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Is this where we pretend that there's no history of racial grievances at Yale (or Mizzou), and that history started afresh the minute before this confrontation?

• Gigablah 11y ago
  No, this is where we acknowledge that both sides can be varying degrees of wrong and right, and that people can lose sight of their original arguments.
• integraton 11y ago
  > As mostly male white people, it's easy to defend free speech when it isn't your people or culture being treated as a costume. Saint Patrick's Day.
  • MCRed 11y ago
    Also, the entire leftist movement uses a homophobic slur to refer to members of the Tea Party: "Teabaggers". I guess they don't care when they're mad about republicans that they show their true feelings about gay people.
    • Perceptes 11y ago
      That term is not specific to gays.
• ForHackernews 11y ago
  These activists need to make up their mind: They can argue that Yale is a white supremacist institution that oppresses minorities (there's certainly evidence for that) or they can argue that Yale's administrators should be further empowered to control discourse and punish students and faculty who won't fall in line. Arguing in favor of both simultaneously is completely incoherent. http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/194874/person-up-yale-students http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/194874/per...
• ericjang 11y ago
  I'm a student at Brown University, and these issues have been at the front of campus-related tensions for the last 2 years (perhaps longer, but I wasn't aware of them then). Your post reflects the most vocal attitude on campus at the moment (the "free-speech" faction is shrewdly keeping silent). I'm up-voting your post because you echo the perspective of many of my peers who I respect, and I want to give others on HN the opportunity to respond to your post without it being hidden. I do not know of any black people at my school who openly criticize this recent string of college protests (the debate seems to be predominantly centered around blacks in these incidents). Surely, if this pain is something only black people can understand and they are so united in this movement, then it suggests that their grievances ARE legitimate. ... and yet, something feels wrong here. Something feels wrong when I see hyperbolic signs like "our culture is not a costume" or retroactive counterarguments like "it's not only about the Halloween Costumes". Something feels wrong when I see people sharing FB statuses with #concernedstudent1950 when it implies they support the demands made by the student group [1]. Something feels wrong when my peers believe that whites cannot be the victims of racism, due to their racial privilege. I don't have a good response to your points, but I'm interested to see others' replies to your comment. At any rate, all I'm sure of is that the political climate has dramatically changed in the last 2 years. [1] http://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/columbiatribune.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/3/45/345ad844-9f05-5479-9b64-e4b362b4e155/563fd24f5a949.pdf.pdf http://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/columbiatribune....
  • fweespeech 11y ago
    He is largely being down voted for simultaneously invoking history while ignoring the right to protest exists only because of free speech and the right to assemble. The ability to have protests like we've seen on campuses and elsewhere are defended entirely on 1st amendment grounds. Watering that down to push an agenda, no matter how righteous, is the kind of idea only those truly ignorant of history would propose. http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/civil-rights-first-amendment http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/civil-rights-first-amend... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker_v._Des_Moines_Independent_Community_School_District https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker_v._Des_Moines_Independe... etc.
• imron 11y ago
  The parent has put forward a polite and reasoned post with links to back up his point of view. I disagree with the point being made that not alienating students (and minority students in particular) is more important than free speech, but... if you are downvoting because you don't like what is being said then that speaks volumes for what you really think about the importance of free speech, and your actions are essentially the same as the students trying to shout down the professor. x0x0, I disagree with you, and think that free speech is more important, but have my upvote.
  • jqm 11y ago
    Except down voting isn't denying the right to speech. It's simply expressing _your_ opinion of the value of said speech.
    • rntz 11y ago
      Downvoting should be reserved for posts that do not contribute to the discussion, not used to express disagreement. The purpose of votes isn't to win a battle of beliefs, but to promote insightful discussion. Honestly I think HN would be better without downvoting at all.
