Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/1999/07/08/exploiting_difference.php
Thursday, July 8, 1999
The weekend after Monica Lewinsky entered the headlines, President Clinton invited Jesse Jackson to the White House to watch the Super Bowl. According to Jackson, he and Clinton 'had prayer'—a surprising new friendship, since Jackson and Clinton were once political adversaries.
The Super Bowl benediction with Jackson began Clinton's public relations strategy on both impeachment and the whole Monica mess: House Republicans ('All they were missing was white sheets,' pronounced Eleanor Clift) were out to destroy the President for his kinship with African-Americans. After all, Clinton is 'our first black president,' as Toni Morrison wrote in The New Yorker.
Maxine Waters railed against the Starr Report 'in the name of my slave ancestors.' Clinton was not even the target of the impeachment, explained Jesse Jackson Jr. Rather, Republicans intended to impeach 'affirmative action' and 'equal protection.'
Clinton deflected much attention from his own transgressions by clouding the impeachment debate with racial politics. In August, after his Lewinsky confession, Clinton went to a black church to seek absolution. Everyone sang 'We Shall Overcome.' Rosa Parks then appeared in the President's gallery at the State of the Union address.
A close relationship with minorities, the President explained on Black Entertainment Television, is 'a source of anger and resentment against me' and 'it may be' the motivation behind the impeachment.
Whatever merit one ascribes to the impeachment charges, the impeachment had nothing at all to do with race. It concerned obstruction of justice and lying under oath. That the President would aggravate racial tensions to protect himself from the serious charges offended many.
'Race injures enough in American life without being dragged into an unrelated arena,' wrote Jay Nordlinger last March, recounting the episodes above. 'Clinton stoked the fires of racial division for the sake of his own pasty-white skin.'
Many Dartmouth students have leveled a similar criticism at College President James Wright. Those students recognized that Wright is exploiting racial differences—not to deflect attention for personal wrong-doing—but to win support for his Social and Residential Life plan, which includes the elimination of fraternities and sororities.
Last February, Wright claimed that he had undertaken the new Social and Residential Life Initiative to combat incidences of racism at the College—the 'ghetto party' among them—and at the behest of concerned students.
'They said it was not an inclusive culture,' Wright said, 'that they wished they had more opportunity to meet students of different backgrounds. When I put the question to them, what is it that does not encourage that, the answer is always the fraternities, the sororities.'
The July 1 Boston Globe reports that 'officials' at the College 'were hoping the move would make The College Formerly Known as The Nation's Best Party School more appealing to prospective students, especially minorities who had been put off by the school's conservative image.
'Black applicants, in particular, had stayed away from Dartmouth,' continues the Globe, 'since the controversial heyday of The Dartmouth Review.'
Now, 'Dartmouth's Greek gamble appears to have paid off.'
According to the College, and as reported in the Globe, the Class of 2003 will contain 12 more African-American students than did the class of 2002, an increase of 21%. Latino and American Indian enrollment will increase by 36 and 14 students respectively, or 78% and 61%.
The College proudly declares, and the Globe reiterates, that next year's freshman class is 'the most diverse ever.'
That the College would reduce 'diversity' to a head-count of minorities on campus is somewhat puerile, and a little offensive, albeit wholly unsurprising.
The College's racial categorizing would be entirely irrelevant to student life, however, if it wasn't for the political grandstanding that accompanied it.
'Although it is hard to make a direct connection between these results and the new social and residential life initiatives at Dartmouth,' Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenberg told the Globe, 'I do believe that the prospect of change made Dartmouth even more attractive to outstanding students.'
The article continues: 'Incoming students and their families,' Furstenberg said, 'are enthusiastic about the prospective changes, particularly the de-emphasis on fraternities.'
That the residential life plan precipitated minority interest in Dartmouth is a dubious contention. The Trustees' Social and Residential Life Initiative was announced over a month after applications to the College were due. What's more, the Class of 2003 is the first to be admitted when Dartmouth's new financial aid program is in effect (see TDR, 10/7/98). Whereas 39.6% of the class of 2002 received financial aid at an average scholarship of $15,864, 42% of the class of 2003 will receive aid, at an average scholarship of $19,235—an average increase of over $3,000.
For the first time, students will be able to keep all outside scholarship money and self-help requirements will be decreased. If anything caused the new admissions numbers, it was the financial aid overhaul.
Back in February, Furstenberg claimed that the 'ghetto party' had damaged Dartmouth's image with minorities, and that that accounted for the low minority early admissions numbers (this, despite the fact that the ghetto party occurred well after early applications were due). Then, he said that Dartmouth's racist image had lowered African-American applications to the College, even though, at the same time, both Latino and Native American applications rose, the latter by 23%.
Furstenberg's assertion was questionable indeed. The same number of African-Americans had been admitted early to the Class of 2000, three years before, and even Furstenberg conceded that the minority admissions numbers were in line with national trends. There was nothing remarkable about Dartmouth's admissions data. But that's irrelevant, of course, when the College can exacerbate racial tensions to further an ideological programme and, especially, to demonize fraternities.
The College expects its racial posturing to further its push to remake residential life. The prospects of that are unclear, however, as even officers of the historically black fraternities and sororities spoke out against Wright and the Trustees at the Winter Carnival rally in support of the Greek system.
Hopefully, members and participants in the Greek system—the majority of students—will not countenance the College's implicit suggestion that they are racists. The College, though, will still endeavor to turn students against each other.