Your Free Speech Argument is A Silencing Tactic

Over the last few weeks I’ve had to endure less than stellar writing that was bound together by a faulty premise from otherwise reputable magazines or websites with a stellar track record of producing excellent quality material. The magazines and websites in question? The Atlantic and The Daily Beast.

The Atlantic’s resident Libero-Conservative pest, Conor Friedersdorf, who has become rather notorious for penning articles which seek to blame those being marginalized and stereotyped because they do not ask nicely for those who are marginalizing them to stop; penned an article in which he attempted to make the case that the problem at Yale is one of “free speech” and that the students who are protesting are “bullying” those who wish to dress in Black/Redface. His article serves to exonerate those who want to exclude Black students from full participation in University activities. Of course, the problem with such a position is immediately clear, it absolves those in power of the responsibility they have in ensuring that the University is a space that can be shared by all of its inhabitants free of undue aggravation by the campus culture. He even makes the leap to judge that the administration is in no position to have to do anything about the continual aggravation and psychological abuse that these students endure year after year at universities like Yale and Missouri, but instead heaps blame upon the students who are protesting, largely because they’re not protesting in a “nice” tone of voice. Years of not being heard or shown any concern will do that to you. You begin to care much less about how your voice sounds and much more about if your voice is being heard, tone be damned.

What Friedersdorf misses here is the power dynamics between the students and the administration, in that the administration though now under intense pressure and scrutiny largely because of the well documented problems at Yale, and the fact that Yale now has its first-ever Black dean, understandably being placed under pressure by Yale’s Black student body to represent them in the face of said injustices; the University’s administration could very well dismiss the student concerns and remain in firm control of the direction of the students’ education. By contrast, the students are essentially at the mercy of if the administration will hear the pain and the frustration of decades of problems in their voices and decide if enough is enough. Friedersdorf’s position erases that complexity of power and positions the students as equal in power to the administration, and anyone who understands power dynamics knows that the administration does not necessarily have to do what the students are petitioning them to do, albeit to do so would be in the worst interest of a university which proclaims to care about not only the education, but the character of its attendees.

Emily Shire’s pieces published in The Daily Beast are no less shortsighted and apologetic for administrations which do not respond well enough to the legitimate concerns of its Black or Latinx populace. In the last two pieces she has written for the publication, she engages in using caustic and reductionary language when referring to the actions and or frustration of the students at Brown University and Claremont McKenna College. In the former, she reduces the very legitimate and real concerns of the students who are voicing their opinions to the President as “whiny” and characterizes the students as “menacing” as though the very idea of being on a campus where you can potentially be accosted for no reason and subjected to police brutality is not a menacing idea and prospect in itself. The students were legitimately angry that the officer was not suspended for his role in the incident, but instead was only placed on desk duty for the duration of the investigation. This is an understandable complaint as it looks as though he is not being sufficiently punished for his apparent racial profiling of a student, but in reality even if he was suspended, he would likely still be getting paid, because let’s be honest, the system of “justice” in America does not care about Black and Brown bodies brutalized by the State. Shire’s reductionary language renders the students as almost wild animals, thirsty for blood, and this is not something which a respectable journalist would do. The piece is interjected with her own bias toward the actions of the students, because they don’t fit into the nice neat box of respectability that she feels should be paid to a university president.

In the latter piece, she engages in using a red herring, this idea that “political correctness” is a hamper to the cultivation of a diverse scholastic environment, while ignoring the fact that her argument is only a slightly nicer phrased version of “shut up and endure injustice” which in this rapidly shifting landscape of academia is not going to be happening for very much longer now that collegiate students are aware that their raised voices equal a certain political capital. She goes on to characterize the student protests as a signal that colleges are headed in a “less noble” direction, but if nobility means we must quietly and humbly accept injustice, then I am glad that we have realized that we are under no obligation to play nice and to swallow micro and macro aggressions in the name of “not rocking the boat” because the comfort of a few wanna be writers is not worth enduring oppression silently.

In this shifting landscape of college cultures, it is vital that the journalists reporting and writing come to an understanding that these issues that are coming to light are not isolated incidents. It would behoove them to do a little research and use that Twitter account of theirs to actually interact with the students whom they so easily criticize for not bowing down to the altar of “massa gone whup us if we says anything” and get an understanding as to exactly why this group of college students is so angry at the administrations at their respective colleges. They might find out that the rage against the machine is completely justified. But that would require them to love something besides their own journalistic egos. That would require them to validate the anger and the frustration and not dismiss it as “bullying” or “whiny.” That would require them to hear instead of wanting to immediately silence the voices and the rage of a populace which will not be satisfied with empty actions and hollow investigations. These pieces are not about free speech, but about the fragility of these journalists egos. They would rather college students be quiet and comfort their fragility. We’re all out of concern for your fragility Emily and Conor, you’re going to have to hear us shout down the mountain.