Jhu politik fall 2015 special issue (printed version)

Special Issue

the JHU POLITIK Fall 2015

THE POLITICS OF RACE & IDENTITY

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JHU POLITIK EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Christine Server & Juliana Vigorito MANAGING EDITOR Mira Haqqani

HEAD WRITER Evan Harary

ASSISTANT EDITORS Dylan Etzel Preston Ge Shrenik Jain Sathvik Namburar

POLICY DESK EDITOR Arpan Ghosh

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Diana Lee

MARYLAND EDITOR David Hamburger

COPY EDITOR Zachary Schlosberg WEBMASTER Sasha Cea-Loveless MARKETING & PUBLICITY Chiara Wright FACULTY ADVISOR Charlotte O’Donnell

CAMPUS EDITOR Christina Selby

STAFF WRITERS Dylan Cowit Sina Fahimi Hanzaei Alejo Perez-Stable Husni Caroline Lupetini Darius Mostaghimi Corey Payne Yuyan Pu Dimitri Simes Linh Tran

TOP COVER PHOTO COURTESY OF: MICHAEL DAVID SMITH. PHOTO BY: THOMAS ANDERSON. BOTTOM COVER PHOTO COURTESY OF: JHU BSU. PHOTO BY: TYANA WARREN.

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INSIDE THIS ISSUE

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Interview with Leaders of the Hopkins Black Student Union Sathvik Namburar ’18 Colorblind Code?

Racial Disparities in Silicon Valley

Shrenik Jain ’18

Europe’s Refugee Crisis:

Politicized Racism and Continued Inaction

Callie Plapinger ’16

Interview with Paige Glotzer,

a doctoral student in the Department of History at Johns Hopkins

Christine Server ’16

India’s Caste System:

Past, Present, and Future

Diva Parekh ’19

It Happens Here, Too:

Racism and Response at Homewood

Corey Payne ’17

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LETTER FROM THE EDITORS “From Homewood to Baltimore City Hall and far beyond, race and identity politics shape our lives.”

Dear Loyal Readers, We are proud to present JHU Politik’s Fall 2015 Special Issue: The Politics of Race & Identity. Our writers and editors have spent months producing this issue, and the release could hardly be more timely. Discourse about race in America and beyond has captivated news media, sparked conversations on university campuses, and prompted activism, most notably through the Black Lives Matter movement. Learning to think critically about race, and anti-black racism in particular, are now key to being a socially conscious American citizen. As the United States fast becomes a majority-minority nation, where no one racial group makes up more than half the population, understanding race will become even more essential.

Here at Johns Hopkins University, we are fortunate to receive a world-class education and to brush shoulders with top academics on a daily basis. Yet despite its acclaim, Homewood and the entire University continue to struggle with achieving racial diversity among students and faculty. On a campus that was once home to slaveholders, in the majority Black city of Baltimore, racial tensions still persist all around us. In recent months these feelings have come to a head, with protests consuming the city in spring 2015.

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This semester, questions of race, diversity, and inclusion have risen to the forefront of campus affairs, mostly thanks to the Johns Hopkins University Black Student Union. In this issue, we are proud to feature an interview with three current BSU members, as well as an article discussing the administrative response. Writers also explored the persistent racial disparities in the tech world, recent developments in the Syrian refugee crisis, and the lasting impacts of India’s caste system. A doctoral student in the Department of History here at Johns Hopkins was interviewed about the racialized past, present, and future of Baltimore City.

From Homewood to Baltimore City Hall and far beyond, race and identity politics shape our lives. We are grateful for the opportunity to highlight student voices regarding this crucial issue, and we hope you enjoy reading.

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Christine Server & Juliana Vigorito Editors-in-Chief

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Interview with Leaders of the Hopkins Black Student Union

By Sathvik Namburar ’18, Assistant Editor Recent police-involved deaths of unarmed Black Americans have led to a nationwide discussion on race and policing. Protests have erupted in cities such as Ferguson, New York, and Baltimore over police treatment of Black Americans. At the university level, frustration with administrative inaction in the wake of racist incidents at the University of Missouri led to student and faculty protests in November.

Inspired in part by the success of the University of Missouri protests in compelling President Tim Wolfe’s resignation, students at other universities throughout the country have demanded that university administrations take issues of race more seriously. Taken together, these incidents reveal an uncomfortable, yet urgent truth: racism is still rampant in America, even on otherwise progressive college campuses.

In Baltimore, the Johns Hopkins Black Student Union (BSU) has been attempting to shed light on racist incidents at the university. In mid-November the BSU peacefully interrupted the filming of a video featuring President Ron Daniels, and the organization relayed to the President a list of demands regarding the issues of race and racism on campus. Shortly after the protest, I sat down for an interview with Matt Brown, the President of Hopkins BSU, as well as Milena Berhane and Rana Saeed, two freshmen members of the BSU executive board chosen to represent the organization for this interview.

Note: some responses have been edited for clarity and concision.

Politik: Was there a single moment in your life in which you realized that racism still exists?

Matt Brown: I went to high school in southern New Jersey. When Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012, I was in high school. My predominantly white friend group was commenting on everything that happened, and I realized that some of what they were saying made me uncomfortable. At that time, I did not fully realize why I felt uncomfortable, but after coming to college, meeting people with experiences similar to mine, and taking classes on race, I realized the impact of race that I could not understand in high school.

Milena Berhane: I went to a predominantly Black high school in Laurel, MD. In our high school, I was one of only two people to be accepted to Hopkins, despite around thirty people applying. One white student, upset that he wasn’t accepted, told me, “The reason that they accepted you is because you are a Black female.” That incident struck a nerve with me, because I had worked just as hard as everyone else. For me, the incident shed light on the negative perception of Black students at Even in college, I have experienced racism. I walked down universities. to 25th Street for a haircut, and when I told someone Rana Saeed: I am originally from a suburb of Denver, CO. I had done so, he noted that I was safe from being For me too, it was during my senior year of high school victimized by a crime because of my race. This incident that I noticed that some people think less of me because gave me pause because Hopkins students are supposed to of the color of my skin. They told me that I was “basically be intellectually bright, yet it was a student who made this white,” and while I supported such characterizations at racist observation. As a result, I felt the need to become first, I eventually questioned why people felt the need more involved in on-campus organizations such as the to label me as such. I feel that there are many negative Black Student Union (BSU), and I started reading more stereotypes associated with being Black—that they are about racism and microaggressions. lazy and unsuccessful—and such stereotypes are just wrong.

