Woodward, Andrew

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Feb 18Have a Conversationandrew woodwardSome words don’t mean anything anymore. Some very powerful words. Words that throughout history heldunprecedented meaning. Words with profound sadness, depth, and power behind them, cementedthroughout the timeline of their use. Words like racist, sexist, and fascist. Words like “White Supremacist.”Words like “Nazi.”Of course, these words do still have meaning. You can look them up in a dictionary, or at the very leastGoogle them. I’m not suggesting that they don’t. What I am suggesting, rather, is that recently these wordshave been carelessly thrown around so much that they have lost their intended meaning, and are now moreakin to casual insults.I don’t say this with pleasure, either; I wish these words hadn’t become so warped in our modern dialect.These words are essential and need to be used when necessary to identify evil and injustice. They have,however, been distorted into phrases to yell at a person whose opinion you don’t agree with. Identifyingactual white supremacists, such as those at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, for what they are isusing this powerful speech correctly in a way that is ethical and just. Equating Jordan Peterson, a conservativeleaning professor/public speaker, to Hitler is not.A graduate student at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada named Lindsay Shepherd made headlines towardthe end of last year for a conversation she secretly recorded with faculty members of the school. She wascalled in after showing a video clip of the now infamous Jordan Peterson to her students as a TeachingV O X  P O P U L IAssistant. The clip was taken from a panel discussion broadcast on Canadian television, in which Petersondiscussed his disapproval of Canadian Bill C-16, which “adds ‘gender identity or expression’ to the list ofprohibited grounds of discrimination” in the Canadian Human Rights Act. Peterson talks about how hedisagrees with the implications of the bill -- if an individual is unwilling to refer to a person by their desiredpronouns it could be considered a criminal offence.In response to showing this clip, Lindsay was chastised by faculty members and called transphobic by herpeers. In a meeting she secretly recorded on her laptop, the school’s faculty told Shepherd they received atleast one complaint from a student who was offended by what Peterson said and reprimanded her forshowing the clip. Shepherd defended herself by saying that she did not take sides during the class, and thatshe was simply presenting both arguments in a neutral manner. Shepherd even goes so far as to expressduring the meeting how she does not even agree with what Peterson was saying in the video, making theentire situation that much more ironic. A faculty member concluded that because Shepherd did not explicitlydenounce the views of Peterson during the class, it was like she was “neutrally playing a speech by Hitler.”This issue goes beyond merely making a false equivalency. Rather, it is more about what these falseequivalencies justify in the minds of those making them. For example, if someone is called racist -- or, inLindsay’s case, transphobic -- and enough people believe the claim, anyone can feel justified in completelyshutting down any and all conversation with the person in question. That person has been labelled a racist,and therefore nothing he has to say for himself should be given any credibility.This phenomenon is further exemplified in the situation regarding Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State College.Evergreen has a tradition that every spring, staff and students participate in a “Day of Absence,” when“faculty and staff of color [spend] a work day away from campus as a grassroots collective action.” Thepurpose of this is to highlight the contribution of African Americans to campus life and culture and promotethe idea that they are as essential to the function of the school as everyone else.This past year, however, the dynamic of the Day of Absence changed. Instead of people of color voluntarilyleaving the campus, “white students, staff and faculty [were] invited to leave the campus for the day’sactivities,” as reported by a student journal at Evergreen. Professor Bret Weinstein disagreed with thisdirection, and voiced his concerns in an email to Rashida Love, Evergreen’s Director of First PeoplesMulticultural Advising Services. Professor Weinstein claimed that “there is a huge difference between a groupor coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital andunder-appreciated roles... and a group or coalition encouraging another group to go away. The first is aforceful call to consciousness… The second is a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself.”What happened when Weinstein publicly expressed this opinion? A mob of angry students formed outsidehis office and began calling him a racist, demanding he either resign or be fired. Though being verballyharassed, Professor Weinstein still showed interest in hearing and understanding the point of view of thestudents accusing him. Amidst the yelling, Weinstein states, “I am not interested in debate, I am onlyinterested in dialectic. Debate means you are trying to win, dialectic means you are using disagreement todiscover what is true.” He wasn’t looking to convince these students that he was right, he wanted to have aconversation. The students didn’t seem interested in this conversation, however, as one is heard replying, “Wedon’t care what terms you want to speak on,” before they begin yelling over one another.I could spend the rest of this article listing off more and more examples of