Coloring History

Living in a place like Harvard’s campus makes the role of history in our everyday lives painfully self-evident. The stoic blue and green eyes that look down from every wall silently judge us all as we move through the halls they owned but did not build. We shuffle through the Yard hoping that congregating in large numbers will not attract too much attention. Few will openly say we do not belong; it falls upon us to discern these feels and reassure ourselves that we, too, are Harvard.

These are the first thoughts that ran through my head after reading the op-ed that President Drew Faust published last week in The Crimson. President Faust not only announced the unveiling of a plaque acknowledging the black bodies that Harvard faculty dehumanized by claiming to own them. More importantly, President Faust did not mince words, concretely admitting that “Harvard was directly complicit in America’s system of racial bondage from the College’s earliest days in the 17th century until slavery in Massachusetts ended in 1783, and Harvard continued to be indirectly involved through extensive financial and other ties to the slave South up to the time of emancipation.”

In the following days, I have heard many opinions and reactions to Faust’s op-ed from my black friends. Some argue that attaching the plaque to the building ties the spirits of those black bodies to the place of their plunder and perpetual torture. Others applaud the administration for finally openly addressing the school’s historical ties to slavery. Amidst all these takes, I can’t help but think we’re all missing the point.

This should be easy. Putting up a plaque to commemorate a dark moment in our collective history only requires acceptance of the truth. Acknowledging Harvard’s role in the larger system of slavery, both by being administratively complicit and by producing prominent slavery advocates, should be a given. For an institution that claims to train the future leaders of the world, educate the next generation of academics, and strive to always seek truth, accepting indisputable historical facts should not warrant celebration.

Harvard’s troubled history with race relations and systems of racism goes far beyond slavery. People of color did not simply become equal at Harvard after members of the faculty were forced to give up their slaves. Once the powers that be stamped out codified racism, a more insidious, implicit form of racism rose from the darkest depths of the human soul to take its place.

We see this when someone calls HUPD because too many black people are in the Quad Yard for a barbecue. We suffer its wrath when we seek out faculty members that look like us only to find a shrinking crop of overworked POC professors. We experience it through the struggles we simply have to tell on the mainstage so the world can know we are here.

What if, next year, I live in a house with no black tutors or people of color? Who am I supposed to turn to if I have a race related issue that does not break any rules to merit administrative action? When someone in section argues that black kids only get into Harvard through affirmative action, whom can I talk to? I will not turn to a white tutor with this pain. I invite intellectual conversations about any racial issue under the sun, but I will only share my pain with someone that knows how it feels to get followed through Toys “R” Us by an untrusting employee, even though you’re only there because your dad said you could get a new toy.

I appreciate that President Faust has taken this step towards legitimately addressing Harvard’s relationship with race, but I am reluctant to thank her. At this juncture, thanks seem inappropriate. While President Faust has done more than many of her predecessors, that’s not saying much: Her predecessors claimed other human beings as property on their tax forms. An aesthetic remodeling of a building with symbolic significance does not create institutional change. At the end of the day, Harvard has not changed. Its history remains riddled with unnamed and forsaken black bodies, untold stories of the exploitation and marginalization of scores of POCs, and a continued struggle to claim ownership of an institution we were meant to have no part in.

When we achieve substantive change, I will rush to the front of the reception line to thank anyone and everyone involved. When Harvard opens a multicultural center for all the groups on campus that feel excluded from the infrastructure of the campus, I will write every donor and administrator a thank you letter. When the administration hires professors that look like the student body to fill the cavernous curriculum holes from Latinx Studies and black queer theory, I will name my first-born child after the President at the time. But something tells me I will likely be naming my first grandchild after a Harvard President instead.

Jaime A. Cobham ’17, a Crimson editorial writer, is a government concentrator in Mather House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.