Mr. Frank Webb '03, in his recent letter to the editor on Monday, Aug. 6, entitled "Remarks of the South Offensive", wrote, "John Stevenson delivered a slight to all of the people south of the Mason-Dixon line. This sort of statement would have produced an uproar, had it been leveled at the Afro-American Society, La Allianza Latina, or the Native Americans at Dartmouth."
I have met with the founders of the Southern Society to discuss my Op-Ed from last Thursday. I shared with them that I was skeptical of long-term interest in their organization and that they should prove they could exist for more than three terms.
I also told them, as a person who was born in Louisiana, lived there for 13 years, and moved to Texas, that we from the South have a lot to learn from the North and the best thing we can do is take what we learn here back with us.
I shared with them that I did consider their claim to group rights neither a legitimate nor a compelling interest. We disagreed -- politely, like Southern gentlemen -- and went our separate ways.
However, I would like to expound on Frank's critiques. His first is that the kind of statements I made about the Southern Society would have caused an uproar if applied to these other so-called cultural organizations. He is absolutely right.
He then suggested that this was proof of an "occasional double-standard" applied to acceptable and non-acceptable minority groups. I do not apply a double standard; all cultural-identity organizations should disappear. Moreover, I have not had an opportunity to craft a well-constructed argument against these groups in the space of 800 words.
Consider my dilemma for a moment. How does one portray the dangers of the implicit racism of these cultural organizations in 800 words without sounding like a right-wing ideologue?
There is no way to show in such a short time that the terms we use -- structures of power, hegemonic paradigms, discourses of language -- come from radical leftist thinkers and have flooded, and poisoned, the university atmosphere.
Furthermore, some of the most honorable and well-intentioned people, the white progressives, are more dangerous than some of the so-called conservative racists. The last dog that we must tackle is our many identities, which are encouraged by the faculty, are defined by a largely non-existent threat. All of these ideas are difficult to constrain to a mere 800-word argument but are the underpinnings of my distrust of the cultural-identity organizations.
So when Frank Webb opined that I didn't slight La Mecha, etc., it is only because I am working to fit my critique into the corset of sound bite (that is, short-form) journalism.
That way, when the attacks do come, there won't be a powder-puff straw man argument, but an argument of iron reason to smash the lies and deprogram the buzzphrases that will come flying at it.
Other minorities give names to people like me because we espouse these contrary ideas. Their goal is to shame us back into a complicitous relationship with the status quo of ethnicities.
Since these ideas undo a large part of the lies that we inherited from the '60s that now appear under the noms de guerre of: social justice, progressive thinking, historical justice, etc, other minorities call us: racists, negrocons, incognegros, white man's tools, house Negros, confused, blinded, nave, Uncle Toms, Clarence Thomases, or in need of "education."
To not subscribe to the trendy leftist ""isms" is for me to invite and generate contempt for being out of line, out of my ethnic block, out of a box prescribed for me as a result of "my oppression under white male structures of power."
What I fear most for the Southern Society and for other cultural organization is that the insidious effect of the sloppy illogic of group rights mingled with the trendy political wisdom du jour of "marginalized communities" will alienate students from each other under a banner of celebrating difference: Frank echoes this fear when he uses the term "Balkanize."
To be liberally educated is to first respect the tenants of liberal thought: individual rights, a common humanity or what Frank calls "common characteristics" and the pursuit of the virtuous life through reason. (see "A Common Humanity and the Core" by Chien Wen Kung '04, July 18, 2002)
These liberal principles are threatened by the avalanche of groupthink and starved by a steady diet of the post-Marxist categories of race, class, gender, etc. that permeate the intellectual atmosphere of our campus.