this misuse of speech, but I wouldmuch rather talk about how this problem can be solved. There is a way we can undo what we’ve done to thesewords -- to make them once more mean what they have the right to mean. It is something, though, that I fearmany won’t want to hear, if only because nowadays it is far easier to simply discredit anything a person has tosay by way of falsely claiming they are something they, in reality, are not.Have a conversation. Talk to someone. Discuss. Not with people who think the same way as you, but ratherwith people who think differently. Take some time away from your own personal echo chamber -- whateverthat may be (Twitter and Facebook come to mind) -- and spend some time engaged in real conversation. Thekey to winning any argument, political or otherwise, is to simply understand your opposition’s point of view.Do you think any self-proclaimed white supremacist has ever changed their ways because someone yelled atthem for being a racist-Nazi-bigoted-scumbag? Certainly very few, as they are already well aware of what theyare. Instead, why not attempt to explain to them exactly how and why what you believe is true. Like ProfessorWeinstein said, be more focused on dialectic than debate.Don’t believe that would ever work? Just ask Daryl Davis, the African-American musician who convinced 200(and counting) members of the KKK to give up their robes. How did he do it? In his own words:The best thing you do is you study up on the subject as much as you can. I went in armed, not with aweapon, but with knowledge… That began to chip away at their ideology because when two enemiesare talking, they're not fighting. It's when the talking ceases that the ground becomes fertile forviolence. If you spend five minutes with your worst enemy — it doesn't have to be about race, it couldbe about anything… you will find that you both have something in common. As you build upon thosecommonalities, you're forming a relationship… That's what would happen. I didn't convert anybody.They saw the light and converted themselves.Cultureopen dialogue, college, free speechThere are many more lessons to be taken from Daryl’s story, and I would highly recommend reading throughthe interview he had with NPR, where this quote comes from.Open conversation is the most important aspect of the survival of any democracy. Without the free exchangeof ideas, society would never progress. People should be allowed to say what they believe. Yes, even whitesupremacists. Because of this, people should also be judged and criticized for what they have to say. However,they should be judged fairly and honestly, through evidence and conversation. It does no good to make falseequivalencies, and in fact only succeeds in making the words used carry less weight.In a poll conducted by The Brookings Press in August of 2017, students were asked which of the followingtwo options was more important for a college to do: “create a positive learning environment for all studentsby prohibiting certain speech or expression of viewpoints that are offensive or biased against certain groupsof people” or “create an open learning environment where students are exposed to all types of speech andviewpoints, even if it means allowing speech that is offensive or biased against certain groups of people.”Overall, only 47% of college students surveyed chose the second option -- that it was more important for acollege to facilitate an open campus than it is for a college to facilitate a positive one.Compare these results to those of a Gallup poll from just a year before, where almost the exact same questionwas asked, and we see a significant difference in opinion. In that poll, an overwhelming majority of 78% ofstudents were in favor of an open environment that allowed potentially offensive speech. In just one year, themajority opinion of college students switched completely. In 2016, only 22% of students were in favor of apositive environment over an open one, but by 2017 that number had risen to 53%.With that in mind I’d like to end this article with something of a challenge -- a challenge to think about ideascritically and to think about people critically. Someone who thinks differently from you is not automaticallyyour enemy. Ask yourself why a person is being called racist or sexist and if these statements are only meantto insult a person with a different perspective. If there is no true merit behind the word being used,understand that it does nothing but broaden the scope of what that word can mean. When the scope becomestoo large, eventually that word will have expanded to mean anything and, subsequently, nothing at all. Related PostsFeb 19 The Impossibility of Donald Trump's "ReligiousFreedom" 16  Intertwining L cal and National Pol tic :Austin City Council and Trump’s WallMar 27An Open Letter to LeadershipMar 30A N D R E W  W O O D W A R DAndrew Woodward is an advertising major at the University of Texas at Austin. He is an ardentdefender of civil liberties, and a passionate watcher of terrible horror movies.Show 2 commentsMadness in the NCAAApr 9A United FrontThe Texas Orator is a nonpartisan, peer-reviewed political publication that was founded and is maintained byUniversity of Texas at Austin students. We value thorough analysis in our articles and strive to protect theideals of free speech and unhindered access to information on campus and nationwide. We seek to keep thestudent body informed of the implications of ever-changing political climates, both domestically and abroad,from a range of voices and perspectives.Join Our CommunitySubscribe to our weekly newsletter!Email Address  SUBMITD O N A T EPowered by Squarespace

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