Sometimes the oldest, most overused of cliches ring the truest.
A resolution set to be presented at the student government meeting tonight has an old grammar school adage looping in my head: It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.
The eighth to be presented to the council so far this school year, the resolution calls for UCLA to divest from companies that profit from the prison-industrial complex, which is an economic culture that promotes mass incarceration.
While the intent of the resolution is a good one – the large number of young people of color being incarcerated deserves the attention of the council – its focus and language cloud the point. The document’s inflammatory rhetoric ultimately illustrates a more general problem with USAC resolutions and their often divisive political nature.
According to the language of the resolution, the prison system amounts to a “form of modern day Jim Crow,” referring to a set of laws that institutionalized racial segregation in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The resolution also states explicitly in one of its “whereas” clauses: “prison is thus a modern form of slavery.”
The lines being drawn are clear enough: The prison-industrial complex benefits from incarcerating people, and the people being incarcerated the most are people of color. It’s a system set up against an already disadvantaged demographic and has disastrous consequences for higher education outcomes for young people of color.
But the language and ideology being used to draw those lines is extreme and polarizing, likely dividing the council table and the student body over word choice rather than the substance of the resolution itself. Some people on council and in the student body may, for example, feel it’s disingenuous to say that the university is complicit in a “modern day Jim Crow,” whether they think that divestment is a wise choice or not.
This resolution isn’t alone in its inclusion of polarizing rhetoric. In considering the resolution on recently appointed University of California President Janet Napolitano earlier this year, the council spent hours discussing specific clauses that made some members uncomfortable, including a clause that preemptively voted no confidence in her.
A resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an inherently political and incredibly divisive topic, generated so much contention among councilmembers and the student body that the council meeting lasted until around 3 a.m., ultimately ending with the resolution being voted down.
This council’s insistence on bringing forward resolution after resolution in such swift succession is already problematic because it diminishes USAC’s ability to generate student awareness for statements that purport to be the official opinion of the student body. USAC’s haste in pushing forward resolutions is even more problematic because of the polarizing and political nature of nearly every one brought forward so far – if the resolutions are inherently political, after all, it’s even more important that students know about them.
Councilmembers must always consider whether or not a resolution is the best way to address an issue they find worthwhile – and if that answer is yes, its authors must work to make sure the resolution’s purpose isn’t marred by pointlessly divisive or extreme language.
So you’re saying that, because it might offend people who are committed to the prison-industrial complex, we should not refer to the prison-industrial complex in such charged language? You’re saying that the real polarization problem is not our system of highly racialized mass incarceration, but rather the ways we try to fight back against it?
You’re a terrible and confused person, Natalie Delgadillo. Instead of using column space to draw attention to the horrible realities of our carceral system–for example, that there are more per capita people imprisoned in the US than in any other state in the world, or that black men are more than 4 times likely to be imprisoned than whites–you chose instead to complain about the discourse used to describe such awful, racist, oppressive structures.
Congrats on being a part of the problem.
I think what Natalie is trying to say is that every issue has two sides to it. If you want to get legislation passed, you might want to tone down the wording enough to appease the other side, but still achieve the intended goal of the bill. We live in a world where sometimes you have to compromise your philosophy (ever so slightly in this case, by removing Jim Crow/slavery references) in order to achieve a pragmatic effect.
Yup, just like there sure were 2 sides to Jim Crow. And we have to make the white supremacists feel comfortable as we work to end their devastating structures of racism!
#Logic
By the way, it’s not like focusing exclusively on the comfort-levels of people in favor of racist systems of oppression makes the victims of those systems feel distinctly uncomfortable or anything… right?
You’re missing the point of the article– she’s not commenting on the
merits of the resolution, she’s saying that the use of unnecessary
inflammatory language is counterproductive, and potentially detrimental
even, to the goals of the resolution and to campus climate in general.
Everyone is entitled to one’s own opinion, but the arguments behind them need to be rooted in facts, not in rhetoric. For example, you made some very good points (ie: “more per capita people imprisoned in the US than in any other state in the world, or that black men are more than 4 times likely to be
imprisoned than whites”) but I’m being distracted from those facts by your necessary and truly unwarranted bullying; there is no need to call the author “a terrible and confused person.” Those words do not get your point across or serve any purpose, really, even if that is truly what you believe. The same applies in USAC resolutions– there’s no need for inflammatory rhetoric, if the goal is truly a worthy one, then it should be able to stand by its own merits.
No, I’m not missing the point of the article. My point is that this author is implicitly part of the problem since her article focuses not on the substance of the resolution but on its discursive style. She hasn’t published any opinion–nor has the DB–supporting this resolution; she instead chose to focus on how scary it is that the resolution uses accurate language instead of pulling punches. That’s counter-productive towards ending brutal racism, in that it attempts to legitimate resistance to a resolution that only racists would oppose.
