Stepping without looking; an ethnographic vignette.
I’m concerned about my own, engrained, violent tendencies. Let me explain.
It’s Thursday morning, and I’m in the PAHB. That’s what long-term residents call the Performing Arts and Humanities Building. I see my friends, Jolee Cohen and Leah White, walking towards me. “Oh, I can try and get some material for my Media Experiment,” I think. Following up on my last experiment, I decide to interview them about our professors. “Have you ever noticed that there is not a single person of color in the UMBC Theatre Department faculty?” I ask. Leah pauses, thinking for a moment. “Yeah, I’ve noticed. I’ve thought about that a lot actually.” I’m surprised, given her initial reaction. I pose the same question to Jolee. “Um, yeah, of course. Like day one I noticed,” Jolee replies. “And for like such a diverse campus, like a university that prides itself on being diverse — Like, 60% non-white students or something? — That’s, like, kinda not great, especially compared to other departments.”
This is an odd moment for me. As a person, I’m pretty passionate about diversity and social issues, especially in the arts. But I hadn’t actually thought about this until I began work on my project. As such, I assumed that not everyone else had noticed either. At least maybe not the people who do see themselves reflected in the department faculty. In that position, how often do you actually analyze something like that?
Before too long, I see my friend Shubhangi coming to join us. I decide to interview her a bit, but to try and get some different material. I ask her about her play, The Mail-Order Bride by Charles Mee.
“What do you know about Charles Mee?” I ask. “Well, he takes plays, um he takes works from Moliere and other, um, well known playwrights and kind of mixes them all together to create his own thing.” We keep talking about Charles Mee for a bit. I’m surprised she doesn’t bring up his ethnic background, or his focus on social issues. I’ve read and seen several of his plays. He’s very focused on social issues, especially with American Diversity and East-West relations. Hell, Mail-Order Bride is about Orientalist stereotypes, where a guy buys a woman he assumes is foreign who ends up being from Los Angeles. I get home and I decide to look up Charles Mee.
He’s a white American. Like Evanston, Illinois-born-and-raised, Middle-American.
Why did I assume he wasn’t?
I’m trying to research and write an ethnography on the symbolic violence experienced by minority students in the UMBC Theatre Department, and I’m perpetrating violence myself. My false assumptions about my fellow students, about a playwright whom I’ve never met; that is violence. To assume without thinking what others think, who they are; that is violence.
Without thinking. That is why it’s so dangerous; because it is so easy to do. To step without looking. Natural and easy. And so, now the thought must be ever present, ever vigilant. It’s much better to look and catch yourself than to step on nothing and fall.
