Why Don’t We Speak About Racism?

By Iyore Ip ’29

As this school year comes to an end, it is time to discuss what the next year has in store for Milton. Throughout discussions surrounding the state of the Milton community and the possibility for future growth, one topic has stood out to me: how will Milton continue to push cultural understanding and antiracist efforts? When looking at Milton’s approach to discussions around identity, especially around race, over the course of this year, I have found that we, as a community, are failing to engage in effective and meaningful conversations on campus. While we continue to push cultural understanding and identity through mandatory programming, our everyday lives outside of Upper school programming reflect that identity plays a different role in how students navigate campus life. Within a community that focuses so much on allowing students to explore different cultures, there is far less of a focus on what racism, or bias as a whole, looks like or how it affects life on campus. Furthermore, the lack of depth in these conversations leaves Milton students completely unequipped for handling conflicts pertaining to identity.

Here at Milton, the concept of racism being bad is not a particularly shocking one. Rather than discussing whether or not racism is bad, the discussion needs to be about where and in what form racism appears. When we think about racism—or identity-based bias as a whole—as something that is simply ‘bad,’ we develop a partially exaggerated idea of what it might look like if we were to encounter it. While we might understand what racism is in concept, in reality many of us students might not recognize the subtler forms of racism, and for those of us who do, it suddenly becomes much harder to talk about it. In truth, however, bias is an undeniable aspect of society. All of us here at Milton will encounter bias in some form or another. All of us will bear witness to racism, homophobia, or sexism, and it will likely not always occur in the environments where we expect it. Rather, the times when we will experience the presence of bias most are within our own social circles, and these confrontations can be a hard reality to grapple with. Therefore, when it comes to the prevalence of racism within the community, we must look at the way that it seeps into our everyday lives.

According to the Milton Paper’s 2026 State of the Academy survey, 74.3% of respondents expressed a belief that students grouped themselves on account of race, while in comparison only 8.6% of respondents believed race was an underdiscussed identity at Milton. The fact that there is such a divide when it comes to the way that race dictates our relationships with peers on campus, in comparison to actually wanting to have more discussion on the matter, should be looked at. In order to understand how students consider race when it comes to life at Milton, I sent out a survey to the freshman class. A majority of students who held a minority identity, racial or otherwise, cited that identity as a factor affecting how they interacted with their peers. When it came to students who did not identify as a minority on the form, however, the responses commonly expressed the opinion that there was no noticeable difference when it came to race in interactions with peers, or were, in quite a few cases, left as incomplete. Looking at these data points opens the discussion around race and whether or not we can, or even should, bring it up.

Within Milton’s Department of Equity, Inclusion, and Justice (DEIJ)’s efforts, the ability to address and cope with these everyday situations becomes less prominent. Unfortunately, there is no assembly that is going to guide a student through how to deal with a specific statement from a peer, and so the rest is up to us. However, Milton’s DEIJ efforts still hold a special place in the conversation around race. Through assemblies and events like CultureFest, students are placed into an environment in which cultural sharing and learning is the norm. We here at Milton are a diverse community, and Milton’s having such an array of student voices is a gift that Milton’s DEIJ team continues to highlight. Unfortunately, celebration is not always enough in combatting bias. We can not just provide students with exposure and leave the realistic conversation to a later date. It is imperative that we also acknowledge that sometimes these experiences with sharing such core aspects in our identity will come with hardships as well, especially in the face of bias. As we continue to navigate the world and culture here at Milton, what is most vital to maintaining healthy relationships and cultural sharing on campus is to recognize our own role and connections, even if we are the ones who might say something wrong, and then to speak up about it.