I'm just back from 10 days in Israel, and I have a lot to think about. I'll try to update a few times over the next few weeks as thoughts come up, but this first one is going to be short because, even though it's 9:40 on the East coast, it's 7 hours ahead in Israel and I'm tired.
We talked a lot about Israel being the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, and that's certainly the case presently. It also has the most diverse and successful economy, vibrant politics and political culture. In comparative politics, Israel is often considered to be an "ethnic democracy," which by definition it is. It was established as a Jewish state for the Jewish people, but what I've learned over the past few days has entrenched my view that ethnic democracy is a contradiction in terms. In order to have an explicitly ethnic state, Israel has been forced not only to encourage immigration from around the world and promote aliyah (diaspora Jews moving to Israel), but also to expel and reject outsiders to a significant extent. Both inclusion and exclusion play a role.
Definitionally, democracy requires an embrace of pluralism and diversity. If different backgrounds, opinions and values aren't important to the state and the population, neither is democracy. In Israel, which is a state with significant diversity, most citizens are only interested in Jewish diversity in their explicitly Jewish state. Arabs, Druze, and other minorities are locked into their status as minorities regardless of increasing demographic change. In a few years, if the current trends hold, Arabs will comprise a majority in the land of Israel. This means, essentially, that in a few years an Arab--a non-Jew--could be the Prime Minister of Israel.
One of the Israeli soldiers on our trip, Mattan, suggested a Constitutional amendment allowing only a Jew to be the Prime Minister. This anti-democratic reform would ensure Jewish domination, even if Jews become the minority in the land of Israel. If this position were widely held or enacted, it would mark the end of true liberal democracy in Israel.
In short, ethnic democracy cannot exist. There is an inherent disconnect between pluralism and an ethnic state, which means Israel has to make a choice in the future.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Health care and the waning of progressive enthusiasm
This was initially written and has been cross-posted at Red, Brown and Blue, which is the politics blog for Tufts Office of Undergrad Admissions.
Let me know what you think, I'd love to see a debate on this topic.
I know it’s summer and some of us have more important things going on than following politics and reading this blog, but luckily for you all, I don’t. I’m relaxing and mentally preparing to head back to Tufts in the fall for senior year, but politics never fade far from my mind. This summer we’ve seen a very intense health care debate flaring up all over the country (even in liberal suburban Connecticut: check this out).
Commentary from the left and the right persistently asks the question: why are conservatives so passionate, so mobilized, and getting so much publicity, when all of those Obama liberals might as well be invisible? Well, for one, Democratic activists haven’t been silent, health care demonstrations around the country have attracted hundreds and even thousands of participants in support of reform, and amidst the loudest anti-reform voices, there are quiet, more polite liberals in the background. But I digress.
Democrats who supported Obama haven’t been as vocal in support of this reform bill as they could have been. The progressive grass- and netroots that did most of the legwork to elect President Obama have been relatively quiet and laid-back as the health care debate gets going. The energy and excitement coursing through Obama supporters in the campaign of 2008 is nowhere to be found.
Jonathan Cohn calls it “The Enthusiasm Gap” in a recent article in The New Republic. Polls are showing that Americans still largely support the major components of health care reform as proposed by the White House, but…well, no one seems to be doing anything about it. Crazies on the right are up in arms, hanging their representatives in effigy and accusing Obama and Democrats of being everything from socialists to granny-murderers, and the response from the left has been…casual, to say the least. No one seems to know why, but I have a few ideas.
Liberals are ambivalent about the legislation on the table to reform health care because, in essence, they’re worthless, watered-down proposals that won’t have much of an effect. As a proponent of single-payer health care, which would not only reduce costs to the individual but actually cover everybody, the bill Barack Obama is pushing is disappointing, to say the least. Most depressing, we can look back at the Hillary-care effort from 1993 longingly; that proposal included many of the provisions we are losing every day. Now, Obama-care is but a shadow of the long lost reform efforts of the Clinton administration. There is even talk that the public option may be dropped entirely.
Is this change we can believe in? More importantly, the first few months of the Obama administration have disappointed progressives on numerous other levels. One of the President’s first official actions was to bailout corporations like AIG to the tune of nearly a trillion dollars, and he has been slow to act on many campaign issues that got him elected in the first place: Afghanistan is getting worse, not better; the pull-out of Iraq has been slow and with only mixed results; and the Bush-era crimes against humanity have yet to be investigated, let lone prosecuted. The list of disappointents is miles long.
As any self-respecting liberal ought to tell you, we as a movement are far from giving up. The recent Netroots Nation convention of progressive bloggers and activists confirms that there is still energy and excitement on the left for “change we can believe in”. But we’re tired of the endless compromises coming out of the White House and the Democratic caucus in both chambers of Congress. We worked to elect the President, and finally, for the first time in my political life, I expected to have a voice, however small, in the decision-making process in Washington. It hasn’t quite materialized–although I’m not ready to give up yet.
And whenever I get really down about the lack of progress on important issues like health care, I remind myself that it could certainly be worse. Imagine the country under President McCain and–I shudder to think–Vice President Palin. A scary picture indeed.
Let me know what you think, I'd love to see a debate on this topic.
I know it’s summer and some of us have more important things going on than following politics and reading this blog, but luckily for you all, I don’t. I’m relaxing and mentally preparing to head back to Tufts in the fall for senior year, but politics never fade far from my mind. This summer we’ve seen a very intense health care debate flaring up all over the country (even in liberal suburban Connecticut: check this out).
