Eric Shive’s bigotry has reached a new pinnacle. In his column, republished by the uber-racist Cornell Review, he made a derogatory reference to “pasty white kids” who play Dungeons and Dragons on Friday nights. As a member of the white community, I am enraged at this stereotypical caricature, and I join the Student Assembly in full support of their resolution to rework the campus code to prevent further hate speech like this.
OK, so I am obviously not serious. However, Shive’s article actually did use this caricature of pasty white kids to draw an interesting comparison between these white kids’ self-imposed isolation and that of the 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 that both racism and nuclear war are undesirable outcomes, making them easy to exploit. Imagine a debate won not by the one with the best arguments which address the specific topic at hand, but the one whose positions are 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 for Black Students United. They basically enumerated a million different things wrong with Cornell, blaming it all on racism. However, they did not 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 — a hot-button political issue on campus — they label it as yet another manifestation of racism rather than a legitimate position.
Clearly, then, this article, which disagrees with these liaisons, is not a manifestation of my argumentation and writing skills. It is just a manifestation of the racism and white privilege lurking deep inside my soul. So I might as well stop writing now.
In reality, while you can criticize Shive’s word choice, the crux of his original article is not racist at all. Shive clearly relegated his criticism to a specific, politically-motivated subset of the minority community — 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 protests against The Cornell Review.
So now that I have explained why Shive’s article is not racist, the protestors must now rely on the second “racist” article and argue that a Muslim has written intolerant things about Muslims. By stating that an arranged marriage with a first cousin is a bad idea.
Perhaps it makes sense that invoking “racism” and “diversity” makes me skeptical. Accusing detractors of hating diversity if they do not support the protestors is like saying someone is un-Christian if they do not support Pat Robertson.
Just as Pat Robertson has distorted Christianity, these protestors have distorted diversity. And there is no greater distortion than the use of diversity as a means to attack freedom of speech, and thus the principles of the Constitution.
I was not surprised at all when The Sun opposed the Student Assembly’s initial attempt to punish The Cornell Review by stripping “Cornell” from their name. While I did not know anything about the editorial until I read The Sun that day, I certainly did not expect a group of journalists, no matter how they view The Review, to support a resolution which tramples on free speech and freedom of the press.
I am not the only who notices this. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is monitoring The Student Assembly’s latest attempt to rewrite the Campus Code of Conduct to censor future “offensive” speech. To censor a well-stated argument for being offensive is not only antithetical to freedom, but it is also an illogical appeal to emotion over reason.
Even if an argument is somewhat misguided, censoring it does not do any good. Shive’s link between the existence of “angry minorities” and affirmative action is speculative, but his argument bears many similarities to other, better arguments.
A few years ago, L.A. Times Columnist Gregory Rodriguez made the case that the problems with academic scholarship lie not with leftists and Marxists but with “craven emotional warriors in the arena of identity politics.” Rodriguez identified ethnic studies departments as one 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 faith in the value of multiculturalism, not evaluating a work in an objective, scholarly manner, but inadvertently holding it to a lower standard because it promotes multiculturalism.
Applying good research to the context of multiculturalism when applicable can make it better. Poor research with references to multiculturalism is still poor, even if the author is not white.
But inevitably, attempts to introduce oversight to correct these problems can lead to more accusations of racism. Just look at what happened when a plagiarism scandal led to the firing of Columbia University Professor Madonna Constantine, a well-known personality on the issue of race. Although she clearly was in the wrong, she desperately attempted to get off the hook by raising the specter of racism.
And no matter what I say, people like her think they can still be right because of white privilege. I am white, and therefore I am responsible for hundreds of years of discrimination, so I have no credibility.
Now I am not a student of color, so I cannot invoke racism to help my cause. And I was not born into a rich family with slave owners as ancestors, so I cannot take advantage of this “white privilege” that supposedly lies within me. In the end, I can only rely on the strength of 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.