The students at Yale were/are trying to go much further than banning Blackface.
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Racial tensions at Yale lead to angry confrontations
- Thread starter philz
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didn't they say she could come back whenever she wanted?
this is nuanced like a motherfucker.
this is nuanced like a motherfucker.
Arrowgigantic
Member
"Letting the students take care of it amongst themselves" means that nothing should happen because students do not have administrative power. She was passing the buck to the void when she was supposed to be a leader.
She was being a leader. It's impossible for the administration to identify or predict every offense that might be demonstrated and then to further enforce it. Doing so would also do nothing to educate those that committed the offense. She argued that that the students that wrote the first letter went too far in their demands. That to rectify or handle a particular category of material which may be offensive but not well understood that the students should open a dialogue. By being a leader she stood up for all students of her university. The University clearly has no power in influencing student culture and the category of offenses that may be construed are something that would exist and be found in student culture.
The administration only as so much power to enforce things, some things defer to the State in the instance of hate speech or hate crime. But she wasn't putting that back into the hands of the students. She was putting debate over whether a white girl can wear a geisha costume into the hands of the students. Something that already can't be enforced. Wouldn't be effective to punish. And really has no reason being construed as stereotyping an entire demographic of people.
Post like yours act only to defame her, and paint her acts as something far more petty than they actually were. The students made sure to imbue her with responsibilities that she never accepted nor held, then they held her accountable for it.
User 73706
Banned
Uh, the whole point of having the administration take care of it is enforcing standards when it comes to situations like this. I don't see how you can say "the administration is doing its job" and then say that the administration has no power in situation like these beyond telling students to take care of it themselves with a straight face - if that's the case, then why even have administrators?
Additionally: if you don't see how a geisha costume can be "construed" as stereotyping an entire demographic of people, it's no wonder why you think doing anything to stop it would have no use - it's because you don't want it to stop.
I don't think a white person wearing a geisha costume is offensive. You do. Who is right?
I think her husband tried to help fight her side. They yelled at him. And kept yelling. And then wanted them both fired.
Steeped in a Sea of Games
Member
She was accountable for her words the second she said them. If she was so misunderstood, she could have tried to fight her side. Ironically, she decided to just pick up her ball and go home despite her trying to argue that minorities should fight to the bitter end to get others to see their side. She took no responsibility for what she said and instead basically flung mud and ran.
Snowman Prophet of Doom
Member
To see people defending what was done to her is far more offensive than anything she actually wrote.
All her email said was that there does exist a gray area for expression, like a child wearing a Mulan costume, where choosing to take offense and raising a stink about said offense is the more facile, not the more righteous and progressive, response, and that something of value is lost when the responsibility to stamp out bad ideas is delegated to a heavyhanded, top-down approach.
If you disagree with either of these points, well, I don't want to live in the America you want to create.
All her email said was that there does exist a gray area for expression, like a child wearing a Mulan costume, where choosing to take offense and raising a stink about said offense is the more facile, not the more righteous and progressive, response, and that something of value is lost when the responsibility to stamp out bad ideas is delegated to a heavyhanded, top-down approach.
If you disagree with either of these points, well, I don't want to live in the America you want to create.
User 73706
Banned
A white person dressed as Mulan warrants a discussion; a white person dressed as a geisha (or any other broad ethnic stereotype / caricature) does not. There is no catch-all answer by nature of "instanced" characters that actually do something with existing cultures, e.g. the Mulan example; the window for what warrants a discussion will just progressively widen as people stop trying to make it warrant arguments, wherein neither side is actually looking to change their stance. That being said, the whole "both sides" argument only goes as far as common sense, basic ethical judgment and equivalent treatment of perspective and human rights go: you couldn't have the same discussion over kids dressing up as Mulan because it's a character wrought out of pre-existing cultural themes as you could compared to, say, Black Pete, which is decidedly less of a discussion and more a matter of getting people to actually consider the fucking "basic human decency" part.
Carnby
Member
It's very misleading and you fell for it without reading the actual email.
Gotdatmoney
Member
I'm unsure whee you are going with this. The debate has nothing to do with what people can and cannot where. Outside of University ran functions people are free to wear w/e the fuck they want. That hasn't been in question. She wasn't opening up a dialog because there was nothing to say on the issue. A white girl can dress up as a geisha if she wants to. The university isn't going to do shit, the university has no recorded instances as far as I have read of punishing students for costumes outside university grounds.
