Ms. Jacob and Ms. Strunk succeeded in proving my point through their selective reading of my piece and the misinformation they included in their responses. Their Wespeaks explicitly and indirectly accuse my quotation of “Come to X House and we’ll see what happens to you,” as racist. Why would they possibly do this when I neither mention that the speaker was black or a woman, let alone one who was part of an “uncontrollable black mob.”
Ms. Jacob does happen to be a black woman, but clearly her previous argument could have been said by anyone and been correct. Likewise the threats of violence could have been said by anyone and still been threats. Race played no role in my quotation, and for Ms. Jacob and Ms. Strunk to suggest that there was is irresponsible and a personalized act of hostility towards me. Further, I did not write a single word which said that X House is populated by a violent, angry, racist mob.
Why did Ms. Jacob and Ms. Strunk deem it necessary to depict my words in such a way? Their world view of racial reductionism dictates that any negative interaction or comment about people of color is necessarily racist—it doesn’t matter to them that I made no explicit reference to Ms. Jacob or her skin color.
Why do Ms. Strunk and Ms. Jacob perceive the interpersonal violence perpetrated by my visiting friend against a person who has lived in Hawaii as racially motivated? Since they perceive the world in a racial manner, there is no possibility of interpersonal actions – like those in response to prolonged verbal abuse – as being derivative of the verbal abuse, and not the ethnicity of those involved.
Why does Ms. Strunk ignore that I pointed to character of not two, but three aspects of the night (the good, the bad, and the ugly)? Obviously it’s more inflammatory to accuse me of complacency and racism than to make a coherent argument for their position.
The racially charged misreading and selective readings of my Wespeak prove my point. I had hoped that by not personalizing the debate, my broad point – encouraging students at Wesleyan to share their views and try and convince others of their correctness – would be heard. Instead, Ms. Jacob and Ms. Strunk applied a racial prism in which one instance of what they deem to be racism constitutes the makeup of a whole event or group of people, e.g., “His white friend threw a beer at a person of color, therefore his quotation is racist.”
I’m not suggesting that race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or any number of defining factors do not affect how we view the world. I know that my being Jewish influences how I perceive various situations. Yet it would be absurd for me to argue that Ms. Jacob and Ms. Strunk’s libelous statements are anti-Semitic, not in the least because neither of them mentioned that I was Jewish. Of course, this is what they claim I did in my anonymous quotation.
I and many others have seriously reconsidered our beliefs about the commodification of diverse cultures since the issue of Hawaiian parties was first raised. How can people reevaluating their beliefs, in the direction suggested by Ms. Strunk, be a bad thing? Dialogue is happening and change is too. Some parts of a debate – which one should recall involved over a dozen people and lasted over three hours – may be unproductive (the incident described by Ms. Strunk would fall into this category, which I labeled “harmful failed communication” in my first Wespeak), but this does not preclude dialogue from being necessary.
The idea behind my words is that we, the Wesleyan student body, are in a position of distinct social privilege. We all are members of the academic elite, where as peers we can educate each other about our beliefs. The content of our beliefs must never be judged a priori by self-appointed thought police. Racial reductionism and absolute intolerance towards any dissenting viewpoint limits the ability to improve Wesleyan or the world. All I propose is that instead of expectations of magical intellectual homogeneity on campus, we all enter into dialogue about what we believe, why we believe in it, and why our beliefs are worthy of being believed by others. As this dialogue happens I will agree with some beliefs and disagree with others, but I will never deny someone’s right to hold a belief that I think is wrong.
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