U Mich Considers Racism Class

In response to a series of racial incidents on campus, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor is considering requiring all undergraduates to take courses in race relations.

Faculty will meet next month to discuss various proposals aimed at improving awareness of race relations and problems on campus.

"The problem of race and racism on campus produces confusion and divisiveness among students," said Philosophy professor Peter A. Railton, who proposed creating a special course that would address racial issues.

Railton said his course would promote critical discussion of the issues through studying the history of racism, literature about minority experiences and competing hypotheses about origins of racial inequality and institutionalized racism.

He said the course will also touch on issues of sexual and religious discrimination.

Michigan's Dean of Long Range Planning and Curriculum Jack W. Meiland said that the faculty has not yet decided whether to implement such a course, and added that existing courses might be able to achieve Railton's goals. "Nobody is proposing that one single course be required," Meiland said.

The University of Michigan has a history of racial incidents. Members of minority groups say they think a required course can correct the insensitivity that leads to incidents like Black students receiving insulting notes under their doors.

"People need to understand what the problems are," said Francis H. Matthews, Jr., a senior on the executive board of the school's Black Student Union.

"There seems to be not an apathy, but an ignorance of problems that have existed in the United States for some time," he said.

Matthews said the ideal course would try "to get at the idea of instutionalized racism--there aren't many Blacks that go to college, there aren't many Blacks on the faculty. It's an awareness type of thing."

But some students don't think the university can solve race problems by mandating a certain program of study.

"I don't think a for-credit class over the course of a semester will change people's minds," said junior Mark C. Molesky, publisher of the conservative Michigan Review. "Most students don't like mandatory classes in general."

"The people who are pushing [the requirement] tend to be more liberal," he said.

Senior Tamar R. Charney, program director of the school's student radio station, said most students seem unconcerned about the proposal. "I've never heard any objection to it," she said.

"If it's handled well and taught properly, it could be a valuable course," she said.

In the most widely reported incident last spring, a non-student disk jockey was banned from the student-run radio station after he played "Run, Nigger, Run" during a series on old Bluegrass and Country & Western songs, Charney said.

Charney, who was not involved with the station at the time, said she viewed the incident as careless rather than racist. She said the disk jockey should have told listeners that no insult was intended by the song. She added that "the song does have its artistic merit."

"It's like reading Huckleberry Finn or any book that documented racism in the past," she said.