Last week, Sigma Phi Epsilon and Alpha Phi held what was undoubtedly a racist event, a near shot-for-shot remake of the film “Dear White People,” which, in a certain sad irony, was partially filmed on campus.
News of the “Kanye Western” themed raid exploded across the campus and the nation.
Emotions understandably intensified in the university’s black community, and cries of anger and resignation responded to the blatant confirmation of what people already knew – that not so much has actually changed.
In the discussion and social media chatter that has swirled around in the wake of the raid, one specific defense of the groups’ actions seems logical, but when pinpointed, identified and examined, fails to hold water and is indicative of complacency with a racist status quo.
Intention. That concept seems to be the buzzword that buttresses much of the public defense of the party.
The argument of “They didn’t mean to be racist,” in some way is thought to absolve the two organizations of the responsibility and the outcome of what they did. But the reality is that in a week that was meant to welcome black Bruins to a fresh start on campus, new students were instead faced with a familiar picture.
Jerry Kang, the university’s vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion, said in a speech following the party, “We should always consider in addition both the impact and the social meaning of any action.”
Intention. The “Kanye Western” party was reprehensible, but not in the same way as when the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at the University of Oklahoma was caught on video gleefully singing a song rife with racial slurs and references to lynching, while happily encouraging other members to never allow a black member into the organization.
It is unlikely that the fraternity sat together and methodically planned to to offend the black community; however, the amount of thought that failed to occur past that point led to the approval of an event that gave attendees a platform to indulge in some of our campus’ – and our country’s – worst impulses.
What a group means should only be the starting point of the conversation. Organizations need to make an effort to be more aware of the larger cultural and political context of their actions. Doing so will have ramifications past initial intent, and create a more inclusive and sensitive community, specifically at UCLA where underrepresented voices are often ignored.
It’s certainly true that what people mean by their actions should hold some weight, that careful consultation of facts should precede extreme action.
Intention. In truth though, it implies a benefit of the doubt often not given to more marginalized groups. The idea certainly wasn’t assigned much merit to 12-year-old Tamir Rice when a report characterized his fatal shooting as “reasonable.”
The fact that Rice did not actually have a deadly weapon, a history of violent behavior or a desire to hurt anyone, did not buy him the smallest opportunity to explain himself. What he meant by his actions as an agitated preteen black boy in the midst of an emotional outburst meant little to the police officer who almost immediately shot him dead.
Intention. As a society we can be better.
We must continue to try and understand the original meaning of actions, but that cannot and should not be where we stop. Going past initial reactions to intentionally treat each other with respect and make attempts to understand each other’s diverse narratives would mean a small but necessary step towards progress.
Kanye and Kim are two of the biggest biggest pop culture icons in the world. People will dress like them, just like people of all races have dressed up as everyone from Elvis to Johnny Depp to Marilyn Monroe to Madonna to Charlie Chaplin to Bill Clinton to David Bowie to Darth Vader to Barack Obama and so on and so on and so on.
Famous people are not immune to being parodied because they’re not lily white. and the fact that our biggest stars aren’t white anymore is a sign of PROGRESS, not regression, you dummies!
This entire incident has NOTHING to do with race. This has to do with CELEBRITY. Get over yourselves.
Even if the intent of the party was blatant racism, the university as an institution holds the responsibility of protecting the right of free speech. Complex issues such as this party with deep historical and cultural implications are best understood and dealt with by dialogue among student groups. That dialogue can take any form of free speech such as the student protest we saw. But when the university decides to punish individuals because of their exercise of free speech, we enter into a different dialogue: one that weighs free speech against political correctness and institutional stability. And sure, that is a dialogue worth having in our generation. But without acknowledging that this university has violated a value that has always been one of the most sacred among college students and intellectuals, the conversation becomes reductionist and delusional..
Well said. The administration imposed an indefinite suspension of the social
activities of a campus fraternity and sorority, affecting well over 400 students, for nine days now, and counting. This particular incident involved no violence, threats, illegality, or exclusion. White and non-white students participated in a social gathering, considered offensive and racist by some other students. The prolonged investigation by the administration and the continued suspension are indefensible.
Jesus you guys need some perspective. Do you realize the entire world is laughing at you? For whom is your privileged, myopic outrage intended? The only groups even remotely receptive to your criticisms are those who hold no intention of harm to begin with.
Do you think xenophobic nationalist reactionaries (which seem to make up a sizable portion of the US electorate) care about implicit undertones of racism in their speech? Do you believe that ISIL propaganda officials will consider putting trigger warnings on their beheading videos? That Saudi-financed madrassahs in Pakistan will ponder the micro-aggressive nature of their calls for ethnic cleansing?
