Eighty-five years ago, Enid Cook walked through the halls of Bryn Mawr creating a legacy with a chance at radical change. Fast forward to the present-- where exactly does Bryn Mawr stand with that notion of inclusion? Has it been affirmed or is it only an ailing hope? Through Anne Dalke’s analysis of the concept of  “slipping” and “Black at Bryn Mawr,” an initiative by BMC students to retrace black history, it has becomes apparent that the school has yet to lived up to its liberal goals.

Slippage in Anne Dalke essay has multiple meanings. When referring to the verbal ‘slippage’, it means the “involuntary” loosing control of words, speaking of something unconsciously. While referring to the social institution and society as a whole, “slippage” means “slide into a state” that’s comfortable of majority, taking things for granted, unaware of the mistakes and injustice, and in other words, “being blind”.

The definition of “slippage” is doing or saying something that one is consciously aware of but realizes that this action is inappropriate after offending someone. It is “an act of associative mis-speaking…”(Cohen & Dalke 254) that is “involuntary”(Cohen & Dalke 255). The act of slipping is not consciously done but the ideas are conscious and are already formed. This includes “deliberate moves to create inclusive structures [which] provoke pronounced displays of further exclusion” (Cohen & Dalke 253). Therefore, the actions are consciously done but the consequences may not be predicted. For example, Nkechi consciously brings her classmates into the Radnor common room where she knew there were decorative lights hanging.

Jasmine Stanton 3

            Slipping is an innate habit that all humans share. As communities become more diverse and more and more different people interact there will be more and more instances where unintentional words or actions that are offensive will be expressed not always with the intention to hurt, but often do. There are certain ideas or stereotypes that we associate with a group of people that then impact our view of individuals of that group. Sometimes we might be unaware that we are slipping. But slipping is healthy as it can often lead to discussion and reflection. We all slip, it is about acknowledging our slips and learning from them.

Vivian O’Bannon

Jodi Cohen

Emily Balch Seminar: Changing Our Story

September 16, 2016

Passivity: Another Agent of Slippage

This week at Bryn Mawr, we talked about “slipping” in classroom discussion. As defined by Anne Dalke and her student Emily Elstad, slipping is an honest, involuntary “act of associative mis-speaking” that helps us learn or realize the truth of what we think (Cohen 254). After a “slip” is made, we can learn and grow by processing the comment in the context of the classroom, the campus, and our society. Sometimes a slip is immediately clear to us; other times we do not know we have slipped until we are called out. Regardless, in an ideal academic contact zone, we will strive to learn from slips together.

Slipping into Mud

Dorothy Kim

            Oftentimes people say things and only later realize that the connotations or meaning surroundings their words were not the best thing to say. At other times, people may have not even noticed that what they have been saying was problematic. This act of slipping creates various contact zones in which people have a chance to come to realize the differences they have with each other. However, in many cases the act of slipping becomes messy and instead, does not create any change while leaving the slipee, or person the slip was made against, feeling terrible about their own identity.  There are various facets of slipping and each side provides a different view on the benefits or the harms of these contact zones.

In “Slipping”, the concept of slips is used to illustrate how we often attempt to deal with inequalities by simply ignoring them, and how this method fails to provide the motivation necessary to effect real change. Slips are politically incorrect statements or acts which weren’t intended to cause harm. Slipping can spark reactions on its own, as we saw in the string light incident in “Slipping”. However, the real damage comes not from slipping, but rather from neglecting the issues that lie beneath these slips. The function of slips is not to cause offense, but rather to shed light on issues that many of us would rather keep buried beneath the surface, for fear of upsetting the order of things.

What does the term slippage signify? I had a very difficult time trying to define this term into one single definition. That is because the term does not have one single definition and it can be interpreted differently by each person. In Anne Dalke’s essay “Slipping”, she defines it as “an act of associative mis-speaking that may be more iterative, more complicated, and potentially more hopeful” (254). In other words, someone “slips” when they say something offensive, which leads to revealing the true identity and ideology of the speaker. Slipping in this circumstance is most often seen in racism, prejudice, and discrimination scenarios. A person might say something offensively intentionally or unintentionally, but this misspeaking shows the true values of that person.