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THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY BLACK STUDNET UNION / PHOTO COURTESY OF: JHU BSU

The idea of affirmative consent is requiring a very clear standard on campus for prevention and enforcement of student conduct. Affirmative consent makes it very clear that unless someone has agreed to sexual activity, it’s prohibited to engage in. Unless you hear yes, it’s a not. On the flip side, affirmative consent is meant to be the standard for campus hearings. There’s a very clear standard. There’s no murky area. It helps administrators so much. Having sat through these hearings with SurvJustice as their lawyers, I can’t even tell you how many young men readily admit to not getting consent before engaging in sexual activity, because they don’t Brown: Part of the problem is that Black professors do think there’s anything wrong with it, which ties back into not want to come here simply because there are so few how bad our prevention education is. people who look like them. All other things being equal, Black professors want to go to a university where there are others of the same race so that there is a support system in place for them. We also have a high turnover rate among Black professors, which could dissuade others from coming to the university. It is incumbent upon the administration to begin to alleviate these issues, which is why we included it in our list of demands.

Politik: You had a list of eight demands that you presented to President Daniels. These demands call for increased transparency with regards to issues of race, cultural competency training for all students, greater consequences for racist acts, and making the Center for Africana Studies into a department, among others. Yet I was most surprised by your revelation that only five Hopkins professors are African-American. Why is the number of African-American professors so low?

Politik: How did you prepare this list of demands? What kinds of conversations did you have in preparing them?

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“I believe that it is important that Black students who follow enter into a better environment than the one we have right now at the university.”

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Brown: These are issues that we have discussed with President Daniels before, and we have seen little progress on them. There is really nothing new in the demands that we released. We have also talked to alumni who have mentioned that they had brought up some of the very same demands ten years ago. We spoke to an alumna who graduated in the mid-2000s, and she said that students had brought up the same issues to President William Brody back then. Obviously, the lack of inaction despite years of discussion is concerning. Alumni also shared how they tried to effect change years ago in the hopes that we would be able to create newer and better strategies.

in our country, including in universities. Black students have been looked down upon for decades, ever since the integration of universities. It is disingenuous to suggest that these events are worsening racial tensions. The action that we demand is meant not to deepen divisions but to bridge them.

Saeed: I think an analogous issue is the discrepancy between the statements Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter. Obviously, all lives matter, but the purpose of Black Lives Matter is to remind others that we should not be forgotten as well. Black Lives Matter is not meant to elevate one race above the others but to emphasize One example of administrative inaction is the recent Yik that being Black does not make someone’s life worth less.

Yak incident, in which Hopkins students anonymously We want to be more included in universities as peers and posted racist comments on the Yik Yak app this past intellectuals, not be divisive [sic]. spring following the Freddie Gray protests. Some alumni told us that back in 2006-07, there were websites on which Politik: If you could make one immediate Hopkins students similarly expressed racist opinions. It is change at Hopkins, what would it be and why? a shame that the school has not addressed these concerns even though they have been brought up multiple times.

Brown: I would convert the Center for Africana Studies into a department. Right now, the Center for Africana Politik: Since issues of race at Hopkins have Studies has very limited autonomy, and as a department not been properly addressed for years, what it would be able to have more clout and exert greater hope do you have for change to come now? independence over its own affairs. If such a change were made, then the Center for Africana Studies would be able Brown: I think there is still hope. When I was reading to take up a greater activist role at the university on behalf the demands to President Daniels, I noted to him that I of Black students. personally might not still be a student when changes are implemented at Hopkins, but I still plan to work on them I would also love to see more Black professors being now. I believe that it is important that Black students who hired by the university, but right now I am not sure of the follow enter into a better environment than the one we immediate feasibility of this change. Hiring more Black have right now at the university. Of course, it will take professors will take more time than making the Center a lot of work, and we will need to bring continuous for Africana Studies a department, but both are equally attention to our demands. But I am hopeful that by being important. in constant contact with the administration and prodding them to enact necessary change, we will be successful.

Saeed: I agree with Matt. Reasonably speaking, the Center for Africana studies is the quickest issue that we can Politik: Have you seen any change at all in the change, and it would have a big impact. past few years on these issues?

Politik: Based on your recent protests and Brown: My sophomore year, I did see the administration activism, what message are you sending to the slowly implementing the changes that we have been asking university? for. I still think that the administration’s pace is slow compared to that of other colleges. It also feels that we do Brown: We will not stop working on this issue until we see not have a lot of transparency from the administration, changes. We do not see a positive environment for Black which is a concern because of the urgency of these issues. students at Hopkins, and we will continue to prod the administration on making the changes we demand. Our Politik: At Towson University recently, the presence on this campus is here to stay. university president acceded to the demands laid forth by the university’s BSU. When I was Berhane: I am expecting and looking forward to having reading online commentary on this decision, more conversations with university administrators on I came across an article that suggested that race. I expect the University to take racism seriously and these events are actually worsening racial to heed our concerns. Hopefully, we are able to finally tensions. What is your response? bring about real change to Hopkins. and prodding them to enact necessary change, we will be Berhane: Even though some people may deny it, there is successful. ■ no doubt that we have for centuries had racial divisions

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PHOTO COURTESY OF: MOTHER JONES

Colorblind Code?

Racial Disparities in Silicon Valley

By Shrenik Jain ’18, Assistant Editor

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he new face of innovation is firmly rooted in technology. Sprawling tech conglomerates like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook now span the globe, broadcasting a vision of corporate profit paired with progressive ideals. The culture emanating from these behemoths is so pervasive that it has spawned a whole generation of entrepreneurs—ambitious, often technically skilled, young people who are committed to solving society’s woes through creative thinking and novel business models independent of ‘stuffy’ corporate culture. Despite the inclusive and enlightened rhetoric the tech industry touts, more information is surfacing that shows a jarring lack of diversity in established technology companies and new startups alike. One of the most egregious areas in which the tech industry lacks diversity is that of race. The massive underrepresentation of Latinos and Blacks in the tech scene is often overlooked but is in dire need of correction.

The most glaring area of racial underrepresentation in technology can be seen in the largest and most recognizable technology brands. For years the management of these companies dodged efforts to release a breakdown of their employees by race. It took a concerted campaign by numerous activist and civil rights groups which, with the public support of Reverend Jesse Jackson, demanded

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that tech companies release their diversity statistics in compliance with the Freedom of Information Act. The released information was predictably damning: most large tech companies had only between 2-4% of Latino and Black employees. It is important to note that these figures include retail workers and that many large companies such as Hulu, Netflix and IBM are still resisting attempts to release their information. Clearly, underrepresentation is real and drastic in the Silicon Valley.

Exclusion from the technology companies also severely hampers the efforts of Latino and Black entrepreneurs.

The results of a Public Religion Research Institute study in 2013, which reported that a mean 1% of a white American’s social network is made up of Blacks, may help to explain this trend. Large technology companies are important in the startup world due to the cuttingedge technical talent that works there, the PR they can give to fledgling startups, and the potential for an acquisition, which is the end goal of many startups.

Given that entrepreneurship is a field in which an individual’s personal connections are vital for acquiring traction, investors, and mentors, underrepresentation in large technology companies translates to an almost total underrepresentation in startup CEOs.

