In college, Dean started race conversation

[Freddie Stubbs]

Dean's roommates inspired his views
By LISA WANGSNESS
Monitor staff


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Racial preference, needless to say, was not listed on the roommate compatibility form the Yale University housing office mailed to incoming freshmen in 1967. But 18-year-old Howard Dean asked to live with a black student anyway. "I didn't know if I had any choice or not," he said in a recent interview. "I just put it down to see what they said."

Yale gave Dean what he wished for: He was placed with two African-American men who had grown up in the segregated South, and who were about to become vocal civil rights activists on campus. Dean soon found himself talking about race all the time. He found it initially awkward, occasionally painful and often exhilarating.

As a candidate for president, Dean has said he wants to begin a serious national dialogue about race in America. His opponents have expressed doubt that the former governor of Vermont is the person to lead that discussion.

They would note that Dean, the son of a Republican Wall Street broker, spent a gilded boyhood between his family's Park Avenue apartment and East Hampton, a seaside enclave on eastern Long Island. At St. George's School, an Episcopal boarding school for boys in Rhode Island, he never had a black classmate.

more: http://www.cmonitor.com/stories/news/recent2004/dean011304%5F2004.shtml

[brainshrub]

1. Now I understand what Al Shrpton meant when he made comment about

Dean haveing Black friends in college.

[DemBones DemBones]

2. Being a couple of years older than Howard Dean,

I remember what it was like to be young, liberal, and white in the Sixties, so I can understand his wanting to get to know blacks his own age. Requesting black roommates seems a peculiar way to go about it, though; it suggests he wanted to have blacks available for study. Considering that he'd spent a year after high school in England and developed a friendship with an African black, I wonder why he didn't just go to Yale in 1967 and get to know people, including blacks, in a natural manner in classes and dorms and just hanging out around campus.

If he wanted to accelerate the process of meeting black students, he could have participated in civil rights groups. Say what you will about Joe Lieberman, when he was at Yale, he made the effort and took the risk of marching for civil rights in the South (1963) and participated in the March on Washington (1964.) I have to respect Joe for that.


This article revealed that Dean's roomies didn't know he'd asked to room with blacks until quite recently:


"Dean told none of his roommates about his petition to the housing officials. Roman and Dawson found out only after Dean told reporters about it during his campaign for president."

"It's probably good I didn't know," Roman said. "Like any other big Afro-, dashiki-wearing black student, I would have questioned his motives. Instead we were able to develop a very natural relationship over time."


I think Dean meant well but I wonder if he ever thought about how it would feel to be selected as a roommate on the basis of race.

[dorktv]

3. Well Bill Gates asked for the same so this is of course more proof that

Dean is evil. <smile>

[Zynx]

4. I didn't know that.

I think it was something that more upscale whites like Gates and Dean did as a learning experience because generally their families kept them away from that sort of thing.

[dorktv]

5. You know, I think that could have been it in Dean's case but in Gates'

I think it was just because he wanted someone who would not make fun of him for his rather odd behaviour. Rich white guys can be pretty nasty and I doubt that someone who got to Harvard based on hard work and actual brains would be so likely to tease someone who never bathes.

[DemBones DemBones]

6. I don't think black PEOPLE should be "a learning experience"

for "upscale whites like Gates and Dean." It seems like exploitation to me.

[bitchkitty]

7. Yea, better to stay ignorant.

Why reach out, when years down the road you'll get slammed for it?

[DemBones DemBones]

9. No, but you can reach out and get to know people

who are different from you without having your college put you all in the same dorm room/ suite. Asking the college to do it is like "ordering up" black friends. The article says Howard was the most popular guy in the dorm, and I'm pretty sure he was never too shy, so why not just meet people as people?

[Cheswick2.0]

12. I was in college 10 years after Dean

I can tell you that a college campus was often at that time very segregated. Getting to know people in a "natural" way didn't happen very often. You read the article, these young men were on very different paths. The fact that they were thrown in together was beneficial for all of them.
It sounds to me like Dean jumped right in on purpose because he knew he had led a sheltered life. But by all means pick it apart.

[AP]

10. Although generally I commend Dean, there is something of

the social anthropologist of this whole thing. It's like he's Doctor Livingstone.

Also the way it's phrased in this article is interesting. To get to know black people he wrote on his application that Yale should give him one as a roommate as sort of a lark. He didn't expect them to do what he asked them to do, but they did. (I didn't get to tell my college who I wanted as a freshman year roommate.)

There's another way to achieve what Dean wanted: do the hard work of making a friend. 0

[Cheswick2.0]

13. bullshit

You are making ridiculous accusations about the mans character. Basically you are just making shit up. Shame on you

[Maddy McCall]

8. Many people confronted race for the first time in college in the 60s

This isn't big news. People were forced to confront race problems in the 1960s and, thankfully, lots of people learned from their interactions and made real and positive differences in the world.

Sadly, though, some learned nothing from their college experiences.

[Cheswick2.0]

14. sadly

some people are just upset that their candidate is not leading in the polls.

[Maddy McCall]

15. Of course you mean Dean...who is losing to Kerry in Iowa as we speak

At least that is according to the Zogby polls Dean supporters cite oh so frequently.

[Wonk]

11. Related article: Yale roommate vouches for Dean on race - AJC

Don Roman taught Howard Dean some of his earliest lessons on race.

Now Roman, who lives in Stone Mountain, is on the campaign trail, telling people his old friend took those lessons to heart and is committed to fairness and racial understanding.

Roman, 55, who is black, roomed with Dean at Yale in the tumultuous days of 1967 and 1968. They talk at least once a week now that Dean is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, Roman said.

(snip)

Roman learned only recently of Dean's request for a black roommate. Knowing that during their freshman year "would have been the kiss of death," said Roman, not wanting to be "some white liberal's" social experiment.

more...
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0104/15roman.html

[RetroLounge]

16. Careful with those facts

you may confuse some posters here.