Race matters in world viewed through 'specialized' eye

According to Michael Omi and Howard Winant in their book "Racial Formation in the United States," "every state institution is a racial institution."

This assertion is necessary since it unveils the degree to which racial consciousness defines the contours of the African-American existence. While Princeton University is in no way a state institution, it comes into contact with such institutions and is influenced by these interactions. Furth-ermore, the repercussions of Amer-ican slavery and legalized segregation continue to reverberate throughout the University.

In all its beauty, Princeton, perhaps inadvertedly, perpetuates varying modes of racism and elitism. A cursory look around campus — the composition of the student body, the number of minority faculty members and the way in which certain programs are or are not legitimized — serves as a testament to this fact.

The various forms of discourse on Princeton's campus are equally revealing.

I know the stories, some of which are mine: a professor, having visited countries in eastern Europe, returns to tell students that these countries are like those of the third world, except with White people; a student overhears a fellow student, commenting on the events of Sept. 11, say "We should blow everything up except Europe and the United States"; minority students, specifically African Americans, being pulled aside after class because their "kind of people" usually have trouble in this or that type of class.

My purpose in revealing these discourses is to highlight the fact that remnants of racism and elitism are ever present and though they may appear subtle, these remnants are pervasive — and dangerous — nonetheless.

During my time at Princeton, no one has threatened to lynch me. I have neither been spit upon nor told to sit in the back of the classroom. These are not the forms that racism takes on Princeton's campus.

Instead, it is far more covert, masked by a veneer of intellectualism. I have heard one of my most scholarly — and White — preceptors explain that there has never been any institutionalized form of racism in the United States.

Now some may argue that this is not racism, it is merely naiveté. But are the two not inextricably linked? Does racism not mold the way in which one views the world?

Is racism — which has never required that the dominant group examine its own institutions and social standing — or at the very least, racial consciousness not at the heart of this type of naiveté?

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To all of these questions, I answer yes.

I have overheard two non-minority students reveal they believed they should not have to read novels by James Baldwin and Sandra Cisneros because they could not relate to the subject matter. Is this comment racist? No, of course not. Is it linked to racism? I think so.

I simply want to point out that as an African-American female (let me pause here to stress that I am in no way speaking for my entire race), never in my life have I been afforded the luxury of making a statement such as that.

I have never quite been able to "relate" to the Faulkners and the Steinbecks of the literary world, but that has never been a legitimate reason for me to not have to read a novel authored by these men. Racism, paying homage to Western (White) thought, afforded those two non-minority students the privilege of that conversation.

Like Cornel West — professor of Afro-American Studies and the philosophy of religion at Harvard — I find myself viewing the world through a specialized eye in which race matters.

And every time that I almost forget that it matters and try to delude myself into imagining a society devoid of the ramifications of racial distinctions, I encounter an individual like David Horowitz, who argues against reparations and boldly asserts that African Americans should be happy their ancestors were brought to the United States because now they are far richer than Blacks in Africa.

Race matters. But let me not finish my reflection without stating that the degree to which it matters is within our control.

This control can be asserted by grasping the reigns of history — the means through which we have been taught that some people are inherently superior than others, at the same time we are taught that all men are created equal.

This history, despite its contradictions, teaches us to believe that all is well and as it should be.

I have never forgotten that even the telling of history is in itself racial. I would encourage the reader to seek out a fuller version of history — a version that incorporates diverse perspectives. In doing so, we uncover the roots of racism, leaving it raw, naked and vulnerable.

At Princeton, I am surrounded by true intellectuals. I am not referring solely to the outstanding faculty, but also to my fellow undergraduates. With you, I have had profound discussions and even more profound revelations.

I hope that, as aspiring leaders, we take responsibility for the way in which history is penned and that we are mindful of forgetting essential historical facts.

Let us look to the persistence of racial profiling, the correlation between life expectancy and race and environmental racism to tell us that the world is neither well nor as it should be.

Let us leave a positive legacy for the next generation, so that in the future, there is no need for someone to write an article about what it means to be an African American at Princeton. Shena Elrington is from Brooklyn, N.Y. She can be reached at selringt@princeton.edu.