What she was doing was writing against the university's suggestions of appropriate and inappropriate costumes and saying, oh we should encourage free thought (ie we shouldn't say shit) not tell people what to do. Okay, but that position is not benign like you are suggesting. Nor is her position of discussion on the issue even feasible in a real setting.
The university is free to take a stand on what they feel is and is not okay and they as an institutions are fully entitled to say "that shit right there is bad, don't do it". What dialog is going to be had between a minority and someone dressed as a Native American with a bullet in their head on Halloween? The students really took it too far imo, someone with an opposite viewpoint isn't shit you just try to actively get fired because they pissed you off. But on the flip, the University also cannot have faulty sending mixed messages about what they stand for. To insinuate that an instution of higher learning should not take a stance on something as simple as "don't be a fucking douche on Halloween" is laughable and her counterpoint reeks of someone who never grew up as a millennial and definitely not as a minority.
Neither is her fault, nor is she an evil person, but there is not much misconstruing going on in this thread tbh. If she is brave enough to send all that letter to the campus, she can have enough of a spine to stand by the negative response and still teach despite pissing off some of the minority population.
No one here is saying that what they did to her is cool. Her email is more nuanced than your interpretation as well. She never insinuated something of value is lost by stamping out bad ideas in a top down fashion. She isn't going to sit down and say "oh it's bad that we have anti hate speech laws or we shouldn't have forced service to minorities top down". She said that as a faculty of higher education we should allow students to discuss these issues instead of defining it themselves. This is further supported by her comment that when you see a costume you don't like you should talk to the person about it and have a discussion. That is genuinely different from your point.
The Mulan costume on a child is honestly not a grey area. Whether it's right or wrong for a child wanting to do it i irrelevant. If something is wrong, just because a child does not grasp "why" does not suddenly make it grey. The debate is whether or not the costume is offensive, that's all there is to it. And it's also really obnoxious to say raising a stink about it facile. The world minorities live in is one where day after day they have to put u with diet racism bullshit all the time. Wrong assumptions, negative stereotypes that are constantly reinforced and normalized when they don't stand up to shit exactly like this. If you do not feel it's a big deal, its entirely fine but you are basically saying "its not progressive to be babies" and my response to that is, "I'm not being a baby for asking people to not where a historically shitty costume, you are being a brat for fighting tooth and nail to be douche".
If you don't wanna live in America over these issues, meh your version is pretty shitty to me.
Steeped in a Sea of Games
Member
So what does a student do when they ask someone to be more culturally sensitive and people keep screaming at them for being a 'pussy' or a 'whiner'? Quit school and go back home? She's a professor from an elite university that got a recommendation when she quit. She can go anywhere she wants.
The only thing that happened to this lady is that people protested her. Yes, people said nasty things, many probably unwarrented, but she even had colleagues who backed her and the university itself seemed fine with her. She was the one who decided to leave because she couldn't take the heat for her own poorly thought out argument.
Second, these aren't children in Mulan costumes but young-adults choosing to perpetuate hateful ideology. She decided to take mostly reasonable requests by students and trivialize struggles they've had to face their whole lives by boiling it down to 'figure it out yourselves' despite the fact that's exactly what they're trying to do through said requests and calls for awareness.
This was already discussed earlier. Her e-mail was directly in response to costumes including blackface which is what that article is implying.
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
I figured she chose the Mulan example because it's one most people wouldn't really take issue with. There's a difference in dressing up as a Disney character who happens to be of a race other than your own, and just dressing up as a stereotypical representation of another race or worst case, a mockery. No one in their right mind is going to begrudge a kid dressing up like a character just because they're a different race.
