MIT Chancellor Phillip Clay last night delivered a lecture and participated in a loosely structured, conversational question-and-answer session about the importance of forming personal relationships through racial dialogue, in a lecture in an almost-full Terrace Room in Paige Hall.
Clay, a black man from the North Carolina countryside who is descended from slaves, said that relationships could be built through the sharing of stories about ancestral histories and personal origin. His talk, organized by the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate, was the inaugural event of a semesterly lecture and conversation series about race, according to TCU President Duncan Pickard, a junior.
"I do not think that we have exhausted the issues that we have to deal with," Clay said regarding the idea that the United States has entered a post-racial period.
Various limiting factors restrict people in America from discussing race and other aspects of identity, such as religion. Insecurity, a feeling that there is nothing to gain from racial dialogue, embarrassment and a reluctance to present oneself as predictable all prevent people from talking about their own racial stories.
A dearth of interest is also a problem, he said. "We fear that the people with whom we have the conversation have no history or no context," he said.
Another reason preventing racial discourse is "the fear of being accused of something," Clay said, whether a racist or a walking stereotype. Clay explained that his father had wanted him to avoid the stereotype of a "country bumpkin" when Clay moved to a city, Clay said.
Clay added that talking about one's unique experiences and history would make it difficult to fit in within society. "Why would you talk about how you're different?" he asked.
Still, despite these motivations, the chancellor said that individuals must share their stories and histories, because doing so would build relationships and subsequently improve relations between people of different races and identities.
"You want to have a relationship that is based on an organic appreciation of each other's history," Clay told the audience. He then drew distinctions between what he called "transactions" and "relationships."
A transaction, he said, is something that is designed to improve race relations or is cited as an indicator of improved relations, such as specific laws or the election of the United States' first president with African heritage.
Interpersonal relationships, rather than transactions, he said, are key. He stressed the need to get to know people in college who come from diverse backgrounds.
"If you build relationships because people get to know each other, then when they participate in organizations — sports teams, Senate — their relationships reflect that," he told the Daily.
"His distinction between relationships and transactions was really, really key," Pickard told the Daily after the program. "I'll take that away and use it all the time."
Clay joked that he, too, was susceptible to pressures on discussion about race. If someone walked up to him and asked him what it was like to be black, he "would probably walk a little faster," he said to audience laughter.
Much time was spent after his talk for conversations between audience members and Clay and amongst audience members, during which topics like slurs in rap lyrics, a community's response to hate speech and the difficulties from an individual having multiple and different socioeconomic and heritable identities.
Pickard, who introduced Clay, told the Daily after the presentation that he thought the format worked well. One of the Senate's goals in promoting the event was to raise the intellectual level of discourse on campus about race, he said.
"We talk about a lot of things on this campus at a very high intellectual level, but on this campus, in this country, we talk about it at a lower level that doesn't use our critical abilities," he said. "I think a lot of people are frustrated with the discourse about race on campus."
Pickard said the Senate would attempt to attract a wider slice of the student body at future lectures in the semesterly series. The Senate has already allocated funds for next semester's talk, he said.
"The ultimate purpose" of the series, he said, "is to build relationships between students and a speaker, or between different students."
The Office of the President and the Office of Institutional Diversity sponsored the event along with the Senate.
