cover image Race Relations on Campus: Stanford Students Speak

Race Relations on Campus: Stanford Students Speak

John C. Bunzel. Stanford Alumni Association, $12.95 (172pp) ISBN 978-0-916318-49-9

Bunzel, a political scientist at the Stanford-based Hoover Institution, has interviewed many Stanford students for this brief, readable analysis of increased racial tension and turmoil on campus. Many white students believe equal educational opportunity has been achieved; many blacks see institutionalized racism in the content of the curriculum and in the small numbers of black faculty, which, Bunzel claims, might reflect legitimate constraints or intellectual choices. He profiles three students--a black activist who feels old stereotypes about blacks are still prevalent; a black moderate who condemns racism by people of all colors; and a white frustrated in his attempt to resolve a notorious incident in which a poster portraying Beethoven was given black features as a prank by drunken white students. Calling for a subtler understanding of racial tension and questioning academic buzzwords like ``diversity,'' this book serves as a corrective to some current rhetoric. But in invoking Martin Luther King's ideal of integration, Bunzel ( Political Passages ) ignores other factors in the racial equation: King's call for economic justice and the resurgent influence of Black Power activist Malcolm X. (May)