If you really want to get grimy about it lots of people only have the option of characters of a different race
If you really want to get grimy about it lots of people only have the option of characters of a different race
Steeped in a Sea of Games
Member
Which is why her e-mail is so disingenuous. What she said isn't necessarily crazy, but when you look at what it's in response to, it's incredibly insulting and short-sighted. Just lazy regurgitation of "college students are so entitled and sheltered waa"
You must have not even read what I said. The administration doesn't have the power to just baby sit everyone. A particular occurrence must be brought to them, where they would then investigate it. This is college, for them to really enforce these policies in the way you expect, that is asking for them to have a zero-tolerance policy. This whole debacle has to do with a student group who hedged the Halloween season with an appeal to combat offensive costumes. Which is great. Christakis issued a companion to their appeal, making an appeal of her own. To encourage people to be careful how they approach the intent behind costumes, and to open dialogue to better understand and not falsely accuse someone of invoking stereotypes. Because every year people get upset over Native American costumes, geisha costumes, and day of the dead costumes. If you read Christakis letter you think one of two things. Well yeah, of course I'll be careful. Or you think she is objecting to the end goal that these students groups wish to usher in. Which she wasn't doing. She argued there was merely a better methodology which presents more opportunities for understand and reduced reactionary action and error.
I know some people don't want to believe it, but there are grey areas. Wearing a sombrero or a day of the dead outfit does not reduce the Mexican people to any particular stereotype. Costumes are about testing out or stepping into the role of a character, occupation, or cultural expression. But those characters, occupations, or cultural expressions are things that are existential. They may be interesting in their own right. Your not dressing up as a Mexican, your dressing up as someone filling the same role which a costume was historically used for or associated with.
It should be clear as day how the students letter and Christakis' work together. But people demonstrably took her position as failing the students. The students were all dealing in hypotheticals. It's as if she had already abandoned them, when they weren't even asking for her to help address an actual instance of offense.
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Also the geisha costume would have been implemented by a subset of the Japanese population. The custom spread and other Japanese people adopted it. It has never been indicative of all Japanese people. Wearing it is not an endorsement that it is indicitive. What actually is, is dressing up in the style of something that existentially existed. If you think that anyone that wears a geisha costume is either trying to be offensive, or is endorsing a stereotype in attempt to "depict" the Japanese people. Then you quite simply are wrong, but you are disgusting in your thinking. If you think there is a deeper problem, like the person is acting racist, did their makeup in an over the top racist way. Then you might have a problem. But to assume it devolving into absurdity, and it's trying to bring about an attack from someone that simply never existed.
First off she is only human. The way the students were treating her, she couldn't even open up a dialogue. Even her husband barely could maintain discussion, and he maintained a considerable amount of patience. Patience which was wasted on more than a couple people. She didn't just pick up her ball either, you're being unreasonable your expectations for her to quell the whole uproar. She simply couldn't address people who were demonstrably against her, the people who chose to remain in contention to make an example of her as they her. This doesn't mean she was right on every beat, but It should be clear that a portion of the student population was refusing to step up and conduct a mature and constructive dialogue over the whole dilemma.
So, what sort of punishment do you want for students who wear and/or say something offensive? And how would you define offensive?
And I think you are seriously underestimating the social consequences of contempt and ostracization by the Yale student body. Just because the student is not being kicked out of school does not mean that there is not going to be consequences. That also begs another question, is it really a good idea to punish/expel students from an education institution where that is the best place for a young student to change his/her views? Not to mention that psychology is very clear. Punishing and ridiculing someone is a terrible way to convince that person that your viewpoint is right.
User 73706
Banned
This is where we disagree. When I think Halloween costume, I think dressing up as a specific character or "instanced individualized concept," to keep things as broadly existential as you're trying to - and while I can't get inside their heads, I seriously don't understand why a go-to for someone's costume isn't a superhero or Hunger Games Peter Pan, but "me except in a sombrero." I mean, why? If you want a lazy costume, just be a bedsheet ghost or something. It seems lazy and tasteless to specifically appropriate a single item or article from another culture to "be in character," because by that logic you're more or less attempting to put on a performance as a caricature of a race, which is what blackface was all about in the first place. It's really not a difficult leap to make, and attempting to dismiss it as "a sombrero is a sombrero, it's not a spanish thing, it's just a sombrero thing" is attempting to instance elements of cultural identity into mundane items, which is - again - what groups are attempting to avoid in the first place: the commodification of cultures one is not native to. There are plenty of ways to honor other cultures even if they aren't your own, but acting like putting on a big fake mustache and walking around with a sombrero and some tequila is somehow doing a justice to Hispanic peoples and that only SJWs would be outrage culture'd by it is nonsense.
