A Win-Win Decision for Black Students

Now that the First Kids have started classes at Sidwell Friends in Washington, they are likely to face this decision in the years to come: Whether to join the school's Black Student Union. Or not.

Will their choice matter either way? Sure, it will, unfair as that might be.

With the election of their father, Barack Obama, as the nation's first black president, many are celebrating the dawn of a long-awaited "post-racial" America. And debates over the relevance of black groups and institutions, from BSUs to historically black colleges, are heating up once again.

In the case of the BSU at Sidwell, some post-racialists might wonder how Barack and Michelle can lead the nation toward a colorblind ideal if they don't steer their daughters away from black groups.

In his widely acclaimed 1992 book "The Content of Our Character," Hoover Institute scholar Shelby Steele wrote that at some of the nation's most elite schools, "administrators have granted concessions in response to black student demands that all but sanction racial separation on campus -- black 'theme' dorms, black students unions, black yearbooks, homecoming dances, and so on." Such concessions, Steele said, merely assuage white guilt while preventing black students from confronting their academic shortcomings and the "inferiority anxiety" that comes from interacting with elite whites.

Of course, nobody would want such a fate to befall Malia Obama, 10, a fifth-grader at Sidwell, or her sister, Sasha, 7, who is in the second grade. They need not worry. For one thing, nobody is forced to join the club.

"My children did not participate in the BSU at all, and that's okay," Cheryl Sanders, a professor of Christian ethics at the Howard University Divinity School and a founder of Sidwell's BSU in 1969, told me recently. "To some extent, my children are post-racial, as are the Obamas." (Her son, Garrett Carswell, graduated from Sidwell in June; her daughter, Allison Carswell, graduated in 2005). "Even though they have a keen awareness of being African American, they didn't just hang out with blacks growing up. Their social experiences are much broader than mine were 40 years ago."

And yet the BSU at Sidwell has not only survived, it also thrives as one of the school's largest and most influential organizations.

"This is one of the great student clubs in the school's history," Ellis Turner, Sidwell's associate head of school, told me. "It is incredibly well operated, taken very seriously by the students and sponsors some fantastic educational events."

Next month, the BSU puts on its annual play, traditionally a powerful expression of how black students feel about being at Sidwell and, by extension, about being black in America. Nearly 13 percent of Sidwell's 1,100 students are African American -- and a majority of them usually participate in the play.

"The BSU is just a way for us to come together and share the experience of being perceived as black," said Ayana Wilson, 20, who graduated from Sidwell in 2007 and was a member of the BSU. "Race may be a biological fiction, but it has real social consequences, and we need a space to talk about that."

Wilson is currently majoring in religious philosophy and geophysics at Stanford. Her twin sister, Ashaia, was also a member of the BSU at Sidwell and is now majoring in applied mathematics at Harvard.

Samori Odadele Cummings, a 1992 Sidwell graduate and BSU member, went on to become a pediatric cardiologist at New York University. "At Sidwell, I began taking some of the bass out of my voice to make myself less threatening when I talked with white people," he told me. "I wasn't even aware of it until friends and family pointed it out. The school had a very inclusive environment, but sometimes you also need the support of your peers and organizations like the BSU to keep from losing yourself."

In his speech on race delivered in Philadelphia last year, Obama renewed his call for "the African American community to embrace the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life."

That's what the BSU at Sidwell strives to do, and if the Obama girls choose to be a part of it, that should be okay.

E-mail: milloyc@washpost.com