Very bad things are happening on college campuses across the nation. Not the systemic racism of which so many complain. Not the never-ending stream of rapes allegations. Not the dethroning of college presidents or apologies of college administrators whose crime is failing to adhere to the orthodoxy of the Academy.
These may all be bad things, to the extent they’re true (and I have no doubt that there is truth in there; we may have come a long way in battling racism, but racism remains). But these aren’t the bad things of which I write. The bad things are the dumbing down of thought, of rights, of words. And they make it impossible to fix the other bad things as we’ve lost the ability to distinguish, and in some instances care, between real harms and empty whining.
I was asked yesterday how it’s possible I can be as concerned as I am about the killing of black men by police, yet so callous about the racism and sexual assault claims on college campuses. Which side am I on? The only answer I can give is that I’m on the side of real harms rather than “senses” of anything. At HuffPo College, a statement by Yale senior, Reine Ibala, a founder of the Black Ivy Coalition, said:
“To the students of color at Mizzou, we stand with you in solidarity. To those who would threaten their sense of safety, we are watching. #ConcernedStudent1950 #InSoliarityWithMizzou.”
And that’s what this is about to college students, threatening their sense of safety. This is a double wiggle, yet they don’t realize it. Or can’t see it. The juxtaposition of Black Lives Matter with Concerned Student 1950 couldn’t be more clear, and yet it eludes them. The former is about people being murdered. The latter is about people feeling hurt, sad and uncomfortable. They are not equivalents in fact, but even then, the latter is reduced to meaningless drivel based upon conclusory allegations and claims of “pain.”
When discussing why cries of rape by feminists are no longer credible, it’s because rape is a conclusory term, the meaning of which has become so watered down, so fuzzy, so ridiculous as to provide no insight into what, in fact, happened. It no longer conveys a fact, but some vague sense. The cries at colleges of systemic racism have now been similarly reduced to meaninglessness.
In contrast, when there’s a dead body lying on the ground, there’s no need for empty rhetoric to manufacture a claim of harm. A dead body speaks for itself.
At The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf was under attack by Jelani Cobb in The New Yorker for this same apparent inconsistency. He explained it well.
Our diverse critiques of the campus left are not a sign that we care too little about fighting racism, advocating for justice, opposing prejudice, or protecting civil rights, or that we’ve yet to be enlightened by the right theorists. They are, rather, a sign that these issues, and concerns that they touch on, free speech among them, are too important to be ceded to a narrow, ideologically insular subculture as prone to blind spots, mistakes, wrongdoing, and excesses as any other; and too fond of jargon that more readily facilitates evasiveness than analytic clarity. The activist left on campus no more benefits from blanket deference than any other political movement, and their defenders should stop conflating criticism of their means and contested assumptions with opposition to or a desire to distract from widely shared ends.
Not only have teams arisen that demand blind adherence to their party line, but they’ve developed battle lines based on words devoid of meaning. Yet, their members believe, and repeat words that mean nothing, “too fond of jargon that more readily facilitates evasiveness than analytical clarity.” In other words, the words of the battle defy evidence that they’re true or real. A “safe space” is no dead body.
Among the demands at Mizzou is the removal of a statue of Thomas Jefferson, because he was a racist rapist.
The Thomas Jefferson statue that sits on the quad of the University of Missouri campus delivers a nonverbal code which affects me emotionally and psychologically.
In the context of today’s norm of racial and gender outrage, it’s certainly true that he was a racist rapist. But that’s “presentism,” viewing historical fact through the lens current social norms rather than in context. It’s wrong and ignorant. You wouldn’t like an America had there been no Thomas Jefferson. Or the rest of the founding fathers, all of whom were evil under today’s standards.
But worse, the cry is that “it affects me emotionally and psychologically.” There’s no dead body here. All the talk of nurturing, feelings of safety, validation and feeling valued is crap. Dead bodies are real. The world affects you “emotionally and psychologically”? Welcome to life, pal. Glad your world is so spectacularly safe that you feel empowered to raise such an insipid issue.
