By Ketul PatelThe Daily Northwestern
Like many candidates scared of a skeleton in their closet, Aretha Chakraborti feared people might have a bone to pick with her when she ran for Panhellenic Association president.
As a freshman, Chakraborti wrote a column for the Northwestern Chronicle titled “Black People Drive Me Nuts.” The piece argued that black Americans needed to stop complaining about racism and work their way up through society. It cited Oprah Winfrey as a positive example.
“For me, at the time, it was, ‘I’m a minority – if I can do it, and my parents can do it, why can’t they?'” said the Weinberg junior, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from India. “It wasn’t the most politically correct article.”
The article sparked controversy on campus. Students started several groups on Facebook.com condemning the article, and the Chronicle pulled the piece from its Web site.
Chakraborti herself retracted the article. She said she received about 75 e-mails the day it was published and continued receiving e-mail responses for months afterward. Many of the e-mails called her ignorant and racist, she said.
But Chakraborti, who will begin her presidency in February, said she has learned from her mistake.
“I’m glad that I dealt with it, that I learned from it and confronted it,” she said. “I’m ashamed of what I wrote, but I am not ashamed of who I am now.”
She said her past should not get in the way of her leadership as Panhel president.
“If there’s such an overwhelming consensus in the Panhellenic community that says, ‘Aretha, you should step down,’ I will,” Chakraborti said. “But I think there is a reason I was elected to this position. It would sadden me if one error that I made in freshman year, and that I learned from, caused it.”
Chakraborti said her experience would help her as Panhel president because she has made connections in the multicultural Greek community as she tried to change her perceptions of the black community.
After the article’s fallout, Alexis Jeffries, a Medill junior and current editor of BlackBoard magazine, reached out to Chakraborti. Jeffries said she thought she might be able to help Chakraborti overcome some of her prejudices. She invited Chakraborti to For Members Only’s Def Poetry Jam where some poets attacked Chakraborti’s article in their performances.
“I reached out to her because I thought a large portion of Northwestern students had similar views,” said Jeffries, a former Daily staffer. “We could educate her so she wouldn’t make the same mistake again.”
Jeffries said she believes Chakraborti has changed since freshman year after exposing herself to new viewpoints.
“I truly believe that she had an epiphany, and she was open to that,” she said. “Aretha is a great person, and I know she will do great things as Panhel president.”
But Tara Stringfellow, former president of CaribNation, said she thinks it’s fine that Chakraborti is the president of Panhel, but that the black community should not forget Chakraborti’s racist comments.
“That racist article will follow her for the rest of her life,” the Weinberg senior said. “Every time she presents herself to the Northwestern community, she will be under scrutiny from the black community. I’m sure she is really sorry, but it does not change the fact that she made those comments.”
As Jefferies and Chakraborti became friends, Jefferies encouraged her to join BlackBoard’s design desk. Chakraborti said she felt some trepidation about joining the black-issues publication.
“It’s not like I thought they were going to fight me, but I didn’t know what to expect,” she said. “I was very shocked at how open people were.”
She has been with the magazine for two years now.
Chakraborti said she was scared to face people after the backlash to her Chronicle article. Terrified of being confronted in public, she skipped class for days.
But Chakraborti said she gained some perspective when talking to a black friend about how people would perceive her from then on.
“My friend told me, ‘Now you know what it feels like to be stereotyped,'” she said. “I realized what it was like to always wonder, ‘What are people thinking of me?'”
Reach Ketul Patel at [email protected].
