This week was a treat for me. My crew (or at least twelve of them) from the Wesley Foundation at the University of Michigan (which, incidentally, is the oldest campus ministry in the Americas no matter what UIUC Wesley says) has been here for a seminar. I have very much enjoyed catching up on stories and hugs, and also learning right along-side my group!
The topic was race relations and affirmative action. This topic came up for the group because in Michigan, voters passed a referendum which said it is illegal to use race as a criteria for college admission, among other things. Since then, there has been a decline in enrollment notably among African American students and other racial minorities at University of Michigan. This has created a lot of racial tension on campus.
In addition to informational and interactive seminar sessions, we also had the chance to listen to historian Harold Bell at Ben’s Chili Bowl and share in Ash Wednesday service with the Wesley Foundation at Howard University. All of these experiences gave us ample opportunity to dialog about race and affirmative action.
I think I could write quite a bit about this topic, but I just want to lift up a reflection from my own experience. One distinct memory I have from college was trying to get my first internship. I talked to recruiter after recruiter at career fair, just hoping to get an interview. I didn’t expect that I would have to beg my way into an interview with my nearly 4.0 GPA, but that’s what I did. I really wanted to get in with one of the Big Three auto makers, but I ended up with an internship with a relatively small engineering firm that most people (including myself) had never heard of. Thankfully, I ended up with something, and it turned out to be a great experience! After career fair, I talked with one of my female engineering friends about how things went. She had her choice of offers from Ford, GM, and many others. I was pretty steamed about this, thinking she probably got her pick of awesome internships because of affirmative action.
I think that frustration is real for people, and I don’t think it is wrong. In fact, I think it’s good to acknowledge it, name it, and talk about it. I’ve learned that you can’t really help how you feel, only how you react. It is good to reflect (whether alone, with others, or in prayer) on feelings and understand them. Well, at least for a thinker like myself, this is helpful. Feelings don’t do much for me unless I can understand why I feel a certain way.
As I think back on this, I can make a couple conclusions. First, I can’t say for certain if affirmative action is why she had so many offers. She could have been more involved on campus than me (very likely), less socially awkward than me (very likely), and better at selling herself than me (very likely). Second, diversity is valuable, and I have a better understanding of that now. Long story short, increased diversity allows us collectively to problem solve from increasingly diverse angles and perspectives. Why is this important? Attacking problems from one direction may work, but there may be better approaches which are not obvious to people of one particular culture. If I’m running around the world moving everyone’s dining table into their bedrooms, I could miss out on a better solution. I could also miss the opportunity to collaborate to find an even better solution than either group could reach in isolation.
I thought Rev. Mulenga, who spoke to my group today and is the father of one member of the group, had a great spiritual insight. Humans are an image or reflection of the Invisible God. One human or one people group cannot capture that image fully, so God gave us diversity to help express that better. One is not more valuable than another, but all help to reflect God’s glory in different ways.
How are we reflecting that glory? Let me leave you with this “living-in-the-tension” kind of question as I also ponder it.
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