Dr. Ruha Benjamin Speaks On Unjust Social Constructs

“Cultural codes, in other words, are not neutral, nor are all codes created equal. They reflect particular values and interests in forms of social organization that allow some people to impose their values on others. And to be successful, we’re all told, we must master the dominant codes. We have to learn to ‘play the game,’ a game in which the rules are created by someone else,” Dr. Ruha Benjamin said, using her coding metaphor to show the difference between benefitting from the system and taking action to fix the disadvantages created as a result of a long standing, unjust society.Benjamin, an Assistant Professor at the Department of African-American Studies at Princeton University, spoke at the assembly entitled “Playing the Game—or Hacking the System?” on Tuesday, Jan. 19. Her presentation highlighted the importance of proactive self-education to identify the societal injustices of the world.Benjamin began her presentation with an anecdote about her experiences with public benches. She initially believed that armrests were made to provide privacy and assist with standing, but as she investigated, she discovered the global phenomenon of discriminatory design. “Values are embedded in all of the objects we take for granted. Nothing is just an isolated body in the world,” she said.Benjamin linked her metaphor of hacking to intervening in social systems that were not created to benefit the vast majority.“To hack a system, one needs in-depth understanding of how it works. What are its strengths, its weaknesses? One also needs a vision for how it could be better. These insights allow us to subvert the system that we’ve come to understand and make it do something it wasn’t meant to do,” she said.

“Even reframing small substitutes can begin the shift in social justice reform.”

As Benjamin continued, her comparisons of everyday situations such as video games and hacking continually traced back to her main message: in order to solve a superficial problem, we must investigate the issue at the center, instead of “painting another shiny exterior to disguise the truth.”Senior Alix Hunter enjoyed the assembly and hoped that more discussion continues on campus.“She took things that people knew and felt, but was able to give language to them and talk about them in ways that kind of legitimized these experiences,” she said.Upper Lauren Wilson also appreciated Benjamin’s message and found her statistics of violence towards black women in video games especially important. “If nine out of ten black female characters are victimized, with a majority of them not showing response to pain, that is an issue that is a reflection of what our own society represents,” she said.Lower Magisha Thorir echoed Wilson’s sentiments, describing Benjamin’s assembly to be not only illuminating, but also thought-provoking and inspiring.“Her point on creating new systems through collaboration, creativity and mastery really stood out to me as an important aspect of fixing social constructs, breaking ‘the box’ as you may say, to open new horizons in understanding the basic human values of genuine kindness and respect to one another,” Thorir said.Health instructor Carol Cahalane appreciated Benjamin's analogy of gaming/playing vs. hacking the social system, pointing out that gaming involves consumption, recreation and competition, while hacking invites us to learn how to master the system, collaborate with others and be creative.“I see this description inviting each of us to think about our roles and to assess when we have opportunities to bring about lasting, positive change in our society,” she said.Although Reverend Robert Thompson did not attend assembly, he read the Exeter Confesses anonymous responses to Benjamin’s assembly. The anonymous post lamented the presentation of “another” liberal speaker by the Academy after alleged demands for a conservative speaker on the anonymous forum, claiming a “new persecuted minority" amongst non-liberal voices.Thompson countered this criticism in a responding comment below the original post, “Really, dude? Seriously?” which garnered over seventy likes from the student body.In response to student complaints of the Assembly Committee’s decision to invite Benjamin subsequent to Exeter’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day workshops, Thompson explained that the committee’s job in scheduling speakers far in advance is a challenging process.“The timing may have been inconvenient. The schedule and current events don’t always go hand in hand … I can understand that people, for whom this is not their issue, may feel overwhelmed and weary by the topic, and I feel some slight sympathy towards that,” Thompson said.Benjamin added that although she was honored to speak at Exeter, she acknowledged her own personal shortfalls. She has moved every few years of her life, and believes that the community should see the limitations of that. She commended the importance of diverse experiences, especially localized perspectives opposing to her own, in formulating opinions.“There is an unintended hierarchy between the people who have had the cosmopolitan experience and the people who are provincial, local. We need to appreciate the cosmopolitan knowledge, but are we being as appreciative of the deep, local knowledge?” Benjamin said. “Do we take someone who has one experience, who has lived one place their entire life… do we put that person on a stage and ask them what knowledge they can provide to students at Exeter?”While acknowledging and emphasizing different perspectives, Benjamin shared her own. During lunch following the assembly, Benjamin elaborated on her goals and ways students can work towards determining and fixing the problems of society.“Instead of saying, ‘I know I’m privileged,’ we could try, ‘I know I’m responsible.’ We want to make a link between privilege and taking action,” she said.Benjamin expanded on the notion of “privilege,” noting that although it is good that people are acknowledging privilege, apologizing for being privileged does not change anything.“Responsible does not mean personally responsible, but it means to take responsibility and to take action on this social position. Even reframing small substitutes can begin the shift in social justice reform,” she said.Although Benjamin has more formal experience studying these issues than students on campus, she emphasized that progress can only be made if everyone collaborates and contributes to change. “I hope you don’t find yourself up on a pedestal, self-righteous, pointing out racism left and right as if it’s outside of yourself. As if we’re the good guys in here and outside, there are the bad guys who don’t want to involve themselves in conversation,” she said.Contributions from April Murphy