Wow. Long read, but worth it.
This quote is only a minor part of a very much more complex essay, but it struck me:
“It was, like, one day I was at college having fun, and the next day someone called me the N-word, and I had no avenue,” she says. She has on a red flannel button-down shirt, open over a tank top. There’s a crisp red kerchief around her head, knotted above a pair of hip blue-and-brown-tortoised glasses. “My parents don’t have the funds to drive to Oberlin when I’m crying and ready to self-harm.
[…]
Adams goes on, “Me trying to appeal to people? Ain’t working. Me trying to be the quiet, sit-back-and-be-chill-and-do-my-work black person? Doesn’t work. Me trying to be friends with non-black folks? Doesn’t work.”
[…]
“I literally am so tired of learning about Marx, when he did not include race in his discussion of the market!” She shrugs incredulously. “As a person who plans on returning to my community, I don’t want to assimilate into middle-class values. I’m going home, back to the ’hood of Chicago, to be exactly who I was before I came to Oberlin.”
What does an inclusive educational institution do when they are presented with students who respond to difficult challenges with aggression and overt racism, who are attending with the stated intention of undergoing no personal development whatsoever? Students who demand that the college make fundamental systemic changes to suit completely incompatible, conflicting emotional needs of individual students? Black students who don’t acknowledge Jewish students who don’t acknowledge transgender students; multiplications of intersectionality that can only unite in their contempt for straight WASP students?
“Non-negotiable demands” that include one for racially segregated “safe spaces”. Honestly, the whole thing reminds me of the Taliban blowing up the Buddha statues. The cultivation of an attitude that is unable to accept historicity without aggressive attempts at demolition, rather than reformation, of existing culture.
Sensitivities seemed to reach a peak at Emory when students complained of being traumatized after finding “TRUMP 2016” chalked on sidewalks around campus. The Trump-averse protesters chanted, “Come speak to us, we are in pain!,” until Emory’s president wrote a letter promising to “honor the concerns of these students.”
Hunh.
There’s a difference when the request is coming from a minority to have some refuge from the majority.
White-driven segregation is an attempt to keep white people in power.
Other-race-driven segeration is an attempt to find some respite from white people in power.
Theoretically.
Well, when I think of a safe space, I think of a place where you can say what you want and do what you want, as long as it harms no other. I don’t think of a place where people of good will are explicitly excluded if they aren’t the right skin color or ideology. That kind of sponsorship of intolerance seems remarkably unsafe, to me.
When I think of a safe space, I think of a women’s shelter as the model.
Besides Jughead Jones of Riverdale? Nope.
…but that story is making his point tho isn’t it?
A woman’s shelter should be a safe space for women… and it was made other.
A safe space for women should be that, for women. A safe space for black students at a university should be just that, a safe space for black students. Including other people negates the “safe space” concept.
I’m not entirely sure how that is relevant. The point is that a shelter for women ought to stay for women. The person who wrote that opinion is under the mistaken impression that one of the women at her shelter was a confused man rather than a woman. There is a need to be sensitive about that because of the vulnerability of the women in the shelter, but I think everyone on all sides seems to agree that women’s shelters ought to be for women.
I don’t think you would encounter the same kind of issue in a space for black students since I’ve never heard of individuals identifying as “transracial” in the same sense as transgender.
The idea of black-only spaces sets off alarm bells in my head in a way that woman-only spaces doesn’t but I think I’m probably better off listening to people who feel those spaces are valuable to them than trying to argue against their existence based on theory.
Well, there is that one incident, that one was problematic. Mostly the internet jumped down her throat, but Kareem Abdul Jabbar wrote an interesting defense (the link).
He’s rather snarky throughout, however. Which I think underlies his point that it’s hard to tell where one thing leaves off and another begins.
Back to the article on the women’s shelter – the commenter who researched the author found some interesting info.
Problematic and profitable! She’s writing a book on race now…
Speaking of Marx, it seemed as though the students did see themselves as having a job to play-- Minority at Oberlin. And they just went on strike. Class issues may be at the heart of this conflict.
When I went to college-- at an impoverished liberal Arts college at Ohio, the admissions office had recruited a deaf student, and the college spent an awful lot of resources on accommodations. From one perspective, this was long overdue.
Apparently, the student had demanded that the college house his tropical fish collection-- so they did. And the student was negligent, and flooded the room, and below that room were housed new computers for the biology department.
Good times.
Well, the end of the article - the “I wonder if transgender activists understand how this affects people on the fringes of society” thing is such bullshit. Because transgender people are too hoity-toity and well-to-do to care about marginalized people. If only they’d leave their gated communities and rich galas and spend some time with victims of violence!
Stylistically, I don’t think it was a good idea for John Horgan to cite his own column multiple times when rubbishing these scientific or pseudoscientific ideas.
If you check out the non-negotiable demands, the “exclusive Black” spaces being demanded are for “Africana identifying students” (demand #7 under subsection FINANCIAL, HEALTH AND WELLNESS BEING OF BLACK STUDENTS). There’s no specific octaroon/quadroon/one-drop purity test given, just as in the women’s shelter story there was no test given for female reproductive organs.
I don’t have any problem identifying with my distant African heritage. Olduvai gorge is as real to me as Stonehenge. But I’m pretty sure that the people behind this petition would not tolerate my presence in their safe space, and that I would very much not be safe there, because of my skin tone.
Thus, some may find the link relevant. I recommend you do check out the student demands, they are quite interesting.
Women’s shelters exist because men go to great lengths to track down fleeing former sexual partners and do physical harm to them. Are white students and professors tracking down students of color and doing them harm? If not, the idea of carving out “Blacks Only” spaces from the areas paid for by all students tuition seems less like protection and more like blatant retaliatory racism.
The request (was it one of the demans? I’m working from the article, which I only just now got to the end of) to be paid for activism ($8.xx/hour) was … interesting.
Receive credit for activism, I could see that flying.
But being paid for it?
Like everybody else who gets paid to do activism, so we don’t have to work at our jobs?
And… Really. What sort of activism would it be if you’re getting paid for it. I can understand the professional activist in a non-profit organization, getting re-imbursed for their skill and expertise in organising, managing finances, etc. etc. etc.
Yes, yes they are. And they’re getting away with it. I have no problem giving any oppressed group a space to talk about their shared experiences without having to worry about white peoples feelings.
Also, I feel like maybe this is more about colourism than university student groups for you… colourism is fucked up, and the politics around skin tone is even more fucked up. I got nothing. 