Save your passion and energy to fight against real injustice in the world, not the poor taste of 19-year-old party goers.
In our justice system, punishment is administered based on intent. Before I can even begin to address the issue from an argumentative standpoint, we must have defined values, or truths. The most important baseline here, I believe, is what we’re going to define racism as. The definition of racism differs from person to person. What one may consider racist another may consider completely bare of any points that can be justifiably criticized. However, as modern western-American society would have it, racism is defined by those who are offended. I do not agree with this definition–I do not believe an action is racist simply because a “victim” feels as if it was. To let the victim define the crime–social, moral, or legal–is to create an imbalance of power–unbiased justice can not be given if one biased party gets to set the terms for the crime, which can change at will. That’s not how American justice works–there are set laws that can be broken or left unbroken and these laws are not decided upon the whim of a single person or group. What I’m getting at is that allowing a victim to set the terms for the crime simply won’t work because, eventually, everyone will be policed to not offend anyone under any circumstances, wherein anyone can claim anything was offensive at a given time. Indeed, leaning too far to the left–attempting to satisfy everyone at once–is just as close to Orwell’s prophecy as it is to lean too far to the right. In layman’s terms, if we let the victim define the crime, and not a third party that the first two parties can agree has authoritative power in deciding these laws beforehand, the world will become a chaotic place. It’s the slippery slope argument, but it’s held true so far as we begin to criminalize people with no ill-intentions.
But for the sake of argument, I’ll let you have the point and we’ll define racism as something decided upon by those who were offended, even though it’s a flawed system. So let’s say that the frat did do something racist because it offended some folks in the black community. Within our own justice system, there are certain degrees of murder. First degree murder is willful and premeditated murder while involuntary manslaughter is the unintentional killing of a human being. Each case has different consequences, based on the severity of the intent. Yet in both cases, punishment is administered–as you stated: a lack of intent of malice does not excuse the crime. However, a lack of intent certainly changes the severity of the punishment. A just parent would not punish a child in the same way for accidentally breaking glass if the child were to smash the glass on purpose. You don’t need to police the frat. You don’t need to survey every damned community out there to see whether or not a certain frat party theme is alright with them. All you need is discussion.
On Tamir Rice–there are two things I’d like to address in bringing up this tragedy. First off is that judgment of intention was necessary here as I’m advocating. An outburst of any kind can have an array of meanings, all of which are based on intention. If the officer had taken Rice’s non-violent intentions into account, the Rice family would still have their son today. Yet Tamir’s intentions were left ignored as he was gunned down. This, I believe, is a fault of the officers’. I believe there needs to be a reform–that we are giving the power to officers, the power to judge that very intention that could mean the difference between life and death, who make idiotic and ill-thought out decisions. And racist impulses certainly do play a large role in the officer’s judgment of a situation, which is something that needs to cease immediately to prevent more innocent intentions from being misjudged.
Obviously, Sigma Phi Epsilon did not originally intend to offend anyone but Kanye West. Yet, according to your definition of racism, their actions inflicted harm. I agree, that regardless of intention, crime cannot go unpunished. And so does our justice system. But what the justice system and I also assert is that the severity of the crime goes hand in hand with intention.
I simply believe that Sigma Phi Epsilon carried out a wrongdoing unintentionally, and that their only consequence is to start putting more receptive care into what actions they carry out. They are not racists. They do not need to have the importance of diversity reiterated to them for the trillionth time. They must simply acknowledge their error and tweak their ways. There should not be any measures taken to prevent minorities from being offended, I believe. It is an infringement of the freedom of speech, and it can evolve as just as much of a police state as any stance can. Though I believe racism is something barbaric and disgusting, I don’t believe it should be censored. To censor the voice of a person, even if the person is a blatant idiot, is to infringe on their rights. And that has more weight than ascertaining that every single minority is not offended does, for having the world cater to one’s needs is not a basic right. In situations where such freedom of speech or expression infringes upon that person’s equality (ie; lower wages or favoring who you hire based on skin color), only then should that ability to express oneself be revoked.
tl;dr
Though Sigma Phi Epsilon may have carried out a wrongdoing, they have the right to do so. Progressivism is counter-intuitive when you censor anything out, even if it is bullshit. Boiled down to three words, this post reads:
Deal with it.
I wrote at length an opinion in Caterina’s submission. That was 4 days ago and is still pending. Censorship or… ?
No, it’s just that we’re “at UCLA where underrepresented voices are often ignored.”