This guest column was written by Robert Dalton ’14

Of the many issues contained within this recent debate on campus regarding race and diversity, one that I’ve heard mentioned more than a few times is isolation. That is to say, some people considered diverse, be it racially, sexually or socioeconomically, feel isolated on a campus overwhelmingly comprised of white, heterosexual, upper-middle class students. While I cannot address the issue of isolation due to sexual orientation or due to socioeconomic status, I can speak to the issue of isolation due to race. But before I do so, I want to clarify something.

The administration and the Board of Trustees and Overseers met recently to discuss how issues regarding race and diversity are being addressed on this campus. I spoke briefly with one of the overseers, an openly gay man with years of experience with regard to isolation due to sexual orientation, about the importance of using “I” when discussing emotionally charged issues such as this. Not using “I” or “me” as a qualifier may imply accusation. Accusation makes an audience tense, defensive and more resistant to hearing an opinion with an open mind.

I want to make it clear that this is my experience and that I am not accusing anyone of having the wrong opinion or attitude on this subject. I only want to tell you my story, and how I see isolation due to race on campus as someone who is, and is not, white.

I’m half Filipino, but I only look it. My mom was born in Manila, but she never taught me Filipino culture. When I was growing up, we rarely spent time with her family, and as a result I’m much closer to my relatives on my dad’s side: the Daltons, an affluent, white, southern family. I’ve spent almost every Christmas and Thanksgiving at my Dad’s parents’ house in Virginia, and I feel at home with them. But as comfortable as I am there, I don’t see myself as a southerner because of my Filipino heritage. Distanced from my mom’s relatives and separated by my appearance from my Dad’s, I can’t truly identify myself as being Filipino or white. It’s an issue that I’ve struggled with for a long time.

This inability to identify with my two sides has left me with a sense of not belonging. It distances me from either side, making me unable to have an identity as either and leaving me stranded somewhere in the middle. It isolates me in a way that is unique and in a way that is not part of the discussion at hand. But it has helped me to see isolation due to race from a unique perspective.

Growing up as an anomaly in a homogeneous student body has made me very perceptive to the fact that I am different. There are more than 42,500 college and high school students in my conservative hometown of State College, Pa., and more than 90 percent of them are white. I was always aware of how I looked different, and I knew that my friends and classmates were too. I can’t count the number of times that someone has curiously looked me up and down and asked, “What kind of Asian are you?” It wasn’t a question that I found offensive, but it stung a bit because it meant that they had noticed that I looked different than they did.

However, I found that even though people knew that I looked different, they didn’t treat me any differently because of my looks. That’s not to say that I didn’t encounter some bigots: I have had guys try and knock me down with their trucks while I’ve been out running, and I’ve watched them laugh as I was diving out of the way. But for the most part, the people that I met on school and on the Penn State campus treated me no differently than they treated their friends.

I can’t speak to isolation from the viewpoint of someone from a different culture. But my experience as someone who does not look white and who grew up in a college town of predominantly white students has been that people both here and back home tend to treat me the same as they treat everyone else. I haven’t found the physical trait of race to be something that has alienated me from this community. The way that you look is an intimate part of what defines you, and I believe that at Whitman, nobody judges you by it.

Some of you may have stories and opinions that differ greatly from my own, and some of you may have similar ones. Again, this is only the story of what I have experienced. My opinion on the subject of isolation based on race and diversity on campus is this: I believe the isolation that some people of color feel here predominantly stems from cultural isolation, from the differences between their backgrounds and the backgrounds of the stereotypical white, upper-middle class students. I think that this is an important distinction to make.

I feel as if some white students are afraid to engage in discussion about race on campus because they feel that the issues at hand ARE, in part, about differences in physical appearance. They’re afraid that if they do discuss race, and they say something politically incorrect, then they will be judged to be a racist, to be someone who discriminates based on physical appearance. If you are such a student, you shouldn’t let that fear stop you from talking about race or diversity on campus of any kind. Because in my opinion, even if you do say something politically incorrect to me, you probably aren’t trying to hit me with a truck.