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Technology companies and startups often recruit employees through a network of referrals at the same group of elite schools. Yet from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to Stanford, Black and Latino students studying STEM majors sought after in the tech world seem to struggle with navigating the path from education to employment. Interestingly, a study on college majors and race done by Princeton University found that Black males were only slightly more likely than whites to study computer science and engineering. Still, industry data shows that not only were Black and Latino students less likely to be hired than their white or Asian counterparts, but they were also likely to be paid less for the same work if hired.

The current structure of the tech industry can no longer be seen as a viable option. While companies have historically preferred to make convenient choices when it comes to hiring, often recruiting through exclusive networks, this closed system makes the industry as a whole much more susceptible to unsustainable booms and busts. While defenders of the industry point out a new atmosphere of prudence in the Valley that they believe may prevent the dot-com bubble from ever popping again, there are already hints of instability. Many revenue-less applications that sound impressive to venture capitalists are able to raise millions in funding but then collapse spectacularly since their business models are out of touch with actual market preferences.

This imbalance in employment and opportunity is made even more disconcerting by the major market share that technology giants enjoy. Some social media sites have Blacks overrepresented in their consumer base—Twitter reports that 27% of Black individuals active on the Internet use the site (compared to 21% of whites). Tech companies grow more and more ambitious with the level of consumer integration they seek with their products, yet the companies themselves do not accurately represent the populations they serve.

While it’s doubtful that discrimination in the tech industry is entirely responsible for the aforementioned problem, it is likely that the systematic exclusion of 25% of the American population from Silicon Valley contributes to a highly biased worldview. This reality runs contrary to the ambition among industry leaders to use technology to connect and liberate the world. The current racial inequality seen in the tech industry is unsustainable.

The more closed off that Silicon Valley chooses to become, the more they become like the corporate world they deplore. Given the importance of technology and entrepreneurship in our fast-paced world, it is in the best interest of everyone—the tech companies, startups, and educational institutions—to take steps to resolve the racial disparities and increase diversity of perspectives in the industry. ■

There is a smattering of initiatives working to correct the existing imbalance. Intel, for example, claims to have allocated $300 million for scholarships and grants for “underrepresented minorities,” though current employment statistics show that such programs have yet to find widespread success. Several incubators and activist groups dedicated specifically to supporting Black and Latino startups are promising. Such efforts have gained the backing of high profile Black and Latino entrepreneurs such as Hank Williams and JJ McCovey, associations which may help penetrate the insular atmosphere of Silicon Valley.

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“Tech companies grow more and more ambitious with the level of consumer integration they seek with their products, yet the companies themselves do not accurately represent the populations they serve.”

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PHOTO COURTESY OF: MARISELA GOMEZ, HTTP://WWW.MARISELABGOMEZ.COM/

EUROPE’S REFUGEE CRISIS: Politicized Racism and Continued Inaction

SYRIAN REFUGEES WAIT AT THE TURKISH BORDER. / PHOTO COURTESY OF: LA TIMES

By Callie Plapinger ’16, Contributing Writer

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n September 17, 2015, a Hungarian journalist kicked two Syrian refugee children and an older man within view of cameras. On November 3, 2015, members of a right-wing anti-immigration group physically assaulted a journalist in Berlin, Germany who authored an anti-xenophobia newspaper column. Unfortunately, instances of overt biases and discrimination have been, and continue to be, perpetrated against refugees fleeing persecution in the Middle East and those who would defend them. This discrimination affects huge numbers of people—nearly 180,000 refugees fled the conflict in Syria between 2014 and 2015, and more continue to do so every day.

Throughout this crisis, it has become evident that countries debating the acceptance of refugees from the Middle East often employ racist and religiously discriminatory criteria in the decision-making process.

Though countries like Germany have enthusiastically embraced and welcomed the arrival of those seeking

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asylum, official policy and acceptance by the citizenry are two different stories. Despite Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open policy of providing refuge to those fleeing conflict in the Middle East, some Germans have voiced their disapproval of this policy, as evidenced by recent protests in Dresden and Berlin.

Additionally, the process of granting asylum is a complex one, and renders the influx of refugees to Europe even more difficult to manage. Under the United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees of 1951, migrants may seek asylum if they show “a well-founded fear of persecution” on the basis of religion, race, ethnicity, or membership in a social or political group. However, this asylum can be redacted or rejected if the migrant has committed war crimes, or doesn’t have the proper documentation. The former is a gray area that often is politicized, while the latter is often overlooked when migrants are fleeing and fear for their lives.

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“The gravity of the situation must be made clear to policymakers and citizens worldwide.”

Furthermore, many have pointed out that, in light of countries like Australia selectively receiving Christian refugees over Muslim refugees, countries may handpick certain ethnic or religious groups and refuse migrants they claim would not integrate well into their society.

Recently, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein, has drawn parallels between the contemporary refugee crisis and the displaced Jewish populations before and during World War II. Through dehumanizing language such as “swarms,” many European politicians and media sources render the legitimate grievances and fears of refugees fleeing conflict and persecution as irrelevant and secondary to protecting their own borders.

Besides the discriminatory selection practices and hateful rhetoric of many, there is a troubling and pervasive logic by which governments continue to deny refugees asylum.

Theresa May, the Home Secretary of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party, argued at a recent conference that accepting refugees would pose an obstruction to building “a cohesive society.” Former Prime Minister of Poland Jaroslaw Kaczynski recently voiced disapproval for his country’s plan to accept thousands of refugees, citing the “dangerous diseases” that Muslim people carry and might transmit to Europeans. The Prime Minister of Hungary put it bluntly: “We don’t want more Muslims.” This sentiment continues to devalue the pressing grievances of refugees.

Contemporary depictions of refugees parallel those during the Evian Conference in 1938, during which European

countries and the United States denied asylum on the basis of protecting their economies and societies from destabilization. While many Western European nations have actively supported the distribution and acceptance of refugees throughout the European Union, some Eastern European nations oppose this policy, creating difficulties for the EU commission. Historical denial of refugees, coupled with a general lack of concern for the livelihood of Jews specifically, helped enable Hitler to launch his plans for execution swiftly and without fear of serious international condemnation. The degree to which European countries have disregarded the recent crisis is surprising, and it becomes even more alarming when one considers that over 230,000 lives have been claimed in the Syrian civil war, with death tolls continuing to rise.

Resolution of the refugee crisis will require raising caps for refugees resettled in the U.S. and European countries, namely those in Eastern Europe and the United Kingdom. Additionally, there must be greater consequences for openly xenophobic comments made by high-ranking government officials, including heads of state. These statements have profound implications because anti-immigration rhetoric provides politicians with a means of currying favor with right-wing supporters.

More generous norms for refugee resettlement must be established, especially in countries and regions where it is most feasible to do so. This can only occur with greater multilateral cooperation across the European Union that results in lasting change, rather than cursory statements with few regulatory effects.