I don't see how blowing out cultural identity into "it exists because it's existentially a part of our existence, it's not a cultural norm, it's just organized rationale spread across human perception and time" as though it's some incomprehensible quanta is any more reasonable than, y'know, attempting to codify "cultural abstractions" so as to make sure they aren't actually being disparaged needlessly.
excelsiorlef
Member
Steeped in a Sea of Games
Member
First, you should consider reading this: https://medium.com/@aaronzlewis/what-s-really-going-on-at-yale-6bdbbeeb57a6
A few choice quotes:
"On Friday, November 6th, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education published an article that made it seem like Yale students are only rallying because of an email sent by Professor Erika Christakis, which suggested that people should feel free to wear culturally insensitive costumes on Halloween. The reality is that students at Yale have been speaking up about serious racial issues on campus for many, many years — long before Erika Christakis even set foot here. But chronic racism isn’t newsworthy. It quietly whittles away at the hearts and minds of people who feel like they’re not being heard."
"Students should not have to become community organizers just to receive acknowledgement and respect from their administrators. It’s disheartening to feel like so few people in power have your back. Yes, we are angry. We are tired. We are emotionally drained. We feel like we have to yell in order to make our voices heard. While the stories in the press are about this one particular week at Yale, we’ve been working toward solutions for years."
That teacher inserted herself into an argument that's been happening for years and obviously has a lot of people upset. It shouldn't come as a surprise that people would be passionate about it, especially when someone's basically telling you to deal with years of problems by saying 'suck it up'.
Obviously a person would have to have multiple offenses before drastic actions were taken. At the very least the university could have students who were jerks attend cultural sensitivity workshops or something. ANYTHING really, because right now the administration has chosen to do nothing at all.
User 73706
Banned
Come on, that's breaking the illusion. Clearly we're calling for the militarization of the PC Police so anyone responsible for cis scum thoughtcrimes has to be flogged, culturally appropriated(???) and cuckolded in a court of outrage culture law.
So, you want campus officials and police to patrol the campus in significant numbers and check up on parties in houses and dorms? Because that is what it would take.
And what if they refuse? What happens then? And what if they can't take it off without stripping down to their underwear or going naked? Telling them to go home and change doesnt sound very effective because the person can just pretend to go back to change and leave, that is, unless you want the campus official in charge to follow the student back to his/her place and make sure he/she changes.
User 73706
Banned
You know you can apply those same criticisms and concerns to virtually any law requiring a person to stop [verb]ing in a public and/or private setting, right? I don't know where this outrage is coming from that "come on, take off the headdress, you're better than that" is equivalent to campuses being turned into Airstrip One.
Universities in the modern US have never been about regulating thought, but rather suggesting and encouraging thought through the academic function. What you are proposing is regulating thought through administrative functions.
While I am sure institutional racism such as legacy exist and need to be corrected. Using the administration to institutionally regulate the culture of Yale, rather than rely on the adults who participate in that culture to self police and evolve makes Yale seem like day care for adults, not yet ready to be adults.
It always provokes that question with such a pathetic answer. Who decides what is offensive?
I do because it offends me!
HideyoshiJP
Member
Evidently, we should all force people to keep their ignorant and misguided thoughts to themselves with heavy-handed policies, instead of letting people openly put themselves in a position where corrective social interaction can take place after a gaffe. An asshole who is forced to keep his or her thoughts to themselves creates opportunities for alienation and perceived persecution before an opportunity to call them out has even occurred. Everything swept under the rug goes away, right?
excelsiorlef
Member
It's a step in the right direction. Escort them off campus, tell them to go home, and continuous refusal leads to further penalties ala suspension.
Not really seeing the big deal
Steeped in a Sea of Games
Member
Universities absolutely reserve the right to punish students for poor behavior. Get arrested for something completely unrelated to the university, even off campus, they can throw you out. Bring booze into a dry dorm, get kicked out. Get caught dating a professor will get you kicked out in many universities. Cause a big enough disturbance, get kicked out.
Being an adult has nothing to do with maturity and ability to act like a decent human being.