It’s utterly ridiculous to focus on the linguistics of a student government resolution instead of the gargantuan system of oppression it refers to. Delgadillo is implying, through this choice of focus, that the more pressing issue here is the feelings of pro-prison white supremacists, rather than the lived realities of millions of prisoners, or else she would’ve condemned the prison-industrial complex instead of the authors of the resolution.
Finally, I completely fail to see how it’s counter-productive to call out counter-productive de facto racists like Delgadillo. But surely such inflammatory language is inappropriate, so shame on me for using it in discussion of realities which are much worse than inflammatory.
Oh wait I forgot: maintaining “campus climate” is a more noble goal than ending the prison-industrial complex. My bad. The real victims here truly are the people in favor of brutal mass incarceration, because they must feel ever so marginalized by people who rightly call them evil.
Sorry, it was hard to follow all your points because I didn’t want to take the time to sift through all your rhetoric. But I did notice you calling unidentified, theoretical people racists and white supremacists. I also noticed you specifically calling the author (who I don’t know and therefore cannot comment on her character) the aforementioned labels, purely because she chose to write an interesting opinion piece on a topic of her choosing instead of the topic you would rather her have talked about. It’s not like she said she disagreed with the resolution, even. If anything, she’s trying to be helpful by recommending precise and non-exaggerated or inflammatory statements in the language of this and future resolutions, so that they could be passed more easily, without controversial statements, which really only hinder such progress.
BTW, are the other Daily Bruin writers also implicitly part of the problem because they also didn’t write and article stating explicit support of the resolution? I haven’t once commented on whether or not I support the resolution, even though I commented on the article since I didn’t like the bullying words I read in your comment, does that also make me a “racist pro-prison white supremacist”? I should say not.
Sure, everyone who doesn’t oppose these structures of racist oppression is indirectly a part of the problem, in a way, especially if those structures work in their benefit (e.g. white kids who go to an expensive college which has its furniture made by forced and unpaid labor [a.k.a. slave labor] in CA prisons). But I’m not focusing on that; I’m focusing on the fact that this columnist chose to legitimate opposition to the bill by focusing on its trivial and symbolic downsides and ignoring its immense and material upsides. That works in favor of racist systems, so therefore it’s a racist act. Racism isn’t just this thing that people believe deep down inside–it’s the way reality works to privilege people of certain races over others. So deep personal knowledge of this columnist isn’t necessary (nor is deep personal knowledge of her apologists, like you) to say they are working in support of racist acts, and are hence much more fitting of the “racist” label than people who merely internally believe disgustingly discriminatory things without working to reify said beliefs.
You should really evaluate why you feel so compelled to defend this columnist from informal charges of racism instead of defending millions of people from the realities of racism. Or is my “bullying” of Delgadillo worse than the slave labor, segregation, and torture that regularly occur through our prisons?
So the thing is I don’t disagree with a number of your points, it is true that institutionalized racism exists and that its effects can extend beyond that of an individual’s internal disposition. I must disagree, however, when you claim that people like the author (and suddenly now me?) are “working in support of racist acts” by voicing an opinion tangental to the crux of the resolution’s argument. It’s ok to be critical of something and still support it; in fact, that’s typically how things improve (for clarity I’m referring to critical support of the resolution).
I also would argue that if someone indirectly benefits from a disparity in privileges, that doesn’t automatically make that individual racist (but that’s referencing the beginning of your comment, which you’re not focussing on, so I won’t dwell).
Now referring to your last paragraph, the comparison you’re making cannot be made. Is verbal cyber bullying worse than “the slave labor, segregation, and torture that regularly occur through our prisons?” No, but does that make your bullying OK? Does calling the author a terrible person help the people in these prisons? No, it doesn’t. All it does is distract from the valid and constructive points you wish to make.
And as for the personal evaluation you asked for: it’s not a this or that scenario. Informal or not, you made a very harsh allegation, one that any decent human being would be offended to be called. Also keep in mind that in your first comment you called the author a “terrible and confused person,” only later adding the bit about her being racist. In an age when cyber bullying is so easy and consequent free, I wanted to point out that it’s not OK. You don’t know the author (presumably). You disagreed with her viewpoint, namely the criticism of the rhetoric used in a particular resolution that has a noble cause. Defending a person from bullying, even if the author in this case just laughed it off, is a worthy thing to do and doesn’t detract from defending the people to whom you are referring. I wasn’t deciding between defending Delgadillo or defending these millions of people; I was responding to a mean comment. It’s fairly simple, and honestly didn’t need my evaluation, but I thought I’d humor you.
Side note: this has been fun and all, but I need to get back to studying. Have a good night.
Poor little columnist. My heart weeps for her. Maybe if she feels a little bullied she won’t distort the issues in the future. Emphasizing style over substance to find pointless fault with a good resolution is a bad thing to do. Especially when the imagined “fault” is using strong language to attack structures of racism. How is it divisive to call this the new Jim Crow? Because modern-day racists don’t want to be associated with racists of yesteryear?