Given that many European countries such as Germany will likely face a serious population decline by 2050, it is time to rethink what “European” is, especially when people are fleeing extremely dangerous situations and are simply looking for a better life. The gravity of the situation must be made clear to policymakers and citizens worldwide. We do not want to look back on this situation and see troubling similarities to the 1938 refugee crisis, during which many countries turned their backs on the Jewish populations and countless lives were lost due to inaction by the international community. Refugees also cite the importance of other nations working to end the Syrian conflict, along with providing assistance to those displaced by it. We, the international community, must heed their calls on both fronts before further damage is inflicted. ■

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INTERVIEW WITH PAIGE GLOTZER, a doctoral student in the Department of History at Johns Hopkins

By Christine Server ’16, Editor-in-Chief

I sat down with Paige to discuss her research into how discriminatory housing policies helped to shape the course of suburban development in Baltimore and across the entire nation. These policies continue to have implications for current challenges in racism, class, and equity today, demonstrating just how little racial discrimination has been abated.

Note: This interview has been abridged for length.

A BLOCK OF VACANT ROW HOMES NEAR THE JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICAL CAMPUS / PHOTO COURTESY OF: KIM HAIRSTON, THE BALTIMORE SUN

Politik: What got you interested in the history of suburban development?

PG: I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and so I was very much aware when I used to go and walk around of how sometimes my neighborhood started to look very different, the buildings would look different, there were racial changes depending on what part of the neighborhood I went to. I got interested in why urban landscapes and urban demographics were the way they were.

When I came to Baltimore I had planned to write a history PhD on public housing, but I ended up getting hired to organize a Hopkins special collection about the Roland Park Company. I didn’t know much about Baltimore and I didn’t know much suburban development actually, but when I started to look through the files I recognized a lot of these larger issues that I had been thinking about for a long time, about race in the city and space. It started to come together and I realized then that suburban development and urban development are flip sides of the same coin.

Politik: Did you choose to study at Hopkins because of a specific interest in Baltimore? How has living in Baltimore influenced your graduate studies?

PG: I didn’t come to Baltimore because it was Baltimore, but I did come here to study the city, and I knew I wanted to live in a city. I came to Hopkins because at the time they had two of the best urban historians in the country, Mary Ryan and N.D.B. Connolly, who are also my advisors. I knew that I’d like living here.

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Now that I’m here, Baltimore has very much influenced not only my work, but also my training and education and my understanding of the relationship between racism and overall politics and economics.

Unlike where I lived in Brooklyn, Baltimore seemed very starkly segregated in ways that I had never seen before, along racial and class lines. One way it influenced what I write about is I became really interested in boundaries between neighborhoods, like how an affluent white neighborhood like Guilford set up boundaries with neighborhoods like Waverly. That’s a question I had because I would walk up and down Greenmount Ave or York Road and see literal walls. This is an in-your-face example of white supremacy and segregation. Where the history comes in for me, I want to understand why things got that way, what were people thinking, what were the long-term effects of that. That wall is pretty much 100 years old: why is it still there, why do we not hear protests about taking it down, why is it not a site of news and attention and activism the way other places are? Putting things like that in historical perspective, that’s what I really love to do.

Politik: Can you describe what your research has found so far, particularly in regards to the Roland Park Company?

PG: As an overview of my project, I look at how Baltimore’s history of suburban segregation helped create a national history of suburban segregation. I mainly focus on how developers like the Roland Park Company (RPC) gained a lot of economic and political power, and then had the influence to set what development would look like.

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The start and end point to this is Baltimore didn’t have year-round planned suburbs like Roland Park (RP) until the RPC came in 1891.

So these were people trying to introduce a whole new type of community, and so I looked how they did that, how they marketed it. Often they marketed it by associating Black people with disease, like “Be healthy, be safe, come live up here.” I look at how they experimented locally with what happens if we build this wall, how does that influence our sales; what happens if we advertise this type of thing, does that improve our sales?

After doing this for a number of years, they also started to talk to other developers in other parts of the country, share ideas, circulate letters. I look at that transmission and how we then start to see places that look the same elsewhere, like in Kansas City, Chicago, California.

I then look at how it came together in an institutional setting. So the RPC and their peers formed real estate’s first national professional association (which is still the largest such association today). They basically became “experts” in how to create good real estate. So when the federal government during the Great Depression needed help creating federal housing policies to help the flagging housing economy, they turned to these folks to help them write the policies.

You then see a lots of forms of segregation making its way very explicitly into the federal policies of the 1930s and 1940s, and that had all sorts of effects for how people across the country would have access to mortgages or living in certain places, and much of it was based on race.

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“I would walk up and down Greenmount Ave or York Road and see literal walls. This is an in-your-face example of white supremacy and segregation.”

Politik: How do you piece together all of these historical documents to get a sense of how networks were formed and disseminated these ideas?

PG: To describe the records that I look at: there are about 350 boxes full of just stuff at the library. These boxes contain letters, ledgers, so I know all of their accounting and what they were spending money on, and travel receipts, so I know where they’re going. They made scrapbooks so when they saw what they thoughts was an effective advertisement in a place like California, if they got wind of it they would save it. I knew what they were reading and what they were saving. By piecing this together, I started to get a picture of who were people in the RPC were talking to, where were they circulating their ideas, and what types of requests or what types of questions were people asking them. A developer in Kansas City writes to developers in Baltimore asking if they can have a copy of the contracts that say “no Black people allowed,” and suddenly you start to see the same contracts word for word in Kansas City.

There’s another policy side to this. I mentioned federal policy before, but there’s also municipal policy zoning. A lot of times in the early 1900s, you would not just get requests from developers, you would get requests from people writing zoning laws saying, “We like how your community works and we want to incorporate those sort of rules into our zoning laws, can you send us copies of your contracts and restrictions?” The person who wrote NYC’s zoning laws really loved the RPC restrictions that they used to keep out Black people, that they used to control the architecture, all of that.

Then I moved from the RP files to another set of records from the National Association of Realtors, which was mainly based in Chicago.

I have records of what they were doing when they got together at national meetings, and they were literally gathering in rooms and saying, “Who lets Jews into their developments?” and they took votes on it and saved all their conversations about it. So in the end, you have publicly accessible literally thousands of pages of conversations about the relationship between race and suburban development. And you can just piece that all together.

Politik: What were some of the specific marketing tactics used by the Roland Park Company?

PG: The one that is probably most well-known are deed restrictions, or restrictive covenants. The developers of Roland Park were some of the first developers in the entire country to use these. They had a contract so that when you bought a house, it had not only the normal deed to the house but a separate set of rules. When you signed the deed and got the property, you were legally bound to follow these rules, otherwise you could be taken to court or maybe even evicted.

Some of these rules were very social—they straight up said, “No person of Negro descent could buy or occupy property except for domestic servants.” They didn’t want anyone buying a house that would disrupt the social hierarchy they had in mind. The deeds also mixed social and aesthetic control. What I mean by that is that sometimes it doesn’t seem very racial or social, but it actually is. For instance, all houses had to cost a certain minimum amount; that was written into the deed. That’s a certain form of class discrimination that was perfectly legal. Another one was that houses had to be set back from the street a certain amount. That meant that you had to be able maintain the landscaping and the lawns, also a lot of money, and you had to hire people. The things is, other than that racial clause, these are still the same rules that govern Roland Park, Guilford, Homeland, and Original Northwood. Deed restrictions are still there and are still perfectly legal, except for the racial clause, which was there for a very long time.

