My Perspective

SJU’s Black History Underscores Importance of Listening, Understanding

By Dr. Eugene McAllister, Interim President

In his thoughtful article – Wrestling with History: The Black Student Experiece 50 Years Ago– Professor Ken Jones invites us to reflect on the significance and meaning of the Black students’ occupation of the Saint John’s University President’s office in 1970. At the risk of appearing Pollyannish or being a home-teamer, I suggest two Benedictine values that offer great insight into our own history, and indeed the current state of the nation. These particular values are to listen and to offer hospitality. As a college president of nearly 15 years, the conversation leading up to the occupation of the President’s office is just too familiar. Not because I have been involved in similar discussions, but because the terms of the conversation, in particular the key feature of the “Proposition” – a request for $10,000 to “promote the culture and unity among peoples of African descent” – are very familiar. The Black students were seeking to be known, to be understood, to have the dominant culture at Saint John’s acknowledge their dignity and the integrity of their experiences. Somehow, somewhere along the way, this moral demand was turned into a demand for funding. Perhaps this was prompted by college administrators saying “tell us what you want!” Perhaps it was the expected thing, the normal thing to do. Knowing how colleges think about things, I suspect the administrators were a little bit relieved by the “Proposition” – not by the amount, but because the content of the conversation was familiar, digestible, a negotiation about amounts. The administrators had an easier answer to a deeply perplexing challenge. And the answer was: We can’t afford that. An opportunity was lost.

The lesson is a universal one, and it applies to institutions and people. Too often, we expect the person with a request to ask in a particular way, a way we most easily understand. We will listen but first they must speak to us in the manner with which we are most comfortable. This is an exercise in power that hurts and deprives all, including – and perhaps especially – the powerful. We miss so much in life, so much of the beauty of the world when we only engage with the familiar through the familiar. Sometimes it is hard to listen, especially if you have the power not to listen. The Benedictine values of listening and offering hospitality are linked (as are so many of the Benedictine values). Listening is the practice; offering hospitality is the motive. Why should we make the effort to listen to someone who is less educated, or from a different ethnic or religious background, or who sees the world very differently? Saint Benedict offers the reason: “Let all … be received as Christ.”

When we first hear that quote from Saint Benedict, we might visualize a medieval traveler wearing a hooded cloak using a staff to knock on the door of a monastery. Our world is infinitely more complex, and the idea of hospitality must be ever so elastic. The practice of hospitality begins with questions: What do you need, and how can I help? Hospitality is an invitation to reveal. It depends on trust, grace and generosity. It affirms and makes it all better.

National discussions about racial equality have relied on a variety of words and concepts: anti-racism, systematic racism and critical race theory, to name a few. Hospitality and listening should be added to the discussions. Those concepts might not speak to everyone, but they will speak to many. And they offer motive and means, a way forward to our goal of seeing and affirming the dignity of each person.