Many ask the senior questions along the line of, “So, did you like Macalester?” I consider my current relationship (since we haven’t broken up yet) with Macalester one of love, given its contradictory existence. I am lucky to be at Macalester because it indeed offers me a space to learn more about people from all corners of the world. I don’t claim to now know it all, but I have gained from many opportunities to interact with different cultures. In my first weeks here, I found myself welcomed into the Macalester community with more enthusiasm than I would’ve believed. In this regard, the Macalester brochures actually understate this reality. Being a citizen of Ghana, I was constantly reminded of my contribution to the genuine manifestation of internationalism at Macalester and that always somehow feels good to know. I love to represent. In my equally international (in an African sense, though) high school, I had never been accorded this level of acknowledgment by virtue of just being Ghanaian. I say this, though, with a tinge of sarcasm.

Having lived for about 12 years in Ghana, I was definitely impacted by the sudden “white” environment I found myself within at Macalester. I won’t call it culture shock at all, but I was in a new environment that required me to reshape the way I had envisioned Macalester. I immediately realized that Macalester was a bit different, a school with smart, mostly white, liberal individuals. I pleasantly realized that many here understood Africa to be a place more diverse than its demarcations could ever describe, more complex than the media would have us understand. Hey, a few white American students here have lived in parts of Africa.

Sitting on a table with an Asian American, a Jamaican and an American from Georgia, somehow the topic for lunch was multiculturalism (in true Macalester fashion). It had begun with some talk on “deconstructions of development” and post-development thinking. For many at Macalester, these issues transcend discussion into activism directed toward doing something about the complexities we face in a global society. Hence we see the peace camps, the Macalester International Roundtable, the anti-Bush demonstrations, etc. However, such discourse within Macalester’s predominantly white-privileged environment necessitates a more cautious approach. This is not to say that we shouldn’t or that we can never positively discuss these issues at Macalester. However, as you will gather from my experience, we face a problem in which we often impose our “elitist” and progressive ideals upon certain groups and situations we seemingly empathize with. At Macalester, these groups, if identifiable, lack visibility; thus, professors and students get away with making assertive statements that do not seek the permission of those on whose behalf they speak, resulting in definitions of the “other” in terms that this “other” might well disagree with. This feels like neo-colonialism to some of us.

It seems mundane for me to elaborate on the fact that Macalester is typically a middle-middle/upper-middle class white campus. However, the acknowledgment of this fact though is essential to enable an open discussion regarding our attitude to certain discourse. I would like to quickly divert to a phenomenon the Black international student should pay particular attention to. Under the umbrella of Macalester’s internationalism, this student (like any other international student) occupies a certain precarious position that authorizes him/her to, one can argue, socially “fit in” more comfortably than the African-American (ask the IC and Admissions why). This is exemplified upon entering Café Mac, where one is bound to be quickly acquainted with this Black international students’ community. This community offers Macalester the chance to interact with it, even at a distance, during its own culturally vibrant interaction. It therefore happens to be that Macalester does have quite a number of multi-racial relationships between white and black students, still coined by many in the United States (like my friends from Brooklyn pointed out) as an “abnormality” only predominant in the Twin Cities. However, in such Macalester idealism, each world is immersed in the other, understood and allowed to interact as freely as it can and arguably should.

But the begging question is: how do Macalester students reconcile this valuable multi-racial dynamic when they’re out of the bubble? It was told to me that a white Macalester student expressed discomfort about a passing African-American male in Uptown. In this instance the reaction from within a car goes like, “Close your window, that’s a black guy walking by!” While this might seem a far-fetched example, we need not just look at white students to realize the disappointing implication. A black Jamaican friend disclosed to me the spontaneous slight apprehension he felt amid fellow blacks in an African-American neighborhood he visited outside Macalester! If this is not alarming to some, then reading on from here would seem a futile exercise (I urge you to read on though). These instances typify how far we are from the “internationalism” and “multiculturalism” symbols at Macalester we quote very often in our mission statement. As proven, their meaning becomes questionable once we enter the real world.

At this year’s International Roundtable, I couldn’t help but notice, as an African, how the essence of Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s work was reluctantly appreciated by the non-African, white respondents. Ngugi’s contention was that Africans can and should be provided agency in defining their own economic, political and social space, made more likely if we resuscitate the translation and usage of our own intact African languages. This initiative, as he aptly concluded, would shift the primary language of communication (English) to accept other available African languages, creating a “balance of centers” as a more inclusive environment to the consciousness of the African in development issues. As an African who attended the typical school where local languages were outlawed outside the once-a-week class, I was left quite displeased to hear one Macalester professor proclaim in his response that neo-colonialism was over, his inkling to the effect that such structures were self-induced defensive mechanisms in an age of globalization and the resulting dominance of the English language. The other, a student, seemed to refer to Ngugi’s framework as founded on linguistic determinism, asserting a desirable outcome highly unlikely given the present economic constraints. To assume a certain preconceived outcome in Ngugi’s contention seemed dangerously erring by the respondents, more so because such responses were built out of the hegemonic capitalist state that some Africans (Ngugi) argue alienates to impoverish the African. It might have been more comfortable hearing their scholarly conceptualizations on the position Africans should take in the age of globalization, rather than the half-hearted, belittling intellectual approach of empathizing. Not to totally discredit the speakers, but I would have liked to know that such researched response was done less insultingly. Many of the underlying thought-processes of these respondents were exemplary of colonial thinking, as they promoted a school of thought comfortable with overlooking the alienation of the African in the emergence of modern African economies. My contention is that the white liberal (often the case at Macalester) has no right to make subtle judgments undermining the process of decolonizing the mind (the main issue at hand here) because the white liberal has no idea by way of experience what a colonized mind is about. He/She can only academically imagine it.

My reservations stem from the concern that we at Macalester wield power via the impressive knowledge we access and therefore run the risk of undermining the reality and urgency of certain people’s situations. Within Macalester, discussions on multi-culturalism are poorly patronized partly as a result of this self-righteous attitude. Given that these discussions entail opening some wounds again and again for many white people, it is no surprising the poor patronage of any multi-cultural issues. If the white liberal has any real commitment to the ideals we mention in Macalester’s brochures (enough to set up camp for Iraqi victims suffering in the War on Iraq), then white liberals can sacrifice their “white guilt” in order to truly see eye to eye with the essence of these issues.

In this regard, we at Macalester need to engage in more discussion about internationalism and domestic multiculturalism among ourselves first. Our roundtables might be then less insulting to sit through, and we might rethink our attitudes outside Macalester. Our elitist approach to these ideas often stifles an earnest pursuit to make them the paramount pilgrims of Macalester. I believe our foremost duty is to constantly seek and respect the groups and individuals for who our liberal ideas seem to directly concern and affect. Catch me for the translation of this article’s title. Peace.