NCore May 2009 San Diego, CA

I know, out of date order. Am working to catch up. The NCore Meeting is a national conference dedicated to diversity issues in higher education. This was the first higher education conference I've attended with actual rock stars. Cornell West was the keynote speaker, and his talk was "The Arrested Development of Democracy" and much was made of the election of Barack Obama in this message. I also had the chance to hear Rev. C.T.Vivian, who worked along with Dr. King (really, he called him Martin) to end segregation along with countless other efforts since that time.

I made a special effort to attend programs on white privilege, which in my very naive world, was a new concept to me. I attended several sessions on how to teach or include white privilege in a university curriculum and how to teach it at a university full of white kids. Teaching White Privilege (Robert Amico, St. Bonaventure) and Beyond White Privilege (David Owen, University of Louisville). There were other sessions I attended that focused on Historically White Institutions or PWIs as I learned to call them (predominantly white institutions).

My favorite session was led by Dr. Francie Kendall "My People, My People the Role of White Women in Keeping the Supremacy of Whiteness in Place." I have from this session a reading list that will keep me busy during the long winter months, and I'm happy to share. You all will forgive me if I'm full of righteous indignation for awhile.

I've never been to a professional conference like this. The audience truly had to hold itself back from participating. People argued, spoke their minds, and were provocative and challenging to the speakers in just about every session I attended. My favorite moment, in Francie Kendall's session there were many women of color in the audience and they had a revealing conversation about what do you do when the white girls start to cry because they didn't realize they'd been oppressive. I mean really, you oppress and I have to comfort you too? And I assure you, I was one wide-eyed white girl trying to mind her manners.

My bring back from this is I want the L&ET organization to become familiar with the concept of white privilege and issues of privilege at a pwi-esque place. I hope that our Diversity Council can provide some programming on this topic.