LETTER: Ignorance begets racism

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by Irphan Gaslightwala

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To the editor:

A friend of mine was applying to a study abroad program, and she was asked on the application to list countries that she would and would not like to study in.

The countries that she listed in the "not like to study in" category happened to include all of the countries on the African continent. When I asked her for the reason for her choice, she faltered -- she could not provide one.

I believe that my friend's lack of interest in Africa comes from the fact that she has not been exposed to African culture.

She has not been taught about the wars that African nations have fought and won, she has not been taught about technological innovations that Africans have produced. Consequently, my friend does not have much of an appreciation of African culture, and the end result is that she grossly underestimates the African nation. I would even go so far as to call my friend racist.

She is not racist in the conventional sense of the word -- she does not spout white-supremacist ideology, and I don't think that she would admit to being racist if questioned about her religious or political beliefs.

Rather, I believe that my friend is unconsciously racist, racist in the way that has helped to prevent racial equality from being achieved in the post-60s, post-Civil Rights Movement era.

I would attribute my friend's racism to certain fundamental flaws in the American educational system.

The American educational system is unabashedly one-sided; humanities courses in the American educational system focus exclusively on advances made in Greco-Roman, Western societies, neglecting advances made by other, non-Western, non-white cultures.

Students, out of ignorance, mistakenly conclude that the Greco-Roman civilizations are the only ones deserving of study and therefore that the Greco-Roman civilzations are somehow superior to other, non-Western, non-white civilizations.

My point is that students of the American educational system don't really see that other cultures besides the European cultures have rich historical heritages behind them.

This leads to the racism to which I was referring earlier; whites recognize that blacks, Asians and Hispanics are different from them without fully accepting the equality of these races.

This in turn leads to an unconscious underestimation of the abilities of minority races, of an unconscious preference always being given to white men.

Whites also find it difficult to identify with peoples of other races; this difficulty translates into racially lopsided hiring and admissions policies.

Administrators of our educational system must realize that we live in a multicultural nation, where people from non-European backgrounds must live among the peoples from European societies.

An education which is heavily biased toward Western white culture ignores the fact that racial equality is most likely when whites have an appreciation of non-white cultures.

Irphan Gaslightwala

Hanszen '96

This item appeared in the Opinion section of the February 9, 1996 issue.

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