This article reads like something from the Onion. This can't be real...but it does bear a strange resemblance to the kind of tyrannical crap we see oozing from college campuses these days. You know, those bastions of full-flower 'progressivism (a/k/a cultural devolution and dissolution)'?
UMass RA's rail against 'crude' Harambe references
Over the Labor Day weekend, Resident Assistants at the University of Massachusetts purportedly released an announcement stating that “crude” references to the deceased gorilla Harambe will be considered racist attacks against African Americans.
In the statement, which was leaked to Twitter Monday, Resident Assistants calling themselves Ryan and Colleen inform students that “any negative remarks regarding ‘Harambe’ will be seen as a direct attack to our campus’s African-American community,” and warn them to “be careful of what gets written on your whiteboards, as well as what you write on them.”
Sure, the reaction by school administration can get a bit overwrought, but to pretend like comparisons between apes and black people is not a time-honoured tradition of racists, and that the recent Harambe "jokes" are not being used to make "subtle" attacks against black people, would be ignoring the obvious.
Well, sure. If one is bent on finding a bogeyman, eventually one will. Either that or invent a bogeyman out of whole cloth.
What worries me the most about stories like this is that there's not much of a leap between an attempt to cleanse the world of racism, and an attempt to cleanse the world of racists.
I don't see what you're getting at with your bogeyman comment. Can you elaborate on that a bit?
I don't know about an "attempt to cleanse the world of racists". What I do know is that when people make racist remarks, whether overt, which is fairly rare, or "coded", which is very common, then they should be held accountable for those remarks. If you know of another way to combat racism, other than dealing directly with racist people, then I'd be glad to hear it.
Can't say that I have...
As it should be. The world.should be.cleansed of them.
That goes along with a conversation HERE.
Really depends on exactly what you consider a racist to be, and what you mean by cleansing, but yeah, it should be.
1) It's called scapegoating or 'other seeking.' It's the kind of sociological phenomenon responsible for the wholesale oppression of Native Americans, Jews, the Irish, the Chinese, etc. This kind of us-versus-them mentality almost always leads to pogroms. "Racists are BAD! Racists are SCUM! Racists are sub-human! Let's round 'em up and"...you can take it from there.
2) What puts us in the position of deciding who should hold them to account, and how they should be held accountable? Have you ever said or harbored a 'racist' or derogatory word/thought about a minority (or simply ostracized) group? If so, for how long shall we hold you to account? Forever? Consider what happened to Paula Deen for something she said 30 years ago.
And I would suggest combating racism the way it was done by the original pioneers of the Civil Rights movement. They seemed to have done a pretty decent job without marginalizing racists or creating a pariah class.
Who decides? Even then, if you're gonna put people to death for being racists, shouldn't you be able to clearly define it?
Reading Harry's response above, maybe my earlier point makes a bit more sense. :-)
How? In what ways?
1) That's where I thought you were headed. Are you really trying to make the move that racists, i.e. the ones doing the oppressing of minorities, are really the ones under attack? I mean, I can understand that there's this fear on the part of white people that as their cultural power fades, that their heads will be on the chopping block. But let's be real here; refusing to accept intolerance (whether it's in the form of "whites only" water fountains, or a barrage of insulting memes) is not itself a form of intolerance, and it's not a slippery slope to white genocide.
2) Everyone needs to first hold themselves accountable, and at the very least try to notice when they are engaging in behaviour that's based on racial prejudice, stereotypes, etc. One way to do this is to start listening to what people in these oppressed groups are saying, and trying to empathize, without immediately looking for a way to dismiss, or refute, or debunk them. As for myself, yeah, I was brought up with racism being the norm, and I absorbed a lot of racist baggage through osmosis. It can take a lifetime to unpack all that. As for Paula Deen, she was publicly embarrassed, and why not? It's certainly not put her out on the street, or her head in a noose. Why shouldn't she be a little ashamed?
3) The original civil rights movement was only a few decades ago. Jim Crow was repealed only 50 years ago. I don't understand this move of trying to defend racists as though they are some kind of rare endangered species that needs protection. Yes there's a lot of animosity towards them, and indeed there are people out there calling for blood. I certainly don't want to see people losing their lives over it, but it needs to be absolutely clear to everyone that racism isn't in any way acceptable. If that means racist people are vilified, guess what, they have the power to stop being racist. If they are worried that they are going to get lynched, that's not as bad as actually being lynched. I think your worry here is, "what if I do or say something that's perceived as racist, when I'm most definitely not?" Well, that's always a possibility. Do your best to unravel whatever prejudices you may have been saddled with, and be respectful of others. Nobody can ask for much more than that. What was it Socrates said, "An honest man cannot be harmed"? Go with that.
Is that what you're really afraid of, that racists will start getting lynched or something?
This is just part of the Meme Wars.
In a manner of speaking, yes!
Gorillas are not a race, they are animals.
Nope.
What scares me, though, is the attitude that it'd be OK to do it. That it's OK to metaphorically if not literally 'put people to death' on account of harboring unpopular views. You may not see the slow creep in that direction, but I do.
Nothing funny about a dead animal.
Oh, my! This is gonna get lengthy. :-)
1) No, I'm not trying to make any such move, but since you brought it up there is the eventual point at which the demographic worm will turn, and that today's 'oppressive' majority (many of whom worked right alongside the pioneers of the Civil Rights movement) will become the oppressed minority. I already see signs of it occurring in this culture. Whether it will culminate in any kind of 'genocide' I cannot say, but there are myriad forms of oppression and justifications for oppression. It's as if we'll never learn.
And you're right: she should be ashamed. We all should be inasmuch as we ever harbored or expressed such thoughts--but at what point does the punishment no longer suit the crime? We're not even asking that yet, and we should. Forgiveness is an integral part of the healing process. If we allow 'transgressors' no chance to redeem themselves, we condemn them to forever being/remaining a pariah class.
3) I'm not trying to 'defend' racists. What I'm trying to explain is that one extreme isn't mitigated by another.
That people in academia are sometimes just wacko. It seems to be an occupational disease.
ROTFLMAO!
