I wonder if white people know that they are white. Do they wake up in the morning and think, "Wow... I'm white"? When they sit in Lit Hum or CC, do they pay extra attention when they're reading a white author's works? Seriously, I'm just wondering.

I'm black. True, I don't wake up thinking, "Wow... I'm black." But I do pay extra attention when, after a year and a half, somebody who looks like me winds up on the CC syllabus. I do get a little miffed when a white person touches my hair exclaiming, "I just had to feel it! It's so different!" I try to make sure that if I'm not early, I'm at least on time... not CP time either. I'm not trying to "play the race card." I'm just saying that I'm black and I know it... every day... maybe every minute.

My constant knowledge of my own "blackness," if there is such a thing, resonates with many black students here at Columbia. Being in the minority in any situation makes you feel as though you stick out and everything you say is, or at least should be, the party line for your group. Reading DuBois in CC, many black students agree that other students, and even teachers, expect to hear opinions from the black perspective (as if there's only one), instead of those of an individual. Sitting in class you can sometimes hear a comment made that isn't outwardly racist, but still maintains a tinge of discrimination. In those instances I have often thought to myself, "Okay, will you speak up today or are you just going to let this one go?" More often than not, being in the minority fills me and others with an obligation to stand up for my __________ (fill in the blank: race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc).

This semester I find myself at Howard University in DC, a Historically Black College/University (HBCU). Though the campus abounds with black faces, most if not all of the black students and faculty are still aware of their blackness, probably because they need only to go to Capitol Hill to find scores of people who have either forgotten, don't care about, or actively work against them.
There is a constant sense of camaraderie, an agreement that we are all here to solve the problems facing our race and the country at large, to get an education and make things better. As at every school, there are those who are primarily out to make money, but in most cases, even they want to use their positions to help others. There is an understanding that those at the Mecca, as Howard is known, have not only a desire but an obligation to better society.

Columbia is a great school. It has opened doors and given me opportunities that I may not have otherwise had. Support from outstanding faculty is not hard to come by. Columbia doesn't have a responsibility to train us all to go out and scream "Black Power" in the faces of everyone we meet. We shouldn't somehow find a way to retroactively turn it into an HBCU. Howard is not intrinsically better than Columbia, but its focus on different cultures offers a critical counterbalance to dominant approaches to education.

Diversifying the curriculum is not merely an issue of people of color wanting to learn about their cultures. If that were true, we wouldn't need to do anymore than maintain the isolation that studies of people of color receive by being quarantined under Major Cultures and Ethnic Studies. As an institution that trains the leaders of tomorrow, I fear that many who leave Columbia may be woefully unaware of issues facing communities and people of color.

We need to find ways to ensure that these leaders enter the world with a working knowledge of the realities facing various ethnicities. My Black Philosophy professor explained the goal of college as being "knowledge for action... academic excellence with social responsibility." He described it as "arming" students for the world. Our curriculum places disproportionate importance on white scholars and effectively denies the importance of scholars of color. We are arming students with a rifle with which to fight, but we do not encourage them to pull back from the scope to see more than just the Eurocentric world on which our society tends to focus. Only two things can result: either they will try to help and shoot blanks, or they will simply shoot to kill when addressing race issues in the future.

I applaud the progress that has been made thus far, including the creation of the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the Vice Provost of Diversity, and the dedication of $15 million to diversify the faculty. The administration has begun to take some cues from student concerns on those matters. But it is important to keep in mind that the necessary changes will require more than throwing money at serious concerns, more than fancy office titles. I hope that, in the near future, Columbia will seriously evaluate how different voices, both textual and oral, can be included in our academic discourse.