Little-known history - Diversity is important part of Black Student Union
By Marion Lang, Correspondent
Wednesday, February 15, 2006 1:07 PM CST
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Pictured, from left, are Jenn Heins-Daum, BSU advisor Jasmine Patzner, BSU president Bakari Williams and son, Nazir, and Shawn Zimmerman. Submitted Photo/For Dunn County News
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Editor's note: This is the second in a two-part series about UW-Stout's Black Student Union. Go to www.dunnconnect.com to read part one.
While the numbers of students of color have increased, many black students, much like Raymond Bradshaw in 1916, still have the experience of being the first black person many UW-Stout students have ever met.
Mary Riordan served as advisor to the university's Black Student Union (BSU) for nine years from 1993-2002 and director of Multicultural Student Services, for five years until her retirement from Stout in 2004.
“A lot of students at Stout are from small towns and suburbs and don't have much experience or knowledge about diversity and people of color,” she explained, emphatic about the importance of BSU and its presence on campus both for students of color and for others.
“African American history and culture is little known by whites and by blacks,” Riordan said, noting that trips to African American-oriented Penumbra Theater in St. Paul are among the ways BSU members have expanded their participation in black culture.
While goals and needs for BSU have remained constant, its face has changed over the years. Originally counting only black students as members, the group now includes members who are from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds.
“Students from urban backgrounds coming to Stout are hungry for diverse experience,” said Riordan, explaining one reason for the growing diversity in BSU.
“The focus in BSU is not so powerful on black identity as it is on each other,” said Jenn Heins-Dahm, current BSU and Multicultural Students Services advisor, mentioning that while there are 68 African American students at Stout, not all are active in BSU, yet the organization's list-serve has 272 names including staff and students from across racial and ethnic groups as well as international students. “It's a holistic group, a place for people to network socially and academically and find support. This group feels that involving the community at Stout and the community at large is important. They live here, shop here; they are part of the community.”
The broadening of BSU's membership is important to Jasmine Patzner who asserted, “I don't think we should be separate. We need to learn both sides.”
Patzner, whose mother is white and whose father was black, is from Taylor where she grew up on a farm with her mother and stepfather (who is white), attended an all-white high school and had only white friends. Arriving at Stout, she had no familiarity with black culture, and found herself for the first time drawn into a circle of friends with African American backgrounds.
Invited by a BSU member, she joined the group to learn about black culture and for the opportunity to get to know black people
“I‘m glad I got involved,” she said.
Shawn Zimmerman, like Patzner, has a mother who is white and a father who is black. But that's where the similarities end.
Zimmerman, very blonde and fair-skinned, openly shares that her parents made the decision to have a child through artificial insemination. In order to spare the child the racial difficulties he had encountered, her father sought a white sperm donor. And so Zimmerman looks white, was raised in a mixed-race family, has a black identity and craves black culture while here at Stout.
“It is hard to be ‘white' when you are ‘mixed.' You might say I have a racial identity crisis,” she observed, adding, “BSU is important, a safe place, a comfortable place, where I belong.”
(A graduate student, Zimmerman serves as a student advisor to BSU.)
Originally from Minneapolis, Bakari Williams whose name in Swahili means “noble promise,” moved at the age of about seven to northern Florida where his parents planned to live with family. In this positive environment, they hoped to turn their lives around from involvement in drugs.
The move thrust Williams into life in a segregated community with “a black side and a white side, a separate high school, separate sports.” His parents' issues with drugs continued.
“I am good at proving people wrong,” he stated, adding that he was determined to “overcome treatment as an outcast and as a person who would never be capable of doing anything positive.” He graduated with honors from high school.
Now on his own, Williams returned to his Minneapolis roots, but found no stability or support because of continuing family involvement with drugs. That summer, while playing basketball in Minneapolis, he was recruited to play basketball at Stout. He described his first experiences at Stout as “a very harsh struggle, in a predominantly white college, a culture shock and a plain-out struggle.”
Now participating in track at Stout, Williams also has coached soccer and basketball at Menomonie High School. In the process of working with students from Pakistan, Germany and China, he has become, for these students, the first African American they have had an opportunity to know and to learn from.
Williams says that although he is not that active in BSU, “Most of my social friends are in BSU. I see BSU as a way for minorities to get together to do things together, a family-based way to do things.”
Now in his last year at the university, he said, “I try to do as much as I can to make it better for people who come here in the future.”
(Some information in this article was taken from an interview by Jasmine Patzner with BSU founder Eddie Davis.) |
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