Back to Conor Friedersdorf:
Had Cobb included the very next sentence in his excerpt from my article, they would have seen that I actually asserted that students were catastrophizing not when arguing with their professors, but when, having failed to secure the apology they demanded for an email, they reportedly declared that “they cannot bear to live in the college anymore,” and one Yale student claimed that friends had stopped eating and sleeping and were having breakdowns.
This is why you have no credibility, and why grown-ups who are concerned about racism won’t join your team. This is inane fragility, and when any words that don’t validate your feelz cause you to stop eating and sleeping, have breakdowns, the problem is that your life is too good, too secure, that you can be in college with the grasp and sensitivity of an infant, and have no clue how absurdly delicate you are.
There are dead bodies lying on the ground, but all you can worry about is your own unduly sensitive feelings of emotional and psychological pain. And anyone who doesn’t validate your childishness is your enemy. Dead bodies versus your feelz. That’s why. Grow up.
As for the college grown-up enablers of this stunted infantilism, either shut this nonsense down or it will swallow you. You will never be able to do enough to sate the outrage machine. Your duty is not to let children have their own way, but to help them mature into adults. By enabling them to remain misguided infants, you are more culpable than they are. Children are expected to be stupid. You are expected to be better.
Via Jonathan Adler at Volokh Conspiracy, Jonathan Rausch proposes a new “trigger warning” for all involved.
Warning: Although this university values and encourages civil expression and respectful personal behavior, you may at any moment, and without further notice, encounter ideas, expressions and images that are mistaken, upsetting, dangerous, prejudiced, insulting or deeply offensive. We call this education.
Now students, go back to class. Study hard. Learn and prepare yourselves for adulthood. And professors, teach or get out.
Remember when American students protested things like being conscripted and sent to war, and not just their precious feels?
In a safe space, no one is putting their bodies on the gears.
This is why the simplistic efforts to compare what’s happening now to earlier times fail miserably. Protests against physical segregation, against death in the rice paddies, against being hosed into submission at best, lynched at worst, dealt with cognizable harms. Now, it’s words that hurt their feelings and not feeling sufficiently “valued.”
https://youtu.be/LrMLt9bMd_I
If you want the far left to understand your point, you’ll have to go deeper. I heard NPR’s interview with Roxane Gay, an English Prof at Purdue, yesterday, it was the first time I took the time to hear them explain themselves. She said:
“I mean, what’s wrong with being coddled once in a while? This notion that we should just be thrown to the lions and make do is absurd. There is very little to be gained from suffering.” She said that last sentence in an exasperated fashion, like, “duh.”
Evidently they need a primer on the value of suffering. I think they see dead bodies and hurt feelings as equally negative.
So I’ve been told here many times, because I just don’t appreciate that feeling unsafe can be every bit as painful as a bullet in the head.
Too bad there was no one else on NPR to explain. There’s nothing “wrong” with some coddling. There’s plenty wrong with demanding to be coddled. There’s plenty wrong with demanding the firing of those who won’t coddle you. There’s plenty wrong with demanding that every aspect of your being, every whim, every urge, everything, be coddled.
I heard the same interview. Jonathan Chait was there to push back. He did so as well as he could have, given the order in which the host asked them questions. Gay did concede more than once that the events at Yale were an example of oversensitivity.
Google this for the transcript:
NPR interview roxane gay jonathan chait
Listened to it. Chait was, how shall I say this nicely, tepid at best. He was more worried about Gertruding than addressing the issues, and allowed himself to be pigeonholed by some manipulative questioning. All in all, a poor showing. Chait does not speak for me.
Technically, the whole making-fun-of-undergrads thing is a massive [ableist slur]. Just because your axons are fully myelinated and ours aren’t doesn’t mean our lived experiences don’t matter.
Wow, you’ve actually read a magazine article on the brain. Good for you. However, your critical thinking skills are at best nascent, at worst deceptive and give worries about your education. This post, for your edification, is about the contrast between childish selfishness vs dead bodies. No one is made fun of except in your puerile brain. Maybe square brackets would [help] you get it?
