Toggle Menu

Ivy Leaguers R White Like Us

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

May 21, 2007

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.


Latest from the nation