a day brightener…check out this beautiful rendition of Stand by Me by some incredibly talented Yale students of color…I’m going to post and then go watch it again. https://youtu.be/xYXwYR8iZ_E
Here is the video of Dartmouth Vice Provost Ameer discussing the protest with the protesters. She states that one of her goals is to provide security for the people involved with the protest since they apparently felt threatened while they were disrupting students studying in the library.
and again, and again, and again…
I see the Yale administration’s response a validation of students’ concerns, so that should put the question to rest whether there is indeed a systematic problem contributing to the racial tension on campus. It can be taken as an encouraging message by students of color in other colleges if they believe the student movement was what it took to make these changes happen (so fast).
I don’t see how any perceived marginalization or perceived sense of being “other” will be improved by self-segregation in a “marked space.” What racist events have occurred recently on Princeton’s campus from which they need to be “safe”?
TheGFG,
Your assessment of MLK Jr., like that of many in mainstream American society who got the sanitized version of MLK Jr.'s legacy from K-12 and mainstream mass media is based on an incomplete and watered down portrayal with many omissions…especially in his later years.
It also ignored the actual historical record when he wasn’t conciliatory or considered “reasonable” to many mainstream Whites of the time…including some of his self-proclaimed allies and that he was viewed as a threat by the then prevailing establishment.
A reason why he wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” where he explicitly disagrees with those “allies” to be “more moderate” and “reasonable” in waiting for the courts and states why he felt justified in taking direct action in breaking laws as an act of civil disobedience to protest their unjust nature.
That’s the reason why the mass media of the time tended to be overwhelmingly critical of him and why agencies like J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI kept a thick dossier on him and made several attempts to publicly discredit him.
The sanitized legacy of MLK Jr. and assessments based on them like yours often forgets his more radical confrontational side which was present in the historical record even as early as the mid '50s. And he became more radical in later years when he openly denounced the Vietnam War as an imperialist war, advocated for a living wage and unionization, and more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/martin-luther-king-was-a-_1_b_6498740.html
This is all in his speeches/writings and historical records if one goes beyond what one learned/remembered from one’s usually limited and often blinkered K-12 or sometimes even one’s freshman US history class taken to fulfill distribution requirements.
I’ve read the majority of his writings, cobrat, including the Letter from Birmingham Jail, and wrote a major paper on his methods. The Letter from Birmingham Jail is a rhetorical masterpiece in the same vein as the writings of the Apostle Paul, who not only was highly educated but who was much admired by conservative white Americans of King’s time. Furthermore, in that letter King does not advocate any action that departs from his non-violent philosophy. The letter is mostly a defense of his timing. King’s writing is rational, calm, and perfectly polite and deferential to his audience. If you call peaceful civil disobedience radical, then he was radical. Radical then meant violence, like the Black Panthers advocated. In today’s climate, I’d say the term radical still implies threats and violent action.
The issue was back in the mid-late '50s. his disagreement with the timing along with openly advocating direct action in breaking laws he considered unjust rather than defer to “waiting for the courts” WAS already extremely radical for that time period.
Especially to southern Whites of that era who expected African-Americans like Dr. King to not only be law-abiding, but exceedingly obsequious in doing so as failing to do both could easily be arbitrarily interpreted in their perspective as “being too uppity”. He may have been seemingly polite in his language in that letter, but he certainly wasn’t deferential as he rejected the counsel of those he was writing to “wait for the courts” in favor of direct action of breaking unjust laws in the name of civil disobedience…a course they opposed which prompted him to write the letter in the first place.
Request: Could you please start a separate thread on historical stuff (MLK or what have you) and let this thread remain about the current events on the college campuses.
Thanks!
Jym626,
The historical stuff is directly related to this thread as there are many eerie similarities between how many mainstream Whites in the '50s and '60s perceived activism by marginalized groups/students as with MLK. Jr. and the Civil Rights movement and the reactions we’ve seen on this very thread towards current activism on campus or involving marginalized groups.
It’s not irrelevant to illustrate and point out those parallels…
No, Cobrat, it is off topic. PLEASE start a separate thread. Posters are talking about what is happening in the colleges TODAY. Please - start a tread on historical events, but don’t derail the current conversations.
Posters are talking about Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Tufts, even South Park- but they are talking about current events. Stay current.
Personally I hope this doesn’t become another cobrat v jym thread.
But I agree with jym that staying with the current topic would be best.
I am staying on topic by using historical examples to illustrate parallels between reactions by the prevailing mainstream White dominated American opinion on political/student activists from marginalized groups in the recent past such as MLK and Civil Rights and the reactions being exhibited towards activists from marginalized groups and their causes being exhibited by conservative mass media and even on this very thread from some posters.
It is eerie how similar the attitudes and some of the very same arguments are when comparing them and they should be part of the discussion, however discomfiting it may be for some who don’t want to examine how closely they are resembling those who we now know were on the wrong side of history.