Then it sounds like a very lackluster and pathetic response to a problem. How many of those instances are going to get noticed by campus officials if their presence isnt ramped up? Barely any if any at all. A much more effective way would seem to be is to make sure that the students themselves have the courage to go up to someone wearing an offensive costume and telling them that line, which is, interestingly enough, exactly what the professor who quit was trying to tell students to do.
As for laws, do you want students to call the campus police and have them take care of the offensive costume problem. Do you want them to investigate those offensives? If not, then I think there is a key difference than any law and this.
Gotdatmoney
Member
What the hell? Uh yes, universities constantly and publicly support certain types of thought and promote certain core beliefs. Like all the time.
You are referencing criminal behavior as justification for regulating thought and expression. -Which on the campuses of many public universities would be constitutionally protected.
Steeped in a Sea of Games
Member
Dude, this is a problem because minorities don't have the manpower to always stand up for themselves. If you've got an entire university walking around in nazi costumes and you're the only jewish person there, you really think you can get other people to listen to you about how they're demeaning you?
That's the whole reasoning behind why minorities of any type get special treatment sometimes. The majority isn't always in the right.
So you picked one example. How about dating a professor? And even the criminal activity that happens off campus and has absolutely nothing to do with the university? That's the university stating that they don't want certain ideas permeated and accepted within their institution.
You are right, they do, but they do but through academia and not administrative actions.
An appropriate response to someone in an offensive costume would be mobilizing to publically shame that person, not demand administrative justice absent actual crime.
excelsiorlef
Member
Pretty sure some schools don't allow hate speech and do so via administration rules
So, you think racism, sexism, etc, on campuses is rampant and prevalent? Perhaps that is where we differ because my thinking and understanding is that those people are in the minority on college campuses and that anyone would receive plenty of support if they stood up against bad-isms and discrimination, and the people who are doing it.
Obviously, if you were at a frat party and the frat was a gathering of a bunch of racist assholes then this strategy would not work out, but that seems like a situation where you would get the campus administration involved after getting film evidence, etc.
Gotdatmoney
Member
They administratively push agendas all the time. Not that I think the university has any business trying to tell its students to take off costumes at all. They don't, stay the fuck outta it once its done. But they completely have the right as an institution to take a moral stance and belief against any issue they choose.
Hellwarden
Member
Who is going to do this though?
How are they going to decide what is considered offensive on the spot?
There's not much room for interpretation of blackface, but what about costumes that some might consider offensive, but others might not?
Who gets to decide that grey area?
Dude Abides
Banned
You're actually proposing a Halloween costume police squad with the power to arrest (because that's what the power to escort off campus is) people in offensive Halloween costumes?
I do because it offends me.
I think you are overestimating the certainty with which a clear and intolerable offense can be distinguished from a potentially intolerable offense. For instance, would it be intolerably offensive to wear a t-shirt with a Charlie Hebdo cartoon of Muhammad? A significant number of people would say yes. And they would draw parallels to the arguments made in the prohibition of potentially offensive halloween costumes. Others, on the other hand, would see it as highly problematic to prohibit it. Or is it offensive to allow a controversial speaker to speak at a university? We have had numerous examples of speakers being prohibited from accepting an invitation to speak at universities, because certain people found the mere expression of a disputed view point intolerably offensive.
It is worth being defensive and skeptic about how much the criticism of ideas and expressions has to be implemented through administrative means or even permanently institutionalized. Especially because institutionalized responses are not the only means through which such ideas and expressions can be criticized. Authoritarian means should not be used lightly. And as I said, in the real world they are not even available in many situations.
Try, for instance, to forbid your boss or an important client from being chauvinistic to female coworkers by invoking some authority. There will be none, at least not in most companies. And there are many more situations like this.Many times there simply does not even exist an institution that could enforce behavior. You'd have to deal with this situation differently. And a university should educate their students with this reality in mind.
I mean there are basically 3 ways to go about policing haloween costumes and I think that she was advocating for the best of the possible choices. Either:
1. There is a blanket ban on any costumes found to be offensive. This is vague enough to lead to several problems, including people arguing that their specific costume isn't offensive or people being afraid to dress up at all due to the vagueness.
2. A specific list of what costumes arn't allowed. Again this runs into the problem of who decides what is offensive or not. Some things like the often mentioning of black face would obviously belon on the list, but what happens when something is not as clear cut? Do we end up with a list of hundreds of costumes or do we have a nearly empty list due to the arguments about what is or is not offensive?
