How to Deal with Racism on Campus

Last month three brave students and a friend stood their ground while a racist shouted, "Go home, slant eyes" and other taunts for fifteen minutes. By staying where they were, they proved that words have no inherent power. Words can do nothing unless one agrees with them at some level. If the racist had come out and assaulted them, he could have been prosecuted. If he had chased or trapped them, refusing to let them alone, that would have been harassment. This was a confrontation in which the racist backed down. It was a victory not only for minorities, but for all who refuse to let others define their place in the world or who disobey orders from presumptuous strangers. America needs more people like that. I wish the University shared their faith in the power of reason, and the weakness of unreason.

Private universities have a unique degree of social and economic power over their students. Unlike public schools, they are not bound by the constitution. Legally, students are their customers, their tenants and their guests. But colleges are exempt from the laws governing other landlords, and are able to ignore the codes of etiquette which presume that the guest or customer is always right or at least should be treated respectfully. To urge that this extraordinary power be used responsibly is not to belittle the university's rights.

The UDC's only specific error is in punishing speech with a rule that claims to apply only to "actions." Sure, speech is action, in the same semantic sense in which people are animals and are therefore not allowed in the dormitories. If there are people here who see no moral difference between saying nasty things about me and doing nasty things to me, then this community is not safe for anyone. In fact, it loses its basic character as a community of people who come together to persuade one another, and be persuaded, with words.

The university should take the advice of Richard Spahr, and re-learn the art of peaceful verbal confrontation. I would like to propose a model, parts of which should be approximated where applicable, though in its perfect form it may be unrealistic (all my social-science professors assure me that this is a valid way to argue). Ideally, I would like to see some kind of public dialogue between the accused racists and some moral leader in the community whom the accused recognize and respect ­p; the president, or one of their former professors or coaches, for example. First it should be ascertained whether the students made the remarks. If they deny them, the other party should ask if they would be so kind as to repudiate and denounce the insults in question, so as to assuage the doubt and anger which plague the community. Otherwise, they should be challenged to either defend their conduct or apologize fully for it. The interlocutor should not just convince them to admit rudeness or bad judgement, but should press to the root of every racist assumption suggested by their remarks (e.g. the idea that Asian-Americans should "go home" to another country).

I seriously think that such a process, if people cared enough to pay attention to it, would to a lot to heal the community of the strains caused by racism. Healing is usually a painful procedure, of course. This process would also be indispensably useful if conducted in private or in a S.O.A.R. workshop, but it would be infinitely more credible if it were one-on-one, without such unfair advantages as the group peer pressure which is felt in workshops or an administrator's power to influence punishment. We cannot always get inside other people's heads, but the only way we can know whether we have persuaded them is if they remain free to disagree.

We have also seen in the past few days that when such a case is resolved secretly, the public can end up suspecting the worst of everyone involved. If the accused racists are given a forum in which to make a public, practically irrevocable apology, most people's minds will be more settled. If they continue to defend their racism, or refuse to show up for an equal debate, we can conclude that we have done all we can for them and renew our efforts to persuade others. As for their privacy rights, I doubt they could claim privacy for anything shouted in a public place.

Some warn that if the accused racists' identities are made public, they will be in some danger from their fellow-students. I don't buy this at all. I trust Brown students to be non-violent, and usually fair and civil. If a few are not, I trust the authorities to deal impartially with them. Responsibility for their actions must rest with them, and not with others who give them information or ideas. Unfortunately, when we blame crimes on societal factors and then try to prevent crime by controlling those factors, we end up restricting everyone's liberty for the sake of debatable popularized sociological theories, in a progression with no logical limit (except a padded cell). For example, suppose someone eats 40 twinkies in an hour, reads a disturbing column in the paper, flies into a rage and shoots the columnist's kneecaps off. Today's compassionate society would respond by banning twinkies and forbidding the papers from printing names and pictures of people with controversial opinions. Law-abiding producers and consumers of opinions and twinkies would be reminded that this is a small price to pay for a law that "saves lives."

In summary, any individual, institution or government should recoil from being the first party to use force in a confrontation. The more force we can muster, the stronger this inhibition must be. I urge the Office of Student Life immediately to insert some opportunity for reasoned ideological debate into the handling of every offense involving ideas that Brown condemns. For verbal offenses which offend our norms but do not involve harassing actions, I hope we will eventually develop an alternative to the disciplinary process. I sympathize with the Third World Coalition's desire for mandatory counseling, but I think they will one day conclude that efforts to change people's ideas are most effective when they are free of any threat of force. Mere communication cannot perform the function of force, and I think we all are beginning to realize that force is not a worthwhile method of communication.