I hope so too, OHmom-- I have zero interest in engaging-- just asking, again to stay on topic, and not turn this thread into yet another thread that gets derailed with information/lectures about historical events, the French Revolution, Huns, Goths or whatever. I am absolutely serious about starting a SEPARATE thread, just like others have done for topics such as the stock market, retirement, book of the month, ets. SUrely there are some who might like to talk about history. But it doesn’t need to invade multiple threads. So please Cobrat, don’t try to justify why the side stories or historical lectures are appropriate. Start another thread to discuss it. This is a thread, in the parents forum, about co9llege related issues. Discussed largely by parents and/or current college students, who are interested in discussing this topic.
The message is important, but the delivery is also important. I do think most people want to be good human beings and are willing to consider the views of others when they are presented respectfully and intelligently. An advocate can be impassioned and effective without alienating the very people he is trying to persuade. Regrettably, there was not a lot of articulate expression and argumentation on display in the Yale courtyard or in the Dartmouth library, or at least not in the clips being highlighted by the media. The students sounded more like Rev. Jeremiah White than Rev. King, and yes, I think people expect better of elite school students. A few years ago a speaker came to our local high school for Black History Month. His speech was full of juvenile insults toward white people, eg. that they have chicken lips. If he wanted to convince white people that he and his people’s history deserved their attention, that was not the way to do it.
A while back I posted on a CC thread an excellent video of a speech by a gay rights activist. I had never given much thought to gender issues, but generally held a more negative than positive opinion of homosexuality, and definitely a negative opinion of the aggressive, in-your-face LGBT activists I had seen and heard to that point. But the woman in the video was so reasonable and well-spoken, and above all her message was so empathetic and respectful, that I listened to her whole speech and came away with a lot of respect for and understanding of her message. Had she screamed insults at me, and threatened she’d make heterosexuals feel unsafe like she had felt unsafe, or whatever, she would have lost me.
Incidentally, there’s a school of thought within some corners of academia and in political activist circles that what you’re expecting above would be perceived by them negatively as a form of tone-policing often exercised by those with greater situational privilege against those with lesser situational privilege.
The first time I came across this was from a few Feminist activists and online discussions from a few grad student friends after college. Here’s some quotations from one online site which I can’t link to which may shed some light on where those student activists are coming from regarding what has been perceived as a double standard regarding the emphasis on the behavior of marginalized student protesters:
Not saying I agree with all of it as I do have some sympathies for the idea that one gets better responses with honey than vinegar and I tend to be wary of heavy emotionalism.
However, I am also well-aware that when someone is living the life as part of a marginalized group where his/her identity, experiences, and arguments are much more likely to be dismissed, ridiculed, and/or ignored on an ongoing regular basis by virtue of being part of that group rather than their merits…it can be exceedingly stressful and frustrating.
People subjected to regular stressful/frustrating situations where there’s little/no letup aren’t likely to always be able to maintain the reserve and energy to maintain the facade of politeness when faced with more stressful/frustrating situations or people they perceive as being direct instigators of them.
The above would apply to persons who were actually the victims of real prejudice and legitimate racism. Yale students like shrieking girl, who have enjoyed privileged lives from birth all the way through to her opportunities at Yale, do not get a pass on tone. Neither do Princeton students who are being “offended” by the name of a dead guy on Princeton property. They can accuse critics of tone policing all they want, but they need to decide whether their goal is to vent or bring about change. If it’s the latter, then they need to adjust their tactics to what works. People aren’t labeling them spoiled merely to be dismissive of their point of view. These students are earning that title by their bratty antics and ridiculous charges of micro aggression. I think this thread indicates that all good people are outraged by real racism and would universally condemn it and support remedies. We just don’t happen to think that removing Wilson’s name qualifies.
I think that we–as parents who probably all lose it from time to time and have children who do the same–could model civil behavior and stop using the words “shrieking girl” to describe a young woman who had the misfortune of losing her temper while being filmed (without her knowledge or consent). Sure, it’s accurate, but it’s also unforgiving.
Shelly Kagan in today’s Yale Daily News: “Kagan acknowledged that it can be difficult for students to exercise decorum when discussing sensitive subjects, which may have led to some of the criticism of student activists. In his own conversations with students these past weeks, he said, his temper flared and he said things he later regretted. Therefore, while Kagan disagreed with the students’ behavior during the Christakis confrontation, he is sympathetic given the emotional stakes of the discussions.”
This is a good article, by the way, that gets at the nuances of the different sides of the argument. It’s worth a read. http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/11/20/faculty-divided-on-free-speech/
What shall we call her instead, then? One reason for continuing with that epithet (which CCer’s didn’t create, btw) was to avoid using her real name so as to protect her, which I think is being fair. Another is because the name has symbolic value since it represents the overall childish nature of the recent campus protests. She is an adult and as a Yale student in 2105 she was not naive about technology, since for years now plenty of young people have had to live with a public record of their activities that were recorded on cell phones. Indeed, she was openly engaging in protest behavior (chalking and yelling) in just as public of a space or more so than a chartered bus or frat house. Students in those places, who may also have assumed privacy, have been filmed without their permission while acting reprehensibly and were eventually named and nationally disgraced. That is not to say I think the latter individuals should have been protected, nor that the Yale girl’s behavior compares to that, but unfortunately our society is a different place for everyone as it relates to privacy.