Dickinson, Stop Coddling Myths of On-Campus Oppression
Over four years since graduating, I’m disappointed—though not surprised—to see that Dickinson continues to fall short in preparing its students for entering the real world. An alarming number of professors dogmatically teach their students that they, knowingly or unknowingly, are either oppressed or are oppressors in a zero-sum game on campus to keep the former marginalized. Worse yet, the administration continues to incentivize this thinking, divorced from the real world, by heaping praise and concessions upon those making massive racial, religious and gender generalizations to justify public temper tantrums against, well…racial, religious and gender generalizations.
The world is full of jerks. Jerks do and say things that are obnoxious and insensitive. Sometimes, those obnoxious and insensitive things have to do with race, religion and gender. Unfortunately, some classes teach students that their problems stem from these jerks being in cahoots, whether consciously or subconsciously, to put them down at every turn and there being institutions systematizing this. Teachings from the social justice gospel, which claims to be anti-generalization, would have you then generalize these instances of jerk-dom to entire racial, religious and gender groups to assert that they are in conspiracy to “systematically oppress” other groups. Behind all the big words and complex concepts invented to put an educated face on a paranoid idea, that’s really the bottom line.
Unsurprisingly, every jerk encounter becomes a chronicle in a long saga of “oppression” that demands justice. And if the jerks haven’t been copious lately, “microaggressions”—usually innocuous actions or inactions used as a pretext to invent discrimination where there isn’t any—step in to fill the void. So come the posters and the screaming, and the loud interruptions of Thanksgiving dinner by megaphone. So comes the regression of young adult back into young child, throwing a fit for everyone to see because someone was mean or wrongly perceived to be mean.
College administrators relentlessly kowtow to howls of protest from students who claim that they are systematically marginalized on campus, misleading students to the belief that they can and should get whatever they want in life because they demand it vociferously. But this is expected when the college continues to blindly encourage student activism simply for its own sake.
A now-former Dickinson dean once told me that students shouldn’t have to prove that their feelings of offense are justified. How convenient for those wanting to make gargantuan claims of “systematic oppression” on campus. Anyone can cry foul over anything they like, and poof, no one is allowed to disagree. Never mind that debate and disagreement are key tenets of the liberal arts. The college wouldn’t want violations of anyone’s “safe space,” in which the occupant is always right and no one says mean things.
To those living in the “safe space,” disagreement equals racism, a need to be educated in the oh-so-enlightened ways of the social justice elite, and/or (my favorite) “a failure to empathize” with the plight of the marginalized—it’s completely out of mind that maybe, just maybe, an unbigoted, educated, well-intentioned person could have a legitimate difference of opinion on topics of race, religion and gender.
When I was a freshman, Dickinson proudly asserted that its students were “comfortable with being uncomfortable,” understanding the value of clashing opinions in building intellectual minds. Now, it appears, the college is concerned with making sure that no one gets their feelings hurt. Have four years of higher education really turned into four years of pre-school?
I have some cold, hard news for those riding around on their pink unicorn in the “safe space” – you can’t cocoon yourself from the harshness of the real world. People from all walks of life are going to disagree on sensitive issues, and as a well-educated adult, you are going to be expected to respond to disagreements in a calm and respectful manner. People are going to say mean, nasty, insensitive things, and no one is going to care about your outrage. And not every door-hold, question about heritage and act of kindness is a discriminatory barb in disguise.
The key to effecting positive change is knowing when to make a fuss and stand up for what is right and when to let it go. Unfortunately, Dickinson isn’t encouraging that kind of discerning mindset. At Dickinson College, one of the most open-minded and tolerant communities in the world, one student’s problems are rarely special or more important than anyone else’s.
As Rocky Balboa famously said, “The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows…You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life.”
David Durstewitz '10 • Dec 9, 2015 at 11:11 pm
This is actually about lack of empathy though. You don’t like a response that’s different from yours to problems that are different from yours. It’s easy for you and I to coast along believing that our reactions are the right ones because they’re the ones that are societally condoned, and it takes you more work to understand why a status quo that benefits you can be very bad for others. Academia is rife with censorship by necessity – it’s impossible to teach literally everything there is to learn, and so we filter most out, and our education (like our economy and our governance) is self-perpetuating all the way back to 1776 and earlier. It’s incredibly strong and brave to call out and to act against centuries-pervasive white supremacy, even if you don’t like it.
Sara • Dec 9, 2015 at 7:17 am
This is reminiscent of the Harvard student a few years ago who wrote about his frustrations of being asked to “check” himself and his privilege. Although, not as well written and researched, he makes some interesting points. Maybe Fox News will catch wind of this and praise his brave opposition to the existence of “white privilege.”
Wilson Riccardo • Dec 9, 2015 at 3:15 am
Quite frankly Andrew, perhaps you have misunderstood the concept of listening. Getting screamed at, berated, threatened, etc, is not an example of listening. It is a reverse model of the same discrimination that these people themselves are experiencing. It is the expression of voicelessness. True listening is does not mean that one should stop talking and blindly accept the opinions of the other or accept abuse from the other side of the aisle. Rather, it is the deescalation of tensions and a straightforward recognition of the humanity of both parts of the conversation in order to find common ground and move forward in a way which suits both parties. Listening is a two-way street.