Seriously, you are way to sensitive.
He was being sarcastic. Kids, you know. Helps to hear him snicker as he types.
No!!! It’s not enough that you defend me. Eradicate KNA’s comment pls.
Outstanding. I’m getting that as my cell ring tone. You write that? It sounds a lot like Mark Bennett singing.
The Thomas Jefferson statue that sits on the quad of the University of Missouri campus delivers a nonverbal code which affects me emotionally and psychologically.
Me too!
That’s the thing about art, it’s supposed to affect you. If it doesn’t, it’s boring or just plain, old sucks.
To those students who may be tuning in: Talk about it! Debate it with your friends!
But if you catastrophize such things, you should expect to be mocked.
Well said, Eric.
Another part of the problem is the way we communicate. Every perceived slight is now described in melodramatic terms. We have to say things in the loudest and most painful ways in order to be heard or draw attention to our issues. Our politicians equate the ACA to slavery, ISIS to an existential threat, abortion to the Holocaust. There’s no rational dialogue and no in-between; and that type of dialogue has migrated to our daily lives. I agree, what has happened on our campuses is tragic and does not benefit the students looking for a “safe place” and it certainly doesn’t benefit the nation. Unfortunately, we have raised a generation of young that are no longer tough, a generation of young that has not experience real strife, real war, real and extended economic downturns. Parents have insulated them, politicians have insulated them and society is coddling them further.
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[Ed. Note: Links deleted per rules.]
“We need to be able to separate these excesses from the real issues. The Rude Pundit could very easily tell kids to get off his lawn with their goddamned safe spaces and microaggressions. He could very easily give in to the urge to say these are whining, privileged, PC-clinging delicate flowers. But that’s a punk-ass way to deal with some genuine problems that exist underneath the whining. Doing that gets you out of confronting the fucking racists who fucking are to blame for this fucking situation in the first fucking place.”
Some subscribe to a theory that if you use the word “fucking” enough, it compensates for having nothing substantive to offer. I do not.
There is, of coruse, substance there, the idea that there are more important issues than stomping around bellowing about what a thick skin you have and how everyone should be just like you, and how said bellowing is actually a run around to ignore those issues.
Likewise, you have chosen to try to claim that your arbitrary tastes in style are a valid excuse to willfully ignore this substance; they are not. That is fallacious thinking, attempting to avoid dealing with any challenge to your current opinions by finding quick excuses to not address it. This is, of course, the opposite of constructive thought or dialogue.
“Of course”? You shouldn’t give away the emptiness of your claim in the first phrase. At least make it a challenge for others to see that you’ve got nothing. Which, in light of your position, makes total sense.
So what should I address? Someone who uses “fucking” in lieu of actually saying anything? This is what you deem substance? There is no substance there whatsoever. It’s vapid. You’re vapid. That’s that.
I’m a little lost here. Heaney’s first comment was a quote that said absolutely nothing. His second was a complaint that you didn’t deal with the “substance” that didn’t exist? Did I miss anything in between?
Giving Heaney the most charitable possible benefit of the doubt, I don’t think he grasps that somebody screaming “RACIST” is conclusory. He confuses substance with empty rhetoric. That or he’s suffering from a terminal dose of confirmation bias, and just can’t see beyond his feelings.
‘having failed to secure the apology they demanded for an email, they reportedly declared that “they cannot bear to live in the college anymore,” and one Yale student claimed that friends had stopped eating and sleeping and were having breakdowns.’
When did Yale move to 1692 Salem? Sounds like mass hysteria.
“one Yale student claimed that friends had stopped eating and sleeping and were having breakdowns.”
When did they start calling ecstasy tablets “microaggressions?”
While I haven’t waded through every tweet on #blacklivesmatter, the impression I have is that many of the people using it really are just talking about feelz. I’m sorry that a lot of people are missing your point that we should care about abuse of state power even when it affects people we don’t know in neighborhoods we don’t hang out in. But nobody owns a hashtag, and demanding power on the basis of membership in a victim class is very much consistent with some things on that particular hashtag.
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