To the Editor:
I would like to explain why I had mixed feelings on David Boldt '63's editorial in Monday's issue of The D ("A Conversion on Campus Community, Oct. 3), in which he expressed his interpretation and his reactions to SA President Danielle Moore '95's convocation speech.
On the one hand, I agree that we should work together to promote a sense of community, and that people from all different backgrounds should come together and learn from one another.
However, I was disturbed by the fact that Boldt didn't seem to make much of a distinction between minorities and non-minorities, opting instead to view the problem of segregation and inter-group conflict as a general community problem.
The problem with this perspective is that it smoothes over the fact that minorities suffer much more from the problem than non-minorities do, that minorities contribute to the problem much less than non-minorities do and that minorities nevertheless work much harder towards solving the problem than non-minorities do.
Thus, a speech on campus community applies much more to non-minorities than to minorities. As a matter of fact, if minorities don't do more towards promoting a sense of community than they have already been doing, that would be understandable. It is simply natural to react to aggravated injustice with anger or withdrawal.
Of course, there are many occasions on which minorities reach out to non-minorities at the risk of being treated maliciously or inequitably. These minorities are not sellouts -- they should be commended for their extraordinary strength and their high morals. However, they should not be held up as models which other minorities should be reasonably expected to follow. Doing so would create a double standard, and make it much harder for minorities than for non-minorities to be "normal."
