Imagine looking out your cozy Harvard dorm room only to see a bunch of black folks whoopin' and hollerin' in the Quad. What's an Ivy Leaguer to do except call campus security. So the rent-a-cops arrive only to find -- oops! -- that troublemakers are members of the Black Men's Forum (BMF) and the Association of Black Harvard Women (ABHW), participating in an annual event that includes riotous -- or is it, riot-like -- activities like dodgeball.
Lakshmi Chaudhry
Imagine looking out your cozy Harvard dorm room only to see a bunch of black folks whoopin’ and hollerin’ in the Quad. What’s an Ivy Leaguer to do except call campus security. So the rent-a-cops arrive only to find — oops! — that troublemakers are members of the Black Men’s Forum (BMF) and the Association of Black Harvard Women (ABHW), participating in an annual event that includes riotous — or is it, riot-like — activities like dodgeball.
Hmm, that would explain why all of them were wearing some form of Harvard paraphanelia.
Of course, all complainants deny even a slightest hint of racism, even of the unconscious, knee-jerk, didn’t-really-think-about-it variety. Sure, these equal opportunity party-poopers would have sent "impassioned e-mails" questioning their presence on the public lawn–"and whether they were students at all"–even if hypothetical white hooligans were all wearing their Harvard sweat-shirts.
Bryan Barnhill, the head of BMF, plans to spearhead a campaign called "I am Harvard," to "show that subtle forms of racism exist, such as seeing a group of black people on Harvard property and assuming they don’t belong there."
Lakshmi ChaudhryLakshmi Chaudhry, a senior editor at Firstpost.com and a Nation contributing writer, is the author, with Robert Scheer and Christopher Scheer, of The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq, published by Akashic Books and Seven Stories Press.