Earlier this week, a petition was released that asked Vice Chancellor Parham to cancel the return of Milo, the self-proclaimed “Dangerous Faggot,” from speaking on our UCI campus. Now I, like many of you, didn’t know how to feel about this issue. On one hand, people have the right to come speak on our campus even if their values and beliefs do not align with our own. On the other hand, how far are we willing to take free speech before it starts becoming dangerous?
I quickly remembered being outside of Milo’s event last year. I remembered the hundreds of people in their “Make America Great Again” attire yelling “Build the Wall” and other racial obscenities. I remembered UCI Police creating a barricade around those same people as if the 20 or so UCI protesters were going to somehow hurt the hundreds of people attending the Milo event. I remembered being in shock when an angry old White man pushed one of the protesters, a student, and UCI Police did absolutely nothing about it. And I remembered standing alongside the 20 protesters, while more than 50 UCI students just stood on the outside and watched from a distance.
Conservatives will have you believe that stopping Milo from coming to our campus is a violation of our freedom of speech. They will tell you to be more open-minded because we cannot learn if we are not open to what other people have to say. This is what we, in the academic world, like to call bullshit. Even though being open to different perspectives is a great thing, that is simply not what the Milo event is for.
The Milo event is purposely trying to dehumanize and devalue the experiences of people of color and minority students. This is not an event to learn anything, it is an event designed to trigger emotions and rally around the ideas of racism and White supremacy. The event itself described it as a “Trump Rally” and instructed its attendees to wear their “most offensive, triggering Halloween costume.” And no, this is not my opinion, it’s fact.
What really bothers me is that if something is not blatantly racist, we tend to dismiss it as “just another opinion.” But what Milo is doing is threatening to communities of color who face these kinds of stereotypes and misconceptions every single day, and literally die from these false perceptions of them. Supporting Trump is not just another political view. Supporting Milo coming to UCI or feeling indifferent about it is not just another feeling, it is an act of racism.
To UCI administrators. How dare you allow someone like this on our campus, not once but twice now? How dare you put the safety of our students at risk? And how dare you disregard this hatred in order to remain neutral to avoid political battles? UCI, you should be ashamed.
To the UCI students, I speak directly to you now. This is our campus. Come Sunday, there will be intruders here calling for the eradication of undocumented folks, the persecution of Muslim folks, and the erasing of Black folks. Come Sunday, these individuals will march onto our campus with their “Make America Great” T-shirts and their Confederate flags. They will try and destroy the very values the students of this campus have worked so hard to instill. It is not okay that our school is less than three percent Black, yet they are the most visible at these protests. We can no longer sit idly by and talk about injustice — we have to do something about it. And if you don’t know where to start, there’s a petition below, but it should not end there. No more silence, because to stay silent means to side with the oppressor. Speak up UCI.
