Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and I attended the main session Monday morning with a speech from a professor. The speech consisted of a lecture and discussion portion, and all of it was telling us we are all racist. There are a few reasons this speech was ridiculous to me.
One thing that the speaker said is that tension is good if it is constructive tension and not violent tension. I can understand this view, but the speaker sought to create tension by telling us that Concordia is racist and that we are all racist whether we think so or not. Starting a speech by telling every person in the audience that they school they attend and love, and everybody in it, is racist does not create constructive tension. It creates a tension that makes people automatically oppose and throw out everything said. Accusing people of something like racism does not make people consider a viewpoint, it raises their hackles and puts them on the defensive, which is heading to violent tension.
In one of the discussions after saying we were racist, somebody mentioned that they used to feel defensive about being called racist then thought that since he was offended by being called a racist he must be racist. This doesn’t make any sense at all, yet everybody agreed with him. If I accused the same person of something like rape, would he feel offended? Almost definitely so. That doesn’t make him a rapist. Most people are offended more when wrongfully accused of something wrong that they didn’t do than when they are accused for something they did do. I would be offended if wrongfully accused of lying or murder, so why does this not translate to racism?
Another issue I had with the speech is that the speaker said that Concordia was an echo chamber for like opinions and we all just pat each other on the back for caring about race for one day. The problem with this statement is that it was clear during the discussion that everybody cared and wanted to know how to do better in their day to day lives, which invalidates his comment about an echo chamber against caring. I also did not feel comfortable bringing up any of my own questions or opinions, because it seemed like everybody agreed with everything the speaker said and there were no dissenting views. I also heard people behind me talking and they had an opinion that was against something the speaker had said at one point in the speech, but they also did not offer their opinion. I think it is interesting that he wanted an open discussion and only got people who agreed with him to talk.
One last issue I had with this speech is he said that we shouldn’t feel inclined to ask minorities questions about things like culture or justice, because it “burdens” them, and we already “burden” them enough. He said we need to “educate ourselves.” There are two problems with this phrase: educating ourselves does not tell us how to fix things people find offending, and educating ourselves can end with incorrect information. There are tons of conflicting information on the internet and even in journals that are spun to influence people or are just plain incorrect. How do we parse through this information? After we find correct information, what do we do with it? This ties into another problem I had with the speech. Dr. Creech said that he would give us suggestions at the end for what to do about all these problems he was talking about, but educate ourselves was the only suggestion he actually gave. How do we fix these things if nobody helps us figure out what to do?
Overall, the speech given did create tension for me, but not the correct kind of tension. The way he worded things and the types of things he said turned me away from his opinion and made me feel defensive and offended, when he did not know anything about me or anybody else in the room. This speech, to me, was more about ostracizing whites than helping people understand better.
