor at Harvard who has dedicated himself to finding a neurological explanation for racism and prejudice; Ginny, Brian’s fellow psychology professor at Harvard who studies and counsels Asian American women suffering from anxiety and depression; Jackson, Brian’s best friend, a black surgeon in residency; And Valerie, a young black actress who participates in Brian’s study and later works for him as a research assistant.
Over winter break, I went out with a few friends and took a train home alone through downtown Dallas. It was the late afternoon — too early for the post-bar bunch and too late for the usual work crowd. Soon after I chose my seat, a slender Casanova wannabe with a can of cheap beer and a green pullover jacket hobbled into the seat behind me. When a young woman entered our section a few stops later, the man took it upon himself to personally give her a warm welcome: “You married?” “Yes,” she said.
A few weeks ago, I gave a speech at the State Theatre in downtown Ithaca as part of Martin Luther King’s Commemoration. Afterwards, I received a standing ovation from the crowd, which I found to be decidedly insufferable. I suspect that my aversion to the applause was in part because I am not nearly as humble as advertised, so I feel uncomfortable with any adulation from the outside world — my ego is large enough already. More importantly, though, experience has taught me to regard hollow gestures like the clapping of hands with a well-warranted cynicism. After all, no one in that room should have been able to listen to what I had to say that evening, go home and still sleep well.
Award-winning spoken word poet Porsha “O” Olayiwola was invited Thursday to speak at a “Freedom Interrupted” lecture.
Clemente ’02 called for an uncompromising movement against racial oppression at a lecture Tuesday at the Africana Center.
On Thursday night, I had a conversation with a black graduate student in which he described how he has spent the semester reeling from an endless onslaught of racist bullshit from faculty and colleagues, along with a dreadful display of apathy on the part of his department. In response to my friend’s plight, his committee masked a self-preservationist agenda with gallingly tepid concern, conveying in the most unrepentant of terms that the program’s reputation superseded a black student’s right to be treated with dignity or humanity. In recounting the events to me, my friend described the rest of the country — or, at least, the rest of the country’s black people — as having finally caught up to his level of silently subdued rage and chronic uneasiness with those who claim to share his values or support his causes. And though he uttered this sentiment in an understated, almost humorous way, it struck me as simultaneously tragic, profound and disquieting. Indeed, I have spent the past few days teetering on the precipice between a stubborn commitment to love and a desire to recoil from everyone and everything.
A Korean-American male student addressed the frequent racial stereotyping of minority students on the popular social network Yik Yak. He said it is “harder for students of color to assimilate,” citing the demographic of the Greek community and dining hall segregation.
Today marks the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Rosh Hashanah is a time of celebration for my people; we eat sweet foods, drink sweet wine and try with all our might to get some sort of sound out of the shofar but never manage to do so (okay, maybe the last one is just me). Rosh Hashanah is a joyous holiday, a time for us to enjoy family, friends and life. Seven days from now, however, there will be no celebration. In seven days, there is Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year.
Some memories of my first few years of education still stick with me. Like in kindergarten, when one of my classmates spilled yogurt all over his binders and I helped him clean up the mess. My teacher, so surprised that a young child could embody selflessness, wrote a note to my parents congratulating them on their daughter’s unsolicited kindness. Or when, in first grade, I answered a certain number of questions in class correctly and was able to pick a prize out of the “treasure chest.” I was so excited. I remember rummaging through the gaudily decorated box, debating whether to choose the pink bunny puppet or the duck one.