Students gather for 'racist' debate

About a dozen people gathered at Read's Community leadership and Development Center area Thursday evening to discuss a sensitive subject -- racism.\nThe discussion was loosely based on a play that spoofs racism called "Are You a Little Bit Racist?," using a song and various topics that came from the play.\nSophomore Candace Buggs, the discussion's coordinator and community educator at Read, said the discussion's purpose began with deciding what racism was.\n"We're trying to say that it's OK to laugh at stuff like Dave Chappelle," Buggs said. "But we want people to realize that it's funny because it's so absurd, not because it's true."\nThe group began the discussion by writing down stereotypical phrases on colored slips of paper. The phrases were offensive things each person had said to them before. Some of the phrases were clearly racist or stereotypical, while others said things that weren't necessarily meant to be racist, but ultimately could be taken that way.\nOne read, "Hey, I have a gay friend here on campus. Do you know him?" The slip was written by junior Dan Yarzebinski, a co-coordinator of the event. He said it implies that all gay people at IU know each other.\nThis slip helped to shift the discussion from racism to prejudice, ultimately leading the group to distinguish between the two.\n"I think you have to have power to be racist," said Tahir Akbar-Williams, a diversity education specialist at Read. "Racism is more of an action, but prejudice is more of a thought."\nYarzebinski elaborated on her comment.\n"I think it really means that everyone has those (prejudice) thoughts," Yarzebinski said. "It doesn't make it OK to act on them."\nBuggs then put on a song from the play's soundtrack, called "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist."\nThe song, which is performed by the group Avenue Q, uses puppets as performers to spoof racism. Yarzebinski said the play and the song itself was meant to be loosely based on the children's television show "Sesame Street."\nBuggs then picked several lines out of the song to spark more group discussion, one in particular read, "No, not big judgments, not who to hire, thinking maybe Mexican bus boys should speak English."\n"There are two groups of people who laugh -- people who laugh because they know it's untrue," Yarzebinski said in response to the line in the song. "And then there are people who laugh because they think it's true."\nAkbar-Williams, an Arizona native, added further to his point saying that her family in Arizona acts nothing like a stereotypical African-American family.\n"Races' stereotypes are more cultural type things," Akbar-Williams said. "Black people from the Bronx act as a part of their culture."\nBuggs then ended the discussion saying, "We need to keep in mind that it's not everybody. Even though we do make judgments in the back of our minds, we can't generalize about an entire group."\n-- Contact Staff Writer Andy Romey at aromey@indiana.edu.