Fly on a Wall Blog

Mosaic Center hosts racism workshop

By: Matthew Dziak

The Mosaic Cross Cultural Center is on campus to provide a welcoming environment that celebrates diversity and offers support to underrepresented groups.

On Thursday, Mosaic held a workshop called Whiteness + Racism to educate interested students on racism and white privilege.

San Jose State celebrates a diverse student body, with Asian and Hispanic students comprising of nearly half of the student body.

“We focus on advocacy for social justice and doing work to have equitable access,” said Mosaic Assistant Direct Caz Salamanca.

The interactive workshop centered on white privilege and racism provided video clips from Buzz Feed and allowed students to have 1-on-1 and group discussions.

“Some people take it personally and it is not about feelings it is about how lives are affected,” said junior English creative writing major and workshop presenter Fatema Elbakoury. “In this instance privilege explores that there are some things one will never have to experience because of who they are but anyone can help facilitate change.”

According to the presentation by Elbakoury, being colorblind ignores identity on a systematic level.

“Everybody involved learns something about their own identity and uses that in a way to spread that message,” Elbakoury said.

“Being a resident advisor that is white on the black scholar’s community, it a dangerous privilege being white and not explore and understand it,” said junior English major Ben Saubolle-Camacho.

The workshop built off the critical race theory’s examination of society and race.

“We allow for students to educate their peers and for us to educate the campus on issues that are not talked about a lot,” Salamanca said.  “A lot of times it is hard to talk about race because we aren’t given the tools to how to interact with other kinds of people.”

Elbakourny showed the group of ten students a video produced by Buzz Feed centered around the explanation of what privilege is.

“There are a lot of daily miscommunications that go on, especially about this topic,” Salamanca said. “We do this to provide a set of tools to shift our lens to be able to be more inclusive.”

Peggy McIntosh, developed  a list of 50 privileged those who identify as white have over those of color. The list is known as unpacking the invisible knapsack.

In privilege No.46, McIntosh discusses the color of bandages aiming toward those of fair skin as “flesh colored”, making the bandage stand out to those of color.  

“For me it is that the conversation about racism is facilitated but in a way that nobody should take it personally,” Elbakourny said.

The Ally presentation lists several ways to combating this issue.

Ally highlighted the importance of: understanding your privilege, listening, do your homework, speak up but not over and realize that mistake will be made but apologize when they happen.  

“It is important to understand that anybody can be an Ally,” Elbakourny said.

Salamanca added that diverse groups in our community do not have a voice.

“The end result is to provide cultural empowerment for the SJSU community, Salamanca said. ”There are a lot of systematic barriers in place.”

The Mosaic Center will be conducting its monthly Word! Open Mic series at the Student Union on October 1^st.

“Open Mic night is an open form of creative expression in a space that is a safe environment whether that is through poetry, music or even monologues,” Salamanca said.