Better Left (Un)Said

If you’re a person of color, you’re probably familiar with the classic “diversity shot” (and you’ve very likely been in one). It’s the photo on a brochure or a website homepage that features people of various races and ethnicities, smiling and embracing one another. Universities, companies, and other organizations love featuring these photos on their publications. They intend to communicate that hey, we are diverse! If you want to interact with different types of people, come here! If you are white, you will get to inhabit the same space as exotic people, like a human zoo! If you are not white, you will be happy here, just like these smiling people!

No harm, no foul, right?

Well, such images present the reality an institution would like you to believe exists. Here, we see ethnic and racial minorities being used as pawns, tools in the organization’s marketing campaign. The diversity and inclusion is merely a superficial image.

Freshman fall marked my first encounter with the study of economics. I barely understood anything from the textbook I occasionally read and the problem sets I passed only by the grace of God. The authority with which my classmates spoke convinced me that the population of idiot island was one: me. I wondered: Had everyone taken microeconomics before? Or was their command of entirely new academic territory a signal of my accidental admission here?

In pursuit of these answers, I decided to listen more closely. Beneath throwing around key terms, arguing with professors as a fresh-out-the-womb 18-year-old, and inflection that suggested they knew supply and demand curves like old friends, I heard nothing. From a few skims of an overpriced N. Greg Mankiw textbook, I could discern that half the time, what they were saying didn’t even make sense. Therein lies the first lesson from the elite liberal arts education: It is possible to speak without saying anything at all. At best, doing so is an interesting party trick; at worst, it’s a crucial and unfortunate tenet of what I deem “Harvard debate culture.”

Harvard debate culture is what happens when you gather a bunch of former prize-winning high school debaters, kids no one really liked growing up, and other lovable rascals who believe that disagreeing with everything for argument’s sake is a captivating personality trait. When you constantly tell them they’re smart(er than everyone else), their self-worth becomes dependent on that precarious belief. Surrounded by other imps who grew accustomed to the self-satisfaction that comes from perpetually holding the title of “smartest one in the room,” their insecurities and external motivations demand they find ways to distinguish themselves once again.

I’m a graduate of an all-girls’ prep school. Our rigorous academic high school curriculum intended to prepare us, women, to lead the future of society. Among coursework that included calculus and principles of physics, I remember life advice most — those heart-to-heart moments when teachers shared what we really needed to know.

As in any good Catholic institution, instructors prepped for us for the heterosexual (and, in our case, upper-middle-class) life cycle. Accordingly, a statistics teacher informed us that numerically, STEM fields offered the best prospects for finding a husband. A drama teacher warned us that a woman should never marry a man prettier than her. Our school’s strict principal allowed us to write in our yearbooks that our dream futures involved marrying a lacrosse playing all boys’ prep school graduate and raising two children in the suburbs.

You see, our high school preparation was not just for a bachelor’s degree, but for the “Mrs.” For the uninitiated, attending college in pursuit of the “Mrs.” means the real purpose of four years of academic coursework is to find a mate — particularly one with a high earning potential. The “Mrs.” doesn’t require you tie the knot during undergrad (a time for sociality that marriage may impede); you just have to lock down a future spouse before anyone else in the post-grad “real world” gets a chance.

How would you describe Harvard students? Those aspiring to join our ranks might call us smart, the best and the brightest. We might like to think of ourselves as ambitious and hardworking. After three years on this campus, I Iament the reality unbeknownst to or ignored by both parties: Harvard students are exceptionally rude.

Before enrolling here, I knew just as much about Harvard as the average American who’s seen Legally Blonde three times: diddly squat. For example, I thought wealthy students would keep their dorms tidy. Getting paid to clean up their mold-laden bedrooms and piss-stained bathrooms that had seen more rat feces than Febreze taught me otherwise. Similarly, I assumed training through boarding schools, country clubs, and cotillions would produce well-mannered undergrads.

This past August, I returned to campus after eight months away. As I toted moving boxes to my dorm, doors were slammed in my face and couldn’t-be-bothered-to-help bystanders greeted me upon my arrival. While I scanned my surroundings in a search for basic human decency, I could practically hear my peers saying, “Those boxes look heavy. Lol, have fun!”

Quickly into my Harvard career, I learned that Harvard students do things differently. Here, handshakes are not reserved for business deals; they’re the customary greeting upon meeting another 18-year-old college kid. Across campus, you’re just as likely to find kids passing blunts as business cards. After meeting someone, you can expect a request to connect on LinkedIn in place of a follow-up text. Think you’d never get asked about your SAT or Advanced Placement scores after completing the college application process? That’s a cute aspiration.

At worst, I find these modes of communication mildly irritating, mostly off-putting. At best, I appreciate the explicit signal warning me that I should never be friends with their proponents. As a senior, I’ve become accustomed to the student body-wide obsession with social climbing and status as reflected in everyday conduct. But one common question has unwaveringly irked me: What do your parents do?

Growing up, the question only ever surfaced in school documents rather than in peer-to-peer discussion. Back home in Philadelphia, we make conversation about the weather, perennially late public transportation, and the Eagles’ Super Bowl prospects. My schooling placed me alongside kids with parents in both blue-collar and white-collar professions, but nobody cared about how other people’s parents made their money.

In 2018, you’ll find a host of articles about all the things millennials have seem to killed: the diamond industry, home ownership, JonBenét Ramsey (well, maybe not the last one). Far more interesting than multi-billion dollar industries made obsolete are what we’ve given life to: avocado toast, fidget spinners, and “woke” culture!

What does it mean to be woke? Knowledge of social justice issues is so Civil Rights Era and (therefore) out of date. In the age of constant social media connection and instant gratification, we need excitement! Sustained community-based activism and political work just takes too long.  Tweeting about how I just bought a PRIDE t-shirt and “ended homophobia” inside Target only takes a few seconds. That, my friends, is woke culture in 2018: a performance in two parts — posting about social issues online and expectantly waiting for the affirmation to pour in.

To activate your woke starter kit, RSVP to a Facebook event. But you don’t actually have to go. It’s not even the thought that counts. What’s important is that other people see you had the seeming intention to go. However, if other people don’t like your RSVP to the Women’s March or environmental justice protest, you may as well cancel your intention to go anyway.

Some people are scared of snakes. Others quake when faced with heights and twenty-story buildings. But my fear falls along the socioeconomic ladder: I’m scared of rich people.

I won’t cross a the street when I see a trust fund kid. I might avoid eye contact, but I’m not classist. In fact, I quite like rich people. They’re the reason I get to go here (thank you, financial aid donors!). It’s just that the sight and aura of the monied class sets my mind into overthinking mode, self-consciousness into overdrive, and robs my tongue of the ability to communicate.

I’m not scared of being defrauded of millions of dollars in a Ponzi scheme. White-collar crime doesn’t rob me of my sleep. I just worry that rich people smell my working class roots, hear my lack of boarding school training, see my discount-store garb, and think I’m inferior.