Politik: When did the racial clause finally get taken out?

PG: I’m not exactly sure! These types of racial restrictions were declared unenforceable by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948 in a case called Shelley v. Kraemer. But they were declared unenforceable—not illegal. Developers would still put it in there, they would have to be taken to court, so they just bet on no one taking them to court.

So for years after 1948, this definitely still continued. The national association still had model racial restrictions that they sent out to people.

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In the early 1960s there was fair housing legislation. That’s the first time racial segregation in housing is declared illegal, along with religious and gender segregation. However, the RPC went out of business in 1960, so the record stopped just before fair housing.

So I’m not exactly sure when these clause were stricken from the deeds themselves. By the 1970s, you start to have Jews moving into RP, which would not have been allowed. So it was breaking down in certain ways, but it’s no coincidence that these are still some of the whitest neighborhoods in Baltimore. Anecdotally, there are still also sorts of pressures one faces if you’re not white and you live in those neighborhoods; you’re not invited to the neighborhood association meetings, for instance. Discrimination continues, except now it works in ways that are a little less visible to outsiders.

Politik: In what ways does the legacy of these discriminatory policies still persist in Baltimore?

PG: A lot of different ways, and it very much relates to some of to the national coverage we were seeing of Baltimore and a lot of the uprisings we saw earlier this year throughout the country.

I’ll start by saying that the ability to own housing is one of the main ways people can accumulate wealth in the U.S. and pass it on. If you have generations and generations of housing discrimination where non-white people were prevented from owning properties that were the most valuable, this creates a huge generational barrier to accumulating wealth that they’re then able to potentially pass on to current generations. That has consequences for people where they go to school, the political power or potential of a residential district, how you pay for college, if you have the opportunity to go to college.

Just in that very broad sense, the legacy of officially having legal racial discrimination during Jim Crow from the 1890s to the 1960s, already you’re talking about discrimination that’s going to bleed into all sorts of other areas.

In a more political sense, looking at the legacy of policy: in some ways, housing discrimination is also a form of credit discrimination.

This is why I find it so important to talk about how a lot of RP’s ideas became federal policy. This federal policy during the Great Depression allowed a lot of people—mainly white people—access to easy mortgages on very good terms. The vast majority of people who own houses today use federally-backed mortgages. Imagine people who didn’t have access to that credit. There are not a lot of ways that you can actually access a lot of consumer goods; you can’t get credit cards or buy a car as easily. Then you‘re talking about mobility restrictions, limits to where you can spend or buy things.

You’re talking about all sorts of opportunities for predatory loans.

In the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, it primarily affected people of color because they could not access conventional mortgages. So the whole recession recently is something traced back to the ways housing discrimination affected people’s credit based on race, and so much of that was about buying suburban homes. If you start with just what does it mean not to be able to live in a suburb if you wanted to, you start to get at so many other ways that race and racism are still perniciously working in people’s lives on a daily basis.

Politik: Transport is a key link between the suburbs

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and the city. In what ways have discriminatory housing policies informed transport policies, and vice versa?

PG: The RPC suburbs were designed between 1890 and 1930 and were actually very well-connected by trolley cars. That’s how a lot of affluent suburbs were in the U.S at that time. You were expected to be commuting into the city and you would take trolleys downtown. The RPC knew that their stuff would not sell if it was not connected to public transport. So what happened? That seems very different from what ended up with suburbs today.

The automobile got a lot more popular. Bus companies started to replace trolley companies. As the car took on increasing importance and became more affordable, a lot of people were able to have them.

In the early 1950s, under Dwight Eisenhower, you get the interstate highway system. This whole idea was now that cars are affordable and a lot of people have them, we should devote a lot of federal money to highways. This was right at a time when cities were starting to lose a little bit of money; factories were on the decline in a lot of places. Cities weren’t investing in public transport as much and these federal highways came along.

The way federal highway projects worked, the federal government paid for 90% of the project and the city would only have to put up 10% of the cost. So where did these highways go? They had to demolish houses to build; cities are really dense and you just didn’t really have a lot of land to build them. For the city, what’s the cheapest way to destroy houses? Let’s look for houses with the least amount of property value. Because of suburbs like RP what are house with the least amount of property value? The least suburban houses, probably with the most minority residents. Highways started to connect suburbs and allow you to live farther and farther away.

They also reinforced the geographies of segregation: they would cut through and literally destroy majority Black neighborhoods that were already suffering because of credit discrimination. This occurred in the 1950s up until the end of the 20th century. Highways made it easier to access suburbs while making it more difficult for people of color to live and work in cities. This was a huge shift that the RPC and developers like them were in some ways indirectly responsible for by helping to create the idea that suburbs were the most valuable property.

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“If you start with just what does it mean not to be able to live in a suburb if you wanted to, you start to get at so many other ways that race and racism are still perniciously working in people’s lives on a daily basis.”

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Actually it’s kind of complicated now in some ways because people are demanding more public transportation than ever before. But a lot of times what you have now are political situations in which the suburbs, unlike RP, but suburbs which are not municipally politically part of the city, because of the way that voting districts are broken up, have a disproportionate amount of say in state affairs.

So in some ways it’s quite easy for, say, Governor Hogan to cater to places outside of Baltimore, get re-elected, and not have to deal with money spent in Baltimore. That’s why you can take money from a big transport project like the Red Line, even something that the federal government will pay for, and distribute it to highways.

Politik: Speaking of the Red Line, is the proposed bus rehaul in any way a good substitute?

PG: No. A friend of mine posted something on Facebook that really resonated with me, and it was “What great city is known for its bus system?” Having buses that are going to be ferrying the vast majority of Baltimore’s carless population to work, people who live in West and East Baltimore, not a lot of whom have cars: those are the people who are dependent on buses and are also people with the least amount of political power. A lot of this project is about creating new signage and rebranding—it just seems like a band aid. Rapid transit is shown to improve people’s access to jobs and improve their mobility.

Even getting out of the politics of equity, transit makes things more accessible. It also makes the city a more attractive place to live. In terms of Baltimore’s declining population, putting in a bus system rather than a rapid-transit system is not going to help the economy grow in the same ways. Buses generally contribute to reinforcing patterns of segregation while at the same time not even playing into the logic of development that its proponents are claiming is going to bear out.

Politik: Gentrification seems to be driving a lot of the new development projects popping up around Baltimore.

How can we make gentrification a more inclusive process, and learn from other cities that have done so?