3. Have no specific ban on any costumes but encourage students not to offend or to speak up when they feel offended. This is what the teacher supported and is probably a good fit for a clearly progressive campus like Yale. Let the people who don't care decide to show up to a party in black face and be kicked out and ostracized for the rest of their time at the school. They have the right to wear an offensive costume and the other students have the right to call them out on it as they are clearly more than ready to do.
1. There is a blanket ban on any costumes found to be offensive. This is vague enough to lead to several problems, including people arguing that their specific costume isn't offensive or people being afraid to dress up at all due to the vagueness.
2. A specific list of what costumes arn't allowed. Again this runs into the problem of who decides what is offensive or not. Some things like the often mentioning of black face would obviously belon on the list, but what happens when something is not as clear cut? Do we end up with a list of hundreds of costumes or do we have a nearly empty list due to the arguments about what is or is not offensive?
3. Have no specific ban on any costumes but encourage students not to offend or to speak up when they feel offended. This is what the teacher supported and is probably a good fit for a clearly progressive campus like Yale. Let the people who don't care decide to show up to a party in black face and be kicked out and ostracized for the rest of their time at the school. They have the right to wear an offensive costume and the other students have the right to call them out on it as they are clearly more than ready to do.
excelsiorlef
Member
That's literally not the definition of arrest not am I proposing a squad of anything but hey let's play a hyperbole game to paint me as some authoritarian lunatic so the status quo never gets challenged
This is irrelevant anyway as the Yale intial letter was suggestions not enforcement.
Steeped in a Sea of Games
Member
Look, you can't stand up for yourself when literally everyone else is against you. Sometimes as a society, we decide that there are certain ways a person should not be treated without consequence on the actor. If a gang of 5 people jump you and beat you down, the law is hopefully there to help the one person who's being beaten. It's like the gay community vs. bakery controversy. It's fine and all to say that the owner of a business should be able to sell to whatever costumer they want, but when every single bakery is owned by people who refuse to serve a certain group of people, the person not in that group is shit out of luck and no matter how much they try to talk others into letting them in, the bakeries have no real reason to change; they still have the majority to serve after all. This was commonplace for blacks before the civil rights movement and the only thing that changed it was by authority coming in and changing it. This would be the same with these costumes. If there's a major problem on campus, which some students think there is, there simply isn't the manpower for these people to when a war of ideology, and instead get to pay for it with anxiety and shame.
Yale has a student body of 12,000+ people. Of that, we have a few hundred people protesting that their treatment at the university has been unfair and that they need help feeling safe and accepted because they simply can't do it on their own. They've tried for years, if not decades and haven't had much progress. They're sick and tired of it and having a teacher say "go talk it out, I'm sure they'll come around" isn't helping anything and is demeaning. It's a little like telling a depressed person that if they just tried being happy more often they wouldn't be depressed. It misses the point and just gives one more example of how the faculty is out of touch with the students who are demanding change. That she faced a large backlash is hardly surprising and the fact that she responded by saying "you guys are just too entitled" and left really says something about her character. When things got hard for her position, instead of fight for it like she told other people to do, she left with her fingers in her ears and created a lot of passive aggressive people who turned it around by stating the students are the ones who couldn't handle things and are too sensitive when they're still there fighting for change.
Yale has a student body of 12,000+ people. Of that, we have a few hundred people protesting that their treatment at the university has been unfair and that they need help feeling safe and accepted because they simply can't do it on their own. They've tried for years, if not decades and haven't had much progress. They're sick and tired of it and having a teacher say "go talk it out, I'm sure they'll come around" isn't helping anything and is demeaning. It's a little like telling a depressed person that if they just tried being happy more often they wouldn't be depressed. It misses the point and just gives one more example of how the faculty is out of touch with the students who are demanding change. That she faced a large backlash is hardly surprising and the fact that she responded by saying "you guys are just too entitled" and left really says something about her character. When things got hard for her position, instead of fight for it like she told other people to do, she left with her fingers in her ears and created a lot of passive aggressive people who turned it around by stating the students are the ones who couldn't handle things and are too sensitive when they're still there fighting for change.
