Emotion over reason
Eric Shive’s bigotry has reached a new pinnacle. In his column,republished by the uber-racist Cornell Review, he made a derogatoryreference to “pasty white kids” who play Dungeons and Dragons on Fridaynights. As a member of the white community, I am enraged at thisstereotypical caricature, and I join the Student Assembly in fullsupport of their resolution to rework the campus code to preventfurther hate speech like this.
OK, so I am obviously not serious. However, Shive’s article actuallydid use this caricature of pasty white kids to draw an interestingcomparison between these white kids’ self-imposed isolation and that ofthe residents of the racially-themed program house. But in response,there has been no discussion of the merits of his argument. Instead,there have just been cries of “racism.”
Invoking racism is like invoking nuclear war. Everyone agrees thatboth racism and nuclear war are undesirable outcomes, making them easyto exploit. Imagine a debate won not by the one with the best argumentswhich address the specific topic at hand, but the one whose positionsare least likely to cause nuclear war.
Now imagine the same thing with racism. Actually, you do not have to imagine it. It is happening right here at Cornell.
Consider the recent guest column written by the campus liaisons forBlack Students United. They basically enumerated a million differentthings wrong with Cornell, blaming it all on racism. However, they didnot provide specific evidence on how racism itself caused any one ill.
They claim that their position on “diversity” is non-ideological.Yet when others fail to take up their position on program houses — ahot-button political issue on campus — they label it as yet anothermanifestation of racism rather than a legitimate position.
Clearly, then, this article, which disagrees with these liaisons, isnot a manifestation of my argumentation and writing skills. It is justa manifestation of the racism and white privilege lurking deep insidemy soul. So I might as well stop writing now.
In reality, while you can criticize Shive’s word choice, the crux ofhis original article is not racist at all. Shive clearly relegated hiscriticism to a specific, politically-motivated subset of the minoritycommunity — not minorities as a whole.
And while I have never been a huge fan of the term “angry minority,”I cannot help but notice that it perfectly describes the protestsagainst The Cornell Review.
So now that I have explained why Shive’s article is not racist, the protesters must now rely on the second “racist” article and argue thata Muslim has written intolerant things about Muslims. By stating thatan arranged marriage with a first cousin is a bad idea.
Perhaps it makes sense that invoking “racism” and “diversity” makesme skeptical. Accusing detractors of hating diversity if they do notsupport the protesters is like saying someone is un-Christian if theydo not support Pat Robertson.
Just as Pat Robertson has distorted Christianity, these protestorshave distorted diversity. And there is no greater distortion than theuse of diversity as a means to attack freedom of speech, and thus theprinciples of the Constitution.
I was not surprised at all when The Sun opposed the StudentAssembly’s initial attempt to punish The Cornell Review by stripping“Cornell” from their name. While I did not know anything about theeditorial until I read The Sun that day, I certainly did not expect agroup of journalists, no matter how they view The Review, to support aresolution which tramples on free speech and freedom of the press.
I am not the only who notices this. The Foundation for IndividualRights in Education is monitoring The Student Assembly’s latest attemptto rewrite the Campus Code of Conduct to censor future “offensive”speech. To censor a well-stated argument for being offensive is notonly antithetical to freedom, but it is also an illogical appeal toemotion over reason.
Even if an argument is somewhat misguided, censoring it does not doany good. Shive’s link between the existence of “angry minorities” andaffirmative action is speculative, but his argument bears manysimilarities to other, better arguments.
A few years ago, L.A. Times Columnist Gregory Rodriguez made thecase that the problems with academic scholarship lie not with leftistsand Marxists but with “craven emotional warriors in the arena ofidentity politics.” Rodriguez identified ethnic studies departments asone of the most likely places among many to harbor these warriors.
And I can easily see why. There is a tendency to put a blind faithin the value of multiculturalism, not evaluating a work in anobjective, scholarly manner, but inadvertently holding it to a lowerstandard because it promotes multiculturalism.
Applying good research to the context of multiculturalism whenapplicable can make it better. Poor research with references tomulticulturalism is still poor, even if the author is not white.
But inevitably, attempts to introduce oversight to correct theseproblems can lead to more accusations of racism. Just look at whathappened when a plagiarism scandal led to the firing of ColumbiaUniversity Professor Madonna Constantine, a well-known personality onthe issue of race. Although she clearly was in the wrong, shedesperately attempted to get off the hook by raising the specter ofracism.
And no matter what I say, people like her think they can still beright because of white privilege. I am white, and therefore I amresponsible for hundreds of years of discrimination, so I have nocredibility.
Now I am not a student of color, so I cannot invoke racism to helpmy cause. And I was not born into a rich family with slave owners asancestors, so I cannot take advantage of this “white privilege” thatsupposedly lies within me. In the end, I can only rely on the strengthof my evidence and arguments.
I suggest that my opponents begin to do the same.
Mike Wacker is assistant web editor at The Sun. Contact him at mwacker@cornellsun.com. Wack Attack appears alternate Fridays.