PG: One of the biggest causes of displacement is property values going up a lot and landlords basically thinking they can squeeze more rent out of new tenants willing and able to pay a lot more. Also older home owners can’t necessarily pay the new property taxes that come when property values go up. I feel like there are some ways to potentially make that more equitable, which is to set more regulations or control oversight about the way property values shoot up or the ways that people are able to flip property. Or more incentives to create mixed-income communities and affordable communities rather than an unregulated mess where there are all sorts of opportunities for landlords, companies, you name it to capitalize on poor people and then turn that property around to wealthier people.

In places like Berlin there is city-wide rent control. It’s basically a cap on the amount that rent can go up at any one time. One of the big critiques of rent control is that it takes things off the market, makes things more expensive because you’re controlling some housing stock, but that’s not happening in Berlin. I know that rent control as one suggestion as it’s been applied in American cases has been

very controversial. What we have seen in the U.S case, and I think what we can look to abroad, is there is a way in which regulation, in some form, can help create equity. It’s very difficult when white supremacy and racism affects governance itself. Looking at policing, for instance, as a norm of governance: police don’t necessarily get better just because you put regulations on there. There’s a much more systemic issue of racism affecting the very machinery of governance.

To disentangle that, I have no idea how.

In some ways, some of the worst effects of housing segregation today are based off things like predatory mortgages or pay-day loans, where people who can’t go to the bank have to pay huge fees to cash their checks. Those aren’t very regulated at all. Something like a federal mortgage, there are a lot of strictures on it and those have improved housing access, even it is has been incomplete. There is some evidence that yes, greater government oversight in some way will potentially help weed out some of the very upfront and explicit causes of housing segregation and displacement. But it’s not a catchall answer.I don’t think there’s been a good solution so far. I think that affordable housing in some abstract sense is the way to go, but I haven’t seen much in Baltimore that makes me optimistic about all of the ideas people are throwing out there.

Politik: How can we at Hopkins, both as an institution and as individuals, work to improve equity? More specifically, can you speak to the Live Near Your Work (LNYW) initiative?

PG: I think this is one of the fundamental tensions with Johns Hopkins trying to make a difference, which is on [the] one hand Hopkins as an institution, including the medical center, is actually quite complicit in a lot of the problems we see, and on the other hand it’s full of individual people, scholars, researchers, groups who seriously want to do something about housing equity. So when I talk about this I want to separate the way I see Hopkins as an institution, displacing people in East Baltimore especially. LNYW is institutional gentrification, I mean it is all about getting the “right people” into neighborhoods that must be full of the wrong people, because something is amiss for them. Hopkins has for years sat on property, kept property vacant, kicked people out of their houses in order to expand.

I remember there was a survey they gave us a few years ago about Hopkins in East Baltimore, and in it they even took away the power of individual residents to name their own communities. The survey asked “What do you call this area?” East Baltimore, Middle East, the East Baltimore Development District were the options listed, and you chose one and they say “For the rest of this survey, we will refer to it as the East Baltimore Development District” That type of power—they’re in the business of erasing the history and the voices of residents in the name of expanding their institution. I think that Hopkins has behaved historically in a very appalling way, especially along the lines of racial justice.

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What can Hopkins do? Well, as one of the biggest employers in Baltimore, as well as one of the biggest property owners in Baltimore, to say they have to stop displacing people as a start…they have billions of dollars and lots of lawyers and they just want to get bigger.

That whole agenda of expansion, of gentrification, of “making neighborhoods better” by essentially changing who lives there, I don’t see how that can keep going and in any way also work to bring equity, I feel like Hopkins has to make a fundamental break with the very things that bring them money, which I don’t see any sign of.

Ron Daniels recently said that one day he hopes to be able to walk all the way from Homewood down to Station North. Nothing is stopping him from doing that right now except what, Black people? It does sound hyperbolic and sensational, but really, I have no hope for Johns Hopkins to do anything in the short and medium terms that makes a very big impact based on their real estate, views on race, and views on people in Baltimore.

Individually, they have tons of money they can give to groups. I know students have worked with Habitat for Humanity and students in the public health school and the medical school who are seriously out there trying to do great things. I hope that helps, but on the other hand I also think that people need to learn their history more. For instance, I know that public health students who are primarily white go out and in some ways feel like they can be experts in a neighborhood they’ve never been [in]. There’s a long history of Hopkins doing that where they don’t have to learn when they get their degree. Maybe slight changes in the curriculum, more dialogue between Hopkins students and community residents. Show more deference by not being leaders in projects, but [by] being partners and allowing people who actually know areas, who may have more of a stake in the area, to have more of a voice. But I’m not optimistic at all.

especially more women and minority businesses, to do work with them. That I think could be potentially very good. And I think that in terms of trying to address inequity in terms of employment, that does seem like a good step. But at the end of the day I think a lot of it comes down to real estate, the housing, the land, because that’s really your key to talking about power, political power and environmental power, and that’s what I feel I don’t think is changing anytime soon.

Politik: What can be done to improve undergraduate engagement with the city?

PG: I think there are a few simple things that can be done, that students can do, that you don’t even have to wait for Hopkins to do. Go and take a bus—not a Circulator or a Hopkins shuttle—go take the MTA 11 bus if you want to go downtown. Understand what the city is like when you do step outside the bubble. Talk to people; don’t be afraid of people. That’s number one.

“Learning more about how Hopkins has affected the built environment would be the first step for people within Hopkins trying to change what it does in the future.”

Earlier this year, I was asked to give tours of Fells Point during Freshman Orientation.

That was wonderful, and I think Hopkins did a great job of trying to get freshman out into Fells Point and Federal Hill in their very first week.

I mean it’s not exactly West and East Baltimore, but it’s not the bubble—it’s a start.

And the orientation leaders— upperclassmen—were all saying, “This is our first time in Fells Point too.” I was floored, completely floored.

I don’t know how typical or atypical that is, but it was every orientation leader, everyone I spoke to. So I feel like, to get out of the bubble, maybe sometimes it’s as simple as physically getting out of the bubble. Baltimore is very accessible in that it’s a fairly small city in terms of its size. If you get on a bike or get on a bus, you can go all the way across it in not a lot of time. Just go somewhere. Dialogue is going to start first with the willingness to get out of the bubble. Baltimore has 200 neighborhoods—go to more than five of them.

Make an effort to do it; bring a friend and use common Part of this is also just educational. Learning more about sense. You can go anywhere in daylight. Be intelligent, how Hopkins has affected the built environment would be nice to people. As a Hopkins student, you can go to be the first step for people within Hopkins trying to probably more places than you think you can. You can change what it does in the future. Hopefully at this point be safe and maybe learn some things and find things you everyone knows about Henrietta Lacks, at the very least. enjoy doing.

On a related note, as an institution, Hopkins recently announced that they would be hiring more local vendors,

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SLUM CLEARANCE IN SIGHT OF THE JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL / PHOTO COURTESY OF: CITIZENS’ PLANNING AND HOUSING ASSOCIATION (CPHA) COLLECTION

“Dialogue is going to start first with the willingness to get out of the bubble...As a Hopkins student, you can go to probably more places than you think you can. You can be safe and maybe learn some things and find things you enjoy doing.”

