One of the first Opinions pieces I ever read in The Oberlin Review was Avery Russell’s “Privilege Must Be Acknowledged Within Gender, Sexuality, Feminist Studies Classes,” The Oberlin Review, Nov. 10, 2023. In the piece, Russell expressed frustration at her white classmates’ silence whenever she tried to introduce the intersection of race and sexuality into the conversation. Though I know that one voice cannot speak for the experience of every student of color at Oberlin, this article brought to my attention my behavior and the behavior of my white peers on campus. This silence in the face of accountability is widespread, but I don’t think it’s a malicious silence. Most white Oberlin students do not want to be racist. This goes beyond not wanting to be called racist; many white Oberlin students do not want to make our peers of color feel discriminated against or alienated. We try to be conscious of the ways that the voices of our peers of color may have been talked over, disregarded, and ignored, and we don’t want to accidentally contribute to that isolating experience. However, staying silent when our peers try to reach us in conversation is isolating in its own right. White students at Oberlin need to stop letting our fear keep us from actively engaging with students of color on the topics of racism, discrimination, and white privilege. 

To understand this phenomenon, I sat down with Professor and Chair of Psychology and Environmental Studies and Psychology Cynthia Frantz. She spoke with me about core social motives, which I believe could be part of the reason for the white silence. Core social motive theory asserts that, in addition to our biological needs, we evolved social needs that drive our behavior, allowing us to organize ourselves in large groups. There are five core social motives, the most important being the need to belong, followed by the needs to understand, to have control, to feel good about oneself, and to be able to trust the people around you. I think that, in some ways, having difficult conversations about privilege and structural oppression can feel threatening to these core social motives. It makes psychological sense that many white students would avoid those topics. However, using silence to preserve our sense of belonging and our self-image comes at a cost to our peers of color.

An experiment conducted in 2011 titled, “You deplete me: The cognitive costs of colorblindness on ethnic minorities” found that emphasizing colorblind ideology to white participants — that is, ignoring or downplaying the importance of race in a racially diverse environment — predicted increased cognitive depletion in participants of color. The study suggests that when white students fail to face cultural and racial differences in discussions about privilege and discrimination, it puts a cognitive and social burden on their peers of color that takes a quantifiable toll. Additionally, “The Minority Spotlight Effect,” published in 2014, corroborates the idea that members of minority groups do not want to feel like the center of attention in discussions about race and privilege. To refrain from participating in these conversations with our peers of color isn’t listening — it’s othering. Our silence serves as a way of pigeonholing historically marginalized students into a one-dimensional identity consisting only of that minority demographic. In order to learn, we have to participate in real conversations that acknowledge the discrimination our peers of color face without forgetting that they are whole people made up of more than just their experiences of prejudice. The silence itself is a privilege, just as the ability to ignore the effects of race on our everyday dynamics is a privilege. In order to grow, white students need to stop relying on that privilege.

I find that I can better conceptualize the way my peers of color might feel when I think about my conversations with men about gender. I want them to see both that I am a woman and that I am a person. This means being able to talk to my male friends about the experience of womanhood and know that they are listening, that they understand as much as they can, and that they will put in the effort to continue meeting me at the bridge between our experiences. When my male friends do something that makes me uncomfortable, that sharply reminds me that I am a woman and they are men, I want to be able to tell them about it without being punished for it with silence. Not being able to communicate my discomfort doubles the burden of that discomfort on me. Do I say something about it and risk them shutting me out? Or do I keep it to myself and feel alienated? It isn’t that I believe this experience is the same as the experience a peer of color might have, but it helps me to understand what it is about the silence that feels bad — it feels bad to me, too.

There isn’t a way for any one of us to erase the effects of privilege and discrimination on our own. Academia has been built upon and structured around the exclusion of people of color, and Oberlin is no exception to this standard. Learning to communicate with each other does not make up for the lack of institutional safeguards for students of color in higher education. To cultivate space for voices to thrive, we need to rally for institutional change as well as interpersonal. Still, actively discussing race and privilege helps all students learn how to be better activists through deconstruction of the structures of discrimination and privilege that we participate in. If white students refuse to engage in discussion about our privilege, if we use our guilt as a shield that allows us to keep from looking at our privilege, we become worse than complicit in the systems we believe we want to dismantle; we become active contributors. Don’t let conversations about race alienate your peers of color. Don’t let your fears distance you from the people around you. These topics are big and uncomfortable to look at, but the only way out is through.