UW News

October 7, 1996

UW to host premiere of documentary about racial issues on campus UW News Release: 07 October, 1996

A new, provocative documentary that deals with race relations on contemporary college campuses will be shown at the University of Washington on Thursday, Oct. 10.

The free screening of “Skin Deep” will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Kane Hall. It is sponsored by the UW Curriculum Transformation Project, the UW Office of Minority Affairs and the Levi Strauss Foundation.

Frances Reid, an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker, as well as a student starring in the film, will both be in attendance after the screening and the following day to answer questions with UW faculty members on site. The second day discussion scheduled at the Husky Union Building (HUB) is called, “Talking About Race.”

The 53 minute film glimpses the interactions of 23 racially diverse college students from Texas A&M, Cal Berkeley and University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Throughout the film, these students express their viewpoints on and experiences with race and race relations.

Reid said she choose the UW as the site for the screening because she felt the UW had done a lot of work with diversity. Many UW professors have made and continue to make efforts to integrate issues of diversity, especially racial diversity, in their curriculum.

Kim Barrett, research assistant professor in psychology, tries to help students “gain an understanding of racism” in her classes.For example, in her Psychology 250 class, Racism and Minority Groups, she explains how discrimination can affect people of color’s mental health and interactions. Barrett finds she always has a “group of students who have never been exposed to the issue of racism” until they attended her class. Moreover, she finds a group of students who “fight with others proclaiming that they are not racists.”

Similarly, Gerald Baldasty, an associate professor in the School of Communications, brings images from film, media and newspapers which portray various people to his class. He said he is excited to teach a course that deals with “how the media portray our lives.” In general, he’s noticed that his students are interested in the subject of race since he feels that they do not get much exposure to race and diversity issues on campus.

“They (students) are concerned with the stereotypes (which) permeate the media such as those of women, people of color as well as gays and lesbians. There are fairly negative images of people…on prime time, or they are invisible. Where can you find Native Americans, Asians and Latinos (on TV)?” asked Baldasty.

As for the UW students themselves, they have differing perceptions of race and race relations on campus. The only common thread among the students’ views was the belief that to improve racial harmony on campus, people must learn how to interact with each other either through taking classes or by force.

As a fifth year senior in history and news editor of the UW paper, The Daily, Jason Ocampo said in an almost tongue-in-cheek manner that the only way to improve race relations at the UW was to “lock everyone up on campus.” Ocampo said that students must deal with race and differences head-on by “going out and doing things different with different people” in an otherwise large and seemingly impersonal campus. Admittedly, he finds his own solution difficult to initialize at the UW because “the UW is like a community college (in that) 80 percent of its students go to class and go home.”

Emily Hutchinson, a junior double majoring in chemistry and sociology, expected a greater racial mix on campus before she arrived at the UW. “I feel the campus is predominately white,” she said

“Race is an emotionally charged word…emotions fly hard and fast. It’s too dangerous of a subject,” warns Hutchinson. She feels that students need to overcome their fears of guilt, and talk honestly to each other because “if no one says anything, nothing will get resolved.”

Conversely, Kate Adams, a senior in sociology, was surprised at how many students of color attend the UW. Adams noted that in one of sociology classes, there was a “stunning array of ethnicity” to which she perceived the class composition to be “30 percent white and 70 percent other races. I feel more like a minority as a Caucasian,” she said.

Like others students, Adams noticed a lot of people from the same or similar ethnicity hang out together in cliques. “I feel uncomfortable in that place in the HUB where the black community sits because they isolate themselves there,” she said. Furthermore, Adams said she wanted to learn how to approach people of different backgrounds since she did not learn how at the UW.

Just 60 miles south of Seattle, at Olympia’s Evergreen State College, student Lambert Lee attended the screening of “Skin Deep” and its follow-up discussion with the filmmaker, faculty and students. From that event forward, Evergreen has established ongoing brown bag lunch dialogues about race on campus.

Individuals who have participated in our race talks have gained a lot of insight into the issues revolving around such a delicate topic. We have gotten a lot of mileage out of the video and will continue to use it as a vehicle to talk about race and diversity on our campus,” Lee said.

“The key message of the film,” said Luis Ramirez, director of the UW Ethnic Cultural Center, “is that unless we see ourselves in the other, then we deny the other ourselves.” In other words, we as people deny our own humanity if we cannot find some likeness in other people, he said.

The screening of “Skin Deep” is free, and a videotape of the movie is also available for loan at the UW Ethnic Cultural Center.

Note: Grace Shim is a Diversity News Intern in the Office of News and Information, under a program supported by the Ford Foundation.