      • noobermin 11y ago
        This has been discussed before it looks like[0], but at least pg[1] has stated that he sees downvoting for expressing disagreement is acceptable. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3760275 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3760275 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
      • simoncion 11y ago
        > Honestly I think HN would be better without downvoting at all. I don't entirely agree with this statement. If you're going to be doing threaded conversations, having a system that can influence the sort order of those conversations isn't necessarily a bad thing. I've been thinking about HN's downvotes for a while now, and I kinda think -based on my overwhelmingly positive experience with the Pre-SJW Metafilter- that HN should either have strict time-based ordering for threads with up/downvotes only serving to give you Whuffie, or have up/downvotes control sort order, but not grey out comments that are below 1.
• littletimmy 11y ago
  What's wrong with treating someone's culture as a costume? If I find Mexican clothing nice, let's say, and I wear it to a "let's celebrate Mexico" party, how on earth is that offensive? Is it also offensive when the people of some other country wear American clothing and use red solo cups at their parties?
  • thex10 11y ago
    That's the best example of all, pal. There aren't candidates of arguably the most powerful nation in the world getting airtime to millions to holler about deporting your kind just because you're Mexican To elaborate: It's cherry-picking. Why should people pick fun/cute/cool parts of a culture without considering the utter bullshit hurled at that culture for it existing?
    • littletimmy 11y ago
      I don't understand your point. Can you rephrase it? Are you saying that just because people say bad things about Mexican culture no one should be allowed to participate in it?
      • ForHackernews 11y ago
        There's a difference between participating in a culture and crudely caricaturing it.
        • littletimmy 11y ago
          Is there a way to participate in a culture that does not open one up immediately to the charge of caricaturing it?
          • ForHackernews 11y ago
            I see we've reached the point in the discussion where HN readers demand for human interpersonal relationships to be spelled out with the same rigor as an RFC.
• fweespeech 11y ago
  > Is this where we pretend that there's no history of racial grievances at Yale (or Mizzou), and that history started afresh the minute before this confrontation? An honest accounting of what happened starts with the fact that there is a long history that had people simmering. Free speech is a wonderful principle, but it conflicts with making students, particularly minority students, not feel alienated. For someone who drags up history, are you really going to pretend that Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Assembly aren't the reason we can protest in the first place? https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/rights-protesters https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/rights-protesters http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/civil-rights-first-amendment http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/civil-rights-first-amend... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker_v._Des_Moines_Independent_Community_School_District https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker_v._Des_Moines_Independe... etc.
• jqm 11y ago
  Question: You don't think the behavior of minorities (groups of blacks in this case) sometimes makes white people feel alienated? You know what.... all races behave badly sometimes and make others feel bad. It's not a white phenomenon. People should be more sensitive towards others. But others should also be less quick to take offense at every perceived or imagined slight. That's just how it's gotta be for this all to work out. Otherwise it's a cycle of negativity with no forgiveness and no progress towards an integrated society.
• slirpee 11y ago
  > If you're curious about Yale, imagine, for starters, how living in, say, Calhoun hall would feel if you're black Repackaging a Reddit comment I wrote: Actually, let's back up a bit and talk about Elihu Yale, the namesake of the university, who was a slave trader[0]. Anyone who is oppressed by living in a Calhoun building, should have first thought about how they'd feel about spending years on a campus named after a slave trader, putting his name on their résumés and personal history for the rest of their lives, giving money to such an institution (either now, or later as alumni donations), building a career on the name of a man who enslaved their people. Yale has also been funded by slavery[1]. To be honest I had no idea this was the case, but I had a feeling if you dig deep enough, pretty much everything has a past that is looked down upon from the modern view. Bottom line is that if you're looking for offense, you'll find it everywhere. You can decide to either reboot the entire society because it's all irrevocably tainted by people with some negative elements of their legacies, you can choose not to go to Yale because it's named after a slaver, or you can accept that it's just a name after all and doesn't have any actual oppressive effects on your life. [0] http://digitalhistories.yctl.org/2014/11/01/elihu-yale-was-a-slave-trader/ http://digitalhistories.yctl.org/2014/11/01/elihu-yale-was-a... [1] http://www.yaleslavery.org/Endowments/e2schol.html http://www.yaleslavery.org/Endowments/e2schol.html