You try to make the point that “we’ve seen what happens when reasonable people try to behave like adults and “listen”. However, I’d ask you to consider the following: what determines a “reasonable person”? The problem with this conversation is that the two sides (for the sake of simplicity, we’ll keep it to two hypothetical sides) are working from completely different assumptions of what determines reasonable and rational. Again, what may be rational for you may be completely justified, but at the same time, you have to recognize that other people coming from different backgrounds or social contexts or whatever will have a different definition of rationality based on their own experiences, and that the rationality of the other has just as much validity as your own rationality because both derive from authentic human experience.
Refusing to concede legitimacy to the social grievances of others has one particularly nasty effect: you delegitimize yourself. That is, by refusing to accept that others have a problem, you put yourself in a position where you must defend yourself and your ideals rather than accept the possibility that you may have a few holes in your bucket. By proclaiming that you are right for one reason or another rather than by actively and logically justifying your position, you are refusing conventional, rational, civil means of discourse. This has the effect of radicalizing the other position to the point that conflict on some level is inevitable. In other words, in denying access to others to the same means of cultural legitimization to which you avail yourself, you are stating that the other does not have a place in the conversation, which is discrimination. I don’t want to justify the screaming and berating that often takes place, but at the same time, the fact that it is taking place suggests that there is an imbalance that should be addressed.
The main problem with your position, and with Matthew’s, is that you assume that that which constitutes ‘rationality’ is the same across the board. It is not. I agree that it is often confusing and frustrating to try to figure out the ins and outs of why people get upset about different things. I am also sometimes completely taken aback by claims that I find absurd. However, when confronted with these situations, rather than outright refuse them, I see them as opportunities to figure out why I think these claims are absurd, and what it says about me as a person.
I’d like to return to your point about reasonable people. I tend to define a reasonable person as someone who can justify their position through clear and formally sound logic. I do not define a reasonable person as someone who has arrived at a particular conclusion which is then taken as “truth”, or a fixed moral point from which all further reason flows.
I am not and will not ever say that you shouldn’t believe what you believe, and that you shouldn’t defend what you believe in, but it is important to recognize that everybody has something to say that they believe in as passionately as you do, and that if some of these positions don’t have value, then none of them do.
Andrew • Dec 8, 2015 at 9:50 pm
Wilson- we’ve seen what happens when reasonable people try to behave like adults and “listen” or treat all of this as a legitimate political discourse: they get screamed at, berated, and threatened with being forced out of their posts. Matt is making the point that instantly conceding legitimacy to every single claim of discrimination or bias, no matter how big a microscope one needs to detect it, encourages a boundless victimhood mentality that no amount of rational counter argument is going to dispel.
Wilson Riccardo • Dec 8, 2015 at 8:52 pm
Dear Matthew,
You are right. The real world is hard, and full of jerks. These jerks “do and say things that are obnoxious and insensitive.” However, what I feel that you fail to consider is that there are reasons for these obnoxious and insensitive actions, both personal and systematic.
Let’s consider a hypothetical situation. I read an article recently discussing the attempt to introduce non-gender specific third person pronouns in the english language to describe people who do not subscribe to the binary notions of gender. I personally have mixed feelings about this, as it is a very strange proposition for me to consider, but at the same time, I also do not feel that I have the authority to impose a definition upon somebody that is not of this person’s choosing. I certainly would not like to find myself in a situation where people attempt to define me without my own input.
You point out in your column that “to those living in the “safe space,” disagreement equals racism, a need to be educated in the oh-so-enlightened ways of the social justice elite, and/or (my favorite) “a failure to empathize” with the plight of the marginalized.” On one hand, I can’t argue with your idea that these claims of discrimination or, as you put it, a “failure to empathize”, lend themselves to a complete shut-down of the social discourse, but on the other, I strongly disagree with your assertion that these differences of opinion are not racist, discriminatory, and, indeed, a failure to empathize. I believe that, while differences of opinion exist, it is necessary to call these differences what they are and try to understand why they exist. After all, one can’t argue that racism doesn’t exist and have real societal consequences simply by stating that it doesn’t exist or have societal consequences. If one party feels discriminated against, clearly a reason for this exists. However, rather than each side of the discourse taking offense, these instances should inspire further conversation on the subject, an investigation into why these issues are causing problems, and, if we’re lucky, perhaps provoke steps toward a joint resolution of the conflict.
What really inspired me to respond to your article was the following: “I have some cold, hard news for those riding around on their pink unicorn in the “safe space” – you can’t cocoon yourself from the harshness of the real world.” To implicate that it is wrong or inappropriate to demand justice for offenses committed against oneself, whether consciously or as a product of the social dynamics of our society, runs contrary to your own statement that “people from all walks of life are going to disagree on sensitive issues, and as a well-educated adult, you are going to be expected to respond to disagreements in a calm and respectful manner.” Refusing to at least further explore of these claims of offense is the opposite of a calm and respectful manner as it denies the space for these individuals or groups to take part in their own social definition on their own terms rather than yours. Consider, for a moment, that someone doesn’t like your haircut or the type of shoes you like to wear, and continually tells you so, both explicitly and implicitly through their actions. You’d like to explain that you just like to wear Nikes, but this person refuses to even look you in the eye. Sounds like a bummer, right?
You are correct when you write that “the key to effecting positive change is knowing when to make a fuss and stand up for what is right and when to let it go.” However, you fail to realize that what may be right for you may be a gross injustice for someone else. This does not mean that you should change your opinions, but you should at least recognize that what in your mind makes you right comes from the same place as that which in the mind of the other make you wrong. Rather than denying a discussion of the problem, you should try to examine why you think you’re right, and give the other party an opportunity to do the same. Rather than talk, you should listen.
Sincerely,
Wilson Riccardo ’12