Dude Abides
Banned
It is not the definition of an arrest. It is an example of an arrest. And it makes you sound like an authoritarian lunatic because it's a loony authoritarian proposal.
not psycho
Member
The funny thing is that the school didn't actually ban anything. Students still have to deal with it. Both the school and Christakis are being misinterpreted.
I highly doubt Christakis would have responded how she did if the school had banned anything. In that situation she would have recognized the high volatility involved. And she may have a different opinion of a specific ban, compared to a general statement. But because the school's email was so low key and general, she probably thought she could add to the conversation without being interpreted as supporting any particular offensive costume or as putting it all on the students (because again, nothing had been banned in the first place).
Email from school:
Email from Christakis:
The school was very general about their concerns. They mention "cultural appropriation", "religious beliefs", etc. A ninja? Mulan? A sexy nun?
One thing the school does not do: Ban anything. Blackface is still allowed.
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Christakis lauds the goal, but wants to add to the conversation her own thoughts about whether censure from above has its own negative consequences.
The school's statement seems to disapprove of all costumes someone could take offense to. I'm not attacking the school's statement, but I can understand why she would want to add something to that. The school does not consider whether there is a place for some offensive costumes, or whether a general statement from above is the best way to handle the issue. Those are ideas that can be added to their statement, without really attacking it.
She uses Mulan and Tiana as examples.
What about a costume of a scantily clad Catholic nun handing out condoms?
The point is, there are potentially offensive costumes that we may not want to censure, or that we may want to discuss before censuring. Or that we may want to leave up to the students what they think about it. That idea can be added to the school's statement.
I highly doubt Christakis would have responded how she did if the school had banned anything. In that situation she would have recognized the high volatility involved. And she may have a different opinion of a specific ban, compared to a general statement. But because the school's email was so low key and general, she probably thought she could add to the conversation without being interpreted as supporting any particular offensive costume or as putting it all on the students (because again, nothing had been banned in the first place).
Email from school:
Email from Christakis:
The school was very general about their concerns. They mention "cultural appropriation", "religious beliefs", etc. A ninja? Mulan? A sexy nun?
One thing the school does not do: Ban anything. Blackface is still allowed.
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Christakis lauds the goal, but wants to add to the conversation her own thoughts about whether censure from above has its own negative consequences.
The school's statement seems to disapprove of all costumes someone could take offense to. I'm not attacking the school's statement, but I can understand why she would want to add something to that. The school does not consider whether there is a place for some offensive costumes, or whether a general statement from above is the best way to handle the issue. Those are ideas that can be added to their statement, without really attacking it.
She uses Mulan and Tiana as examples.
What about a costume of a scantily clad Catholic nun handing out condoms?
The point is, there are potentially offensive costumes that we may not want to censure, or that we may want to discuss before censuring. Or that we may want to leave up to the students what they think about it. That idea can be added to the school's statement.
Arrogant Bastard
Banned
Been following this briefly when it first dropped and I have to say I'm disappointed but not really surprised. I very well could have misread this entire issue, but to me as an educator it was about academic freedom/exploration/expression. There is a culture in America that is brewing that seeks to stifle discussion and expression on the basis of outrage/safety/etc.
I did not read her email as a means to support bigotry, racism, etc. I read it as a means to make sure that we discuss those things if/when they crop out during Halloween. Truly a shame.
I did not read her email as a means to support bigotry, racism, etc. I read it as a means to make sure that we discuss those things if/when they crop out during Halloween. Truly a shame.
excelsiorlef
Member
How is being told to leave somewhere an arrest?
Offensive costumes and disparaging remarks amoung adults are equivalent to universal suffrage and equal rights with institutional actors?
DrGonzo615
Banned
Thats how sane people would have interpreted the email. This is seriously some infantile BS.
Hellwarden
Member
I'm sorry if I came off rude in my questions.
I feel as though some action could be taken against individuals who dress in a racial offensive manner. (Individuals who wear black face for example.)
But I don't agree that people should be called, and the potentially offending individual or party should be escorted anywhere. Rather I think we should tell students to document the incident, and report it so careful action could be taken.
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
I guess whether or not you see dressing up as a member of a race as a discussion starter is the core of how you feel about the school's letter and the professor's. I don't personally feel like I'd be losing out by being encouraged not to mock others but I can see how some people do.
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