• Bluestrike2 11y ago
  I don’t think anyone is arguing that there’s no history of racial grievances at these institutions, at least as far as informed discussion goes. The closest I’ve seen, aside from some neanderthal Facebook comments, was along the lines of something like “it happened, but it doesn’t matter now.” And while I don’t agree with that notion, free speech at least gives me the ability to debate it with such individuals. One of the more interesting philosophy courses centered on whiteness and critical race theory, and was taught by a brilliant professor named George Yancy. I remember talking with him as we headed out of the building one night, and we were debating terminology after he had shared an interesting story about walking down the sidewalk while traffic was backed up beside him. As we was walking, he noticed that a number of drivers were reaching over and locking their doors (again) as this black man in suit with a red hat was walking near them. A really stupid little action on their part that made them feel safer—conscious or not—but one that was kind of mind-boggling to him as he walked. It wasn’t just one car, but a large number of them even though it looked like the doors were already locked. Racist? Definitely; he was shoehorned into this stereotype of a “black gangster/thug” that might try to carjack them in broad daylight or otherwise threaten them. They took preventive action to protect themselves from this perceived threat, and the general consensus was to label the action as racist. But the question I asked him was whether the term worked in this context. When we hear the term “racist,” the first thing that comes to mind are images of the KKK. Lynchings. Slavery. Overseers trying to “cure” drapetomania (mental illness causing slaves to run away) by “whipping the devil” out of their slaves (interesting how the cure for supposed illness matched up with their normal practices so perfectly). No one wants to be lumped into that sort of company, so the immediate response is to deny it. “I’m no racist! [insert reasons X,Y,Z here].” He felt that there’s definitely a difference, but that the label still worked because it sought to critique racism in its less obvious forms. In other words, the shock of having one’s actions compared to the horrors of the past helps pin down racial privilege behind the scenes that isn’t even given conscious thought. My argument was that the term is so loaded that it prevents that introspection from occurring. Worse yet, it whips up a frantic frenzy to avoid the charge that serves to further mask that privilege from being seen. Consider an authoritarian state where neighbors are in a rush to inform on one another, constantly pushing further in an all-out effort to avoid becoming the focus of the state’s secret police themselves. Rather than address the substance of the critique, the individual being critiqued is so concerned with the label associated with the critique--"racist"--that they avoid hearing the critique at all. The end result is that two groups find themselves looking at the same term and using two radically different definitions for it that are, effectively, mutually exclusive. And the worst part is that neither group realizes that they give such radically different meaning to the same term, leading to confusion and pain for all involved while stifling even the hope for meaningful progress. Neither group will ever be able to fully understand these differences without sustained dialogue between them. That dialogue may be painful at times, but it’s still necessary if you hope to see any sort of change or progress. That’s where free speech comes in. The students at Yale, and those supporting the broader push for “safe spaces” in general, are missing this point to the point where they're undermining the very progress they seek to achieve. Not just because they’re mocked in the media, but because they’re preventing it from occurring in the first place. What good is it to push for everyone to feel “safe” on campus (again, it comes down to how we define yet another word) if those outside that group don’t understand what it is that makes them feel unsafe in the first place. Authoritarian efforts to force this issue, to carve out the so-called safe space by squashing other voices can only end in one thing: the creation of a new, sacred cow. You aren’t creating a dialogue that fosters genuine understanding and respect. You’re purposely avoiding it, which only serves to take the sacred cow in your midst and have it set aside and ignored out of fear of giving offense. The end result is that those you believe to be marginalized are marginalized further. Nowhere in the Christakis email does she “salt the wound.” It’s an intellectual effort to engage a debate about Halloween costumes and the nature of interpersonal communication in this context. Agree with her or disagree as you wish. But engage her points; don’t make up this interpretation in order to justify ignoring and silencing her in the first place. Race relations and progress with them have never been easy. Much of their history is written in pain and blood. Why would anyone be so foolish as to think that you can force this issue and avoid the discomfort that comes with engaging with one another? It's an attempt to take a shortcut that avoids the very reasons for the journey itself. Even if you succeed, you only manage to mask the very issues that concerned you in the first place.