Politik: Do you recommend any books or other resources for learning more about Baltimore and its history?

PG: I’m glad this year’s freshmen had to read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book The Beautiful Struggle. Getting books from the voices of Baltimore residents is fantastic. D. Watkins is another person whose work I really recommend. For things to read or see in Baltimore, just in terms of learning its history, our school library has a great collection of books about Baltimore. There’s a book called Baltimore: New Views of Local History, and the chapters are short and it’s full of pictures. It clues people in to the city’s history, going street by street to understand what the lived experiences are outside of the Hopkins area.

Another thing would be to just make a day of it and go to a couple of museums, go check out the cultural institutions, watch a John Waters movie or go bike through a neighborhood. There’s no one correct way to learn about Baltimore. Baltimore can mean many things to many people. I think people can find their own ways of getting into it and learning about it. ■

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India’s Caste System: Past, Present, and Future

By Diva Parekh ’19, Contributing Writer

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he Indian caste system has existed for centuries, yet historians remain unable to identify its inception or completely understand how it came to be so integral to Indian society.

As someone from India, I’ve seen the caste system manifest around me — in my daily life, in politics, in the people I see living on the streets of Mumbai. It may seem like the caste system is currently in decline, and while that is true to some extent, remnants of this sociopolitical hierarchy still determine one’s education, employment, and overall course in life. However, in order to understand the impact of the caste system on contemporary Indian society, it is necessary to go approximately 5,000 years back in time and look at its origins.

From its earliest stages, the Indian subcontinent was characterized by migration. As India’s population grew increasingly diverse, it would have been more difficult for Hinduism to remain prominent if immigrants were not integrated into the culture and society that had developed around the religion. While the origins of castes are still debated, one argument is generally agreed upon—the castes were created in order to help preserve Hinduism and to integrate the many diverse sociocultural groups into one culture. The caste system allowed each group to have a crucial, distinct role, which bound them together and created a functioning society.

Although the caste system in its early stages was a means of inclusion, it gradually evolved into a simultaneous means for exclusion. The hierarchical nature of the caste system allowed certain immigrant

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FLOWER MARKET IN GUJARAT / PHOTO COURTESY OF: LOU WILSON

groups to be made inferior to others, thus including them in the Hindu tradition but placing them further away from any form of political power. Over time, the caste system materialized from the set of social and religious rules used to control the increasingly diverse population. The first caste was the Brahmins, who were possessors of knowledge. Second came the Kshatriyas, who ruled in collaboration with the Brahmins. Third were the Vaishyas, who controlled commerce but were denied a high socio-political status.

Fourth came the Shudras, who were responsible for agriculture and cattle rearing. Fifth and last came the Dalits, sometimes known as “untouchables,” who performed religiously unclean occupations and along with the Shudras were denied access to both temples and education.

Legally and technically speaking, the caste system has now been abolished completely. After British colonization of India, courts of law were no longer permitted to support caste divisions. Nevertheless, with the British “divide and rule” policy instituted in response to increasing local opposition, caste rifts deepened. The freedom struggle split based on caste differences. In part, this lack of unity prolonged the freedom struggle until 1947 because the lower classes were prevented from taking part in freedom movements pioneered by the more educated upper classes; however, during the later stages, Jyotirao Phule, B.R. Ambedkar, and Mahatma Gandhi led reforms to abolish discrimination against lower castes.

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Turn back to today, and I’m reading an article from The Indian Express entitled “I was a Dalit so I couldn’t be part of puja” describe how 20 Dalit students were locked in school for five hours and barred from offering prayers simply because they were Dalits. While the teachers were made to issue an apology in this case, Dalits still face structural discrimination in many aspects of Indian society. The same article benignly states that “Discrimination is common…but this time it is different.” It may be different today, but the situation, particularly in rural communities, has been stagnant for too long.

It is undeniable that there is an effort to improve conditions for the lower castes, but part of the problem is that most Indian leaders since independence have been Brahmin. Lower castes have long called for more representation in higher government positions, from where substantial change can be enacted. In 1991, Laloo Prasad Yadav, a member of a lower caste, became Chief Minister of the Indian state of Bihar. His policies promoted antagonism towards higher castes, leading to rural violence. On February 13, 1992, 200 armed untouchables surrounded Barra, a high caste village in Bihar, and killed all the village’s men. The massacre fueled political tension with higher-class individuals taking up arms against Dalits, which in turn led to Dalit self-defense forces responding with equal violence.

Similar rural conflicts were mirrored in West Indian states such as Rajasthan. Though violence was mostly restricted to rural areas, class rifts manifested socially and economically in urban areas as well.

Though the independence movement brought positive changes in the status of the lower castes, particularly for the Dalits, a deep divide in educational access persisted into the 1950s. For most born as Dalits, formal childhood education was non-existent, restricting individuals to menial jobs in the post-colonization society. To promote political reform, the Janata Party government under Prime Minister Morarji Desai established the Mandal Commission in 1979 to investigate the effect of lingering social caste divides on the Indian economy.

Studies found that the caste system significantly contributed to socioeconomic backwardness in India. As a result, an affirmative action policy was introduced in 1980, and the government began to reserve public sector jobs and university seats for lower caste members. Through this reservation system, the government used quotas to give “Other Backward Classes,” “Scheduled Classes,” and “Scheduled Tribes” exclusive access to certain opportunities in public education and employment. The reservation system, which had been around since the 1960s, predated the Mandal Commission, but the report in 1980 asserted the need to increase quotas from 27% to 50%.

The reservation system, along with the economic liberalization of India in 1991, caused an upsurge in lower caste employment.

However, due to historical differences in access to education, the lower castes tended to struggle to find skilled employment.

Eventually, the lower caste viewed disproportionate employment rates as socioeconomic subjugation to the higher castes and tried to rebel against it, which in turn contributed to a spike in corruption.

Lower caste employees accepted bribes that would reduce their employers’ revenues; in response, employers would reduce salaries.

This phenomenon contributes to India’s status as one of the most corrupt democracies in the world, with corruption visible in high-

profile positions as well as on the streets. Not only do police officers hired through the reservation system accept bribes, but they insist on them and prefer them to official fines, making it impossible for an individual to do anything but succumb to the increasing corruption.

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“Lower castes have long called for more representation in higher government positions, from where substantial change can be enacted.”

Another major argument against the reservation system comes from educational institutions. Similar to the debate surrounding affirmative action in the U.S., groups in India believe that the quotas disregard merit and unfairly deprive more qualified students of opportunities.

A few months ago in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, a young girl lost out on a college scholarship because of the quota system. Her older brother, Hardik Patel, grew increasingly resentful after discovering from other people who shared his last name that Patels were considered too well off to qualify for reservation. They were losing out on jobs and education opportunities, yet politicians defended the policy in order to gain votes from the uneducated lower classes. Hardik Patel led a protest attended by 500,000 Gujaratis demanding inclusion in the quota system, knowing that the inclusion of the wealthy former Vaishyas would essentially disintegrate it. The protest resulted in violence and claims of police brutality, culminating in the deaths of one officer and seven civilians by gunfire. Responsible for much of Gujarati wealth and economic development, the Patels argued that discrimination against them would negatively impact the economy they had helped to build.

