A friend, who is a teaching assistant in "SOC 0170: The Family," just finished grading the class' first homework. The assignment was to write a five-page essay about one's family history. She said that out of the 60 students who submitted essays to her, only two to three of them do not live with both of their biological parents. Hard-working grandparents, loving and encouraging parents and loyal and friendly pets are often mentioned. Many of the grandparents are college graduates, as are most of the parents. Though racial and ethnic diversity is present among her students, the stories are not as diverse as expected.
These comments from a teaching assistant of SOC 0170: "The Family" may not give you a comprehensive understanding of an average Brown student's family background, but they may reveal some of its very interesting aspects. We tend to think of Brown as a diverse place where people from all kinds of background come together, share their opinions and learn new things from each other. But what if half of the people sitting in the same lecture hall with you have grandparents with immigrant backgrounds, who worked very hard, earned college degrees and maybe even paved a smooth road for your life before your birth?
Let's imagine. Since people tend to form some of the closest, longest-lasting friendships in college, many friends in college stick together long after they have graduated, meet friends-of-friends, build networks and form a circle. Plus, many elite universities are feeders for large corporations, academia and professions such as law and medicine. So it could be that some people sitting in the same lecture hall with you will be hanging out and working with you later on in your life, and they may also be the grandchildren of your grandpa's friends-of-friends. If it is true, then you already belong to a community, and the connection between you and those other people around you is already embedded in your family kinship, probably before you even noticed.
The university is another place where sameness, connection and convention rule. While the stereotype is that Brown has absolutely no requirements, and every student is a tree-hugging, pot-smoking, liberal hippie, Brown students often regard themselves as smart, liberal, somewhat artsy and, of course, unique. The student body as a whole has its own way of speaking and its own dress code. As one of my professors said in her class, "Have you noticed that you all dress, more or less, alike? Brown students don't dress in the same way as students at Vanderbilt University do." We think we are unique because everyone else feels the same way, and being unique in the same way makes us comfortable. Our collective college experience forms a sense of familiarity and community. Also, attending an elite college and succeeding in careers like business or law are still largely functions of family wealth and sustained networks.
You may argue that, even though the family stories sound alike, they are very different in reality, and every person is unique. I absolutely agree. Everyone wants to be special and cool, and I am no exception. But there are certain standards and expectations of being unique. Brown students feel unique because they have similar family backgrounds, similar tastes for fashion and art, similar educations and similar ways of thinking. It is precisely the sameness that makes us feel different.
It is very difficult to avoid, or to even notice, the taken-for-granted desirability of certain types, the tendency to comply with normative standards, the ease with the familiar and the rejection of those considered deviant. Preference for sameness is embedded in our allegiance to family, education, professions, consumption, ideologies and so on. Even though there have been a lot of debates on multiculturalism, the plea to reproduce other cultures rather than only the dominant one has been much more popular than questioning the assumption that cultures or sameness need to be maintained or reproduced.
Probably there is no way of being unique. All we have is the reproduction of sameness hidden behind the sense of collective uniqueness. Personally, I believe that the preference of sameness is an important part of human nature that inevitably rules our ways of our thinking. While this is sometimes a good thing, it merits further examination.
Jan Cao '13 believes that everyone taking SOC 0170 will enjoy the next paper topic: "Dating and Hooking Up."
