Rooming with race in Oakland

When Bernard Mack came to Pitt more than 30 years ago, he found that Pittsburgh had “a great… When Bernard Mack came to Pitt more than 30 years ago, he found that Pittsburgh had “a great divide.” Coming from New York City, Mack, 58, felt that the city was homogenous to begin with, but even with the relatively small black population, blacks and whites still did not mix.

Mack, however, refused to be part of this separation. Instead, he chose to live with about 10 other whites and blacks in a three-story house on Dithridge Street, thus becoming one of the original members of the InterCultural House.

On Saturday, Mack joined his former roommates and current residents for an ICH open house. After a backyard barbeque, the invited speakers, including Pitt vice chancellor for Public Affairs Robert Hill and Pittsburgh City Councilman Bill Peduto, talked about the importance of the ICH and how it will help to build better race relations in the city.

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world,’ Peduto said, quoting Mahatma Gandhi. “But be it here first.”

The ICH was founded in 1970 as an experiment to test whether blacks and whites could live together peacefully, a somewhat risky move in the wake of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968 and the Pittsburgh race riots that flared up not long afterward, according to Selasi Blavo, the current resident director of the house.

“There weren’t many institutions with blacks and whites living together on a voluntary basis,” Mack said.

Since many people thought the two races couldn’t live together, the ICH board members paired up one black student with one white student to share a room for the year.

At first, some of the original students slept on the couches instead of with their roommates, but Mack and other students found the experience stimulating and thought provoking.

“It was exciting learning the cultures of one another and being able to overcome biases,” Mack said. “I think [the house] is still as prevalent today as it was in the 1970s. We still need to live together.”

Although blacks and whites still make up a large part of the house, Blavo said that it has been attracting more and more foreign students, shifting the house from an intercultural house to an international house.

But after this year, the house will revert to being predominantly black and white, Blavo said.

“It is the most predominant strand of racism in the U.S.,” Blavo explained, who also said the ICH will begin issuing surveys to the residents this year to assess how much they have changed.

Another major change for the house will be having the residents share bedrooms again. Blavo said that in the past, residents shared a room with a student of another ethnicity – now, however, the students have their own rooms.

Blavo said that the ICH is trying to revive this policy. Only two students currently share a room in the house, and both of them are white.

Regardless of these changes, ICH resident Frank Lee said he is more than happy with the house.

After stumbling upon an ICH advertisement in a local newspaper, Lee, a sophomore, decided to apply for housing there. One application and two interviews later, Lee received a call from an ICH staff member this summer and learned that he had been accepted.

“It’s been great so far and it’s only been three weeks,” Lee said. “It’s like a family environment.”

Lee is the first member of his family to be born in the U.S. His parents were from Korea, but he was born in Atlanta-a town that he said has much more diversity.

“Coming from Atlanta, [Pittsburgh] was a huge culture shock,” said Lee, who had friends that were all different races in Atlanta but not in Pittsburgh. “I didn’t really like Pittsburgh all too much my freshman year, but now I love it.”

Living in the house is a learning experience itself, said Lee, but the ICH residents also get a lot of formal education.

ICH residents read about different ethnicities, hold group conversations and watch documentaries about racism, Carla Cummings, the ICH program director, said.

And it’s not all learning-it’s teaching, too.

This year marks the second year that the students will give presentations at local Montessori schools, help at a YMCA and participate in local conferences about racial issues.