A stately brick building with white shutters and a copper cupola perched on the roof, Cutter-Shabazz blends in with Dartmouth's typical Georgian architecture, save for the unusual script above the front door: "El Hajj Malik El Shabazz," the Muslim name adopted by Malcolm X.
Home to the Shabazz Center for Intellectual Inquiry, part of the College's affinity housing program, Cutter houses the office for the Afro-American Society and a space for campus events. The multifaith affinity housing program also occupies the third floor.
But some students may know it simply as "the African-American dorm" or "the place where black students live." Having lived in the nearby Choates freshman year, I thought I knew the place fairly well I had been to a few dinners there and often came home at night to the sound of reggae or rap pulsing from its basement. Until this Fall, however, I had never been upstairs to the dorm rooms. When I visited a friend there and we entered another resident's room, she told me I was the first white person who had been there this year.
Race relations on campus are rarely discussed, even considered taboo. Most people seem to settle into relatively if not absolutely homogenous social groups freshman year and tend not to branch out. So it comes as no surprise if conversations about race don't ever come up, because the only thing notable about the diversity of your friend group is the lack thereof.
Minority groups tend to receive the blame for this phenomenon, with critics often citing "self segregation" as an absolute negative.
"I started to get criticism from peers outside the black community that I was being self-segregating and not taking advantage of everything that Dartmouth has to offer," Joan Leslie '12 said.
The Cutter-Shabazz community itself has faced such "false representations" of self segregation, Leslie said.
"Unlike other minority houses, everyone has card access to Cutter-Shabazz," she said. "This space is accessible, literally and physically."
Leslie also argued that self segregation is a natural, even universal, process.
"I thought about how in FoCo you'll see football players sitting together, just like black students do," she said. "It's natural to be with people you feel most comfortable with, but minority students will get more attention for it because we visibly stick out."
The divide between black students and "mainstream" Dartmouth can be wide, as Jessica Drazenovich '12 experienced in conversations with other students on her LSA in Barcelona.
"It sometimes seemed like we went to two different schools," Drazenovich said. "There are many people who have fun in the social scene here, but for others the mindset is Get in and get out with your degree.'"
Similarly, misunderstandings about the black community stem from widespread "cultural ignorance," Lancel Joseph '13 sai.
"People aren't cognizant of, and don't acknowledge, cultural differences," Joseph said. "They tend to ignore the fact that everyone is different in the black community we have black, African, African-American, Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Brazilian [students] from the black diaspora or Africa itself, but we get lumped together in one group because we look alike."
Jasmine Kumalah '12 explored the same phenomenon among black women at Dartmouth in a documentary she created over her sophomore Summer.
"What I heard a lot was that black women feel visible and invisible at the same time," Kumalah said. "You feel like you stick out, but at the same time aren't appreciated or that mainstream culture doesn't integrate you into anything."
Many students interviewed by The Mirror identified Greek life as the "mainstream culture" that is often distanced from "black culture" on campus, but some affiliated black students felt otherwise.
"In the Dartmouth Greek system there are many false perceptions about how blacks are accepted and valued," Zakia Lghzaoui '13 said. "I feel very welcomed for who I am in my house."
Lghzaoui, a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, encouraged students to challenge preconceived notions of separateness.
"More people should see how the Greek experience fits them and not allow their reluctance to be based on these untried perceptions," she said.
Given the testimonies of these students, there is a clear advantage to rejecting facile and broad characterizations of "communities," be they black or otherwise. The simplicity of social categorization is seductive, but we must fight it and recognize that all of our experiences are equally plural. Given that common ground, why not stop by Cutter sometime and see what's good? Your card always works.