Those living in the overcrowded neighborhoods of Gujarat felt threatened by this movement as well. Coming from an almost exclusively low-caste town, these people’s jobs and educations were owed to the quota system. Nevertheless, the increasing conflict caused social tensions to intensify as well. Lawyers from lower castes were becoming increasingly unemployed as a result of being passed over by potential clients who favored higher caste members.

Nevertheless, change is happening in major Indian metropolitan cities. In Mumbai, non-profit organizations are working to increase access to education before children reach university age in order to develop the merit needed to avoid a reliance on the quota system.

Also changing for the better, albeit slowly, is the influence of the caste system in determining the jobs, wealth, education and other opportunities available to an average person living in a city. Call center jobs are only one example of the increasing number of urban jobs requiring English knowledge. Public schools and charities place a larger emphasis on children learning English at an early age.

Upper class members, particularly teenagers and young adults, are taking it upon themselves to teach English to public school students and personal acquaintances they may have within lower caste neighborhoods. Hopefully, this change can eventually transition to the rest of India. Meanwhile, the influence of the ancient caste system still lingers today. ■

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BSU PRESIDENT MATTHEW BROWN PRESENTS DEMANDS TO UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT RON DANIELS. / PHOTO COURTESY OF: JHU BSU

It Happens Here, Too: Racism and Response at Homewood

By Corey Payne ’17, Staff Writer

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from several undergraduate organizations, academic departments, and graduate student unions to present their demands to University President Ron Daniels at a promotional video filming on November 13, 2015. When Daniels arrived, BSU President Matthew Brown read the list of demands to Daniels. The demands are largely similar to those proposed at other institutions, while some are more specific to Hopkins: the increase in faculty of color, a transparent five-year plan for the recruitment and retention of Black undergraduate students, granting the Center for Africana Studies status as an academic department, and a clear plan on how the administration plans to handle racist hate speech and threats made on social media from students and faculty. It was agreed that At Johns Hopkins, the Black Student Union (BSU) led the administration would present their response to these the organizing effort of Black students and their allies demands at an open forum on November 30th. he Black Liberation Collective lists seventy-three colleges and universities where Black students and their allies have made formal, collective demands to their administrations during this academic year. The top five demands compiled from all of these schools are: (1) Increase the diversity of professors, (2) Require diversity training, (3) Fund cultural centers, (4) Require classes for students, and (5) Increase diversity of students. While demands, tactics, and results vary from one university to another, there is one common thread tying all of these struggles together: the desire to create a less toxic environment for Black students at predominantly white institutions.

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“As BSU Vice President Tiffany Onyejiaka pointed out during the forum, it should not be the job of Black students to make Hopkins a welcoming environment.”

In the two weeks between the protest and the forum, the BSU executive board worked every day to compile a presentation and hone their arguments. As BSU Vice President Tiffany Onyejiaka pointed out during the forum, it should not be the job of Black students to make Hopkins a welcoming environment. While they should have been relaxing over Thanksgiving break and preparing for the end of the semester, student leaders instead had to prepare for a forum to address the administration’s inadequate responses over the past half-century.

Student organizers were in touch with previous BSU leaders, including founding members of the organization, and discovered that students have presented their demands at forums like these on four previous occasions, only to be met with an inadequate administrative response each time. Many of those involved still held onto hope that this time would be different—that the rise of rhetoric criticizing college administrations across the country would convince University leaders to respond adequately.

So far, these hopes seem to be misplaced.

On the day of the forum, the administration released its new Faculty Diversity Initiative (FDI) in what many skeptics viewed as an attempt to soothe student frustration before the evening event. By the time the forum started, there were over five hundred students, faculty, and staff piled into the basement lecture room in Hodson Hall—with dozens more in an overflow room upstairs.

The forum began with BSU President Matthew Brown presenting the demands and providing justification for them, as well as comparing them to programs in place at peer institutions. President Daniels then presented a

non-response, in which he spoke at length of the FDI and rushed through responses to the other demands presented. The panel then had a question and answer session, giving students and alumni the opportunity to ask both the administration and the BSU leadership questions about their plans.

The administration refused to give the Center for Africana Studies departmental status, and deflected questions about Black student life and retention at Hopkins. They acknowledged that they “are prepared” to go to law enforcement over hate speech online, but offered no indication as to when or how this would happen—or if there were repercussions for past acts of hatred. Daniels refused to set a required cultural competency course and, even after hinting at the possibility of a distribution requirement, pushed it off to be discussed at a later date.

Even when talking about their pivot-point, the FDI, administrators were unwilling to offer concrete timelines or accountability checkpoints—during one exchange, Brown asked for specific dates and Daniels replied with “Well, the time is now.” Members of the administration often responded in a patronizing manner, offering lines such as “these things don’t happen overnight” or “the process really takes a long time,” as if the student leaders had not already exhibited their knowledge of these processes or were unable to accept a long-term solution.

There are two overarching problems with the administration’s response: first, they presented themselves as accepting almost all of the demands of the protesters while only budging slightly on one issue; and second, the manner in which they responded to the BSU and the audience members. Daniels stated at the end of the forum that we cannot play a zero-sum game—that if the administration refused to agree to all the demands, then there was no true progress. Many of the student organizers agree with his underlying sentiment, but do not agree with his assertion that progress was made or that productive dialogue was had. The leaders are reasonable individuals who expect compromise, but the administration’s inability to recognize their failures makes compromise impossible. More important than the administration’s refusal to accept all of the demands was the way that they evaded discussion of racism and white supremacy and tough questions asked by the audience members. With resounding clarity, two words can describe their performance at the forum: evasive and inadequate.

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THE JOHNS HOPKINS BLACK STUDENTS AND ALLIES ON THE KEYSER QUAD / PHOTO COURTESY OF: JHU BSU

In answering every question, leaders pivoted to a discussion on the FDI without fully addressing the concerns of the questioner. In response to one question about the Center for Africana Studies, instead of addressing the student’s concerns, Daniels said that we shouldn’t get bogged down with “inside baseball” and “semantics” and instead focus on the good things—like the FDI.

The FDI may be a progressive step, but the administration’s one positive response should not invalidate the rest of the concerns that Black students have about life at Hopkins. If the administration is unable or unwilling to address the demands of student protesters, they should at least have the decency to admit that to the student body.

University administrators have dedicated their careers to working in the service of students, and for them to continually disrespect student voices is unacceptable. If the administration evades the concerns of students, then to whom are they held accountable? ■

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“Brown asked for specific dates and Daniels replied with ‘Well, the time is now.’”

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THE JOHNS HOPKINS BLACK STUDENTS AND ALLIES ON THE KEYSER QUAD / PHOTO COURTESY OF: JHU BSU

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