Commentary from the left and the right persistently asks the question: why are conservatives so passionate, so mobilized, and getting so much publicity, when all of those Obama liberals might as well be invisible? Well, for one, Democratic activists haven’t been silent, health care demonstrations around the country have attracted hundreds and even thousands of participants in support of reform, and amidst the loudest anti-reform voices, there are quiet, more polite liberals in the background. But I digress.
Democrats who supported Obama haven’t been as vocal in support of this reform bill as they could have been. The progressive grass- and netroots that did most of the legwork to elect President Obama have been relatively quiet and laid-back as the health care debate gets going. The energy and excitement coursing through Obama supporters in the campaign of 2008 is nowhere to be found.
Jonathan Cohn calls it “The Enthusiasm Gap” in a recent article in The New Republic. Polls are showing that Americans still largely support the major components of health care reform as proposed by the White House, but…well, no one seems to be doing anything about it. Crazies on the right are up in arms, hanging their representatives in effigy and accusing Obama and Democrats of being everything from socialists to granny-murderers, and the response from the left has been…casual, to say the least. No one seems to know why, but I have a few ideas.
Liberals are ambivalent about the legislation on the table to reform health care because, in essence, they’re worthless, watered-down proposals that won’t have much of an effect. As a proponent of single-payer health care, which would not only reduce costs to the individual but actually cover everybody, the bill Barack Obama is pushing is disappointing, to say the least. Most depressing, we can look back at the Hillary-care effort from 1993 longingly; that proposal included many of the provisions we are losing every day. Now, Obama-care is but a shadow of the long lost reform efforts of the Clinton administration. There is even talk that the public option may be dropped entirely.
Is this change we can believe in? More importantly, the first few months of the Obama administration have disappointed progressives on numerous other levels. One of the President’s first official actions was to bailout corporations like AIG to the tune of nearly a trillion dollars, and he has been slow to act on many campaign issues that got him elected in the first place: Afghanistan is getting worse, not better; the pull-out of Iraq has been slow and with only mixed results; and the Bush-era crimes against humanity have yet to be investigated, let lone prosecuted. The list of disappointents is miles long.
As any self-respecting liberal ought to tell you, we as a movement are far from giving up. The recent Netroots Nation convention of progressive bloggers and activists confirms that there is still energy and excitement on the left for “change we can believe in”. But we’re tired of the endless compromises coming out of the White House and the Democratic caucus in both chambers of Congress. We worked to elect the President, and finally, for the first time in my political life, I expected to have a voice, however small, in the decision-making process in Washington. It hasn’t quite materialized–although I’m not ready to give up yet.
And whenever I get really down about the lack of progress on important issues like health care, I remind myself that it could certainly be worse. Imagine the country under President McCain and–I shudder to think–Vice President Palin. A scary picture indeed.
Monday, July 6, 2009
The New York Times writes about me
Here's the story: on one of the paper's blogs, The Choice, of which I am relatively frequent reader, they asked for college students who were living at home for the summer to talk about how the recession is affecting them and how the summer is going with internships drying up and parents' largely not being able to afford to support kids doing unpaid work away from home. So, I responded, not expecting anything to come of it, and day or 2 later the writer responds to me, asks a few more questions, and we go back and forth via email. THEN, when I'm out of town for a weekend, I get a call from a photographer for the Times, and she wants to come to my house to take my picture for this article. And now I'm in a huge photo on the cover of the Style section of the Sunday New York Times. check it out
Will Ehrenfeld, right, a Tufts senior, hoped for a White House summer internship but ended up with no job. He’s shown with Josh, his brother, a college graduate who is also jobless.
Say Hello to Underachieving
By ALEX WILLIAMS
Published: July 2, 2009
ERIN McAULIFFE had a vision for this summer. A 20-year-old junior at Bowdoin College, she had lined up an internship at a New York publishing house and imagined stimulating days leafing through manuscripts, and evenings of sparkling conversation with friends at downtown cafes.
She ended up starring in a real-life version of the movie “Adventureland” instead. In that recent comedy, a recent college graduate is forced by economic hardship to work at a suburban amusement park.
Life is imitating art for Ms. McAuliffe. With her parents unable to help bankroll three months of unpaid work in Manhattan, she gave up the internship offer and moved home to Andover, Mass., where she took the one job she could find: working 12-hour days at an amusement park. For $7.80 an hour, she tends bumper cars and the big swing, and endures the many carny jokes of her friends.
“It’s rain or shine,” Ms. McAuliffe said dryly about her job. “You’d be really surprised how many people go to an amusement park in the pouring rain.”
School’s out for summer 2009, and instead of getting a jump on the boundless futures that parents and colleges always promised them, students this year are receiving a reality check.
The well-paying summer jobs that in previous years seemed like a birthright have grown scarce, and pre-professional internships are disappearing as companies cut back across the board. Recession-strapped parents don’t always have the means or will to bankroll starter apartments or art tours of Tuscany.
So many college students and recent graduates are heading to where they least expected: back home, and facing an unfamiliar prospect: downtime, maybe too much of it. To a high-achieving generation whose schedules were once crammed with extracurricular activities meant to propel them into college, it feels like an empty summer — eerie, and a bit scary.
“Things have changed drastically,” said Ron Alsop, author of “The Trophy Kids Grow Up: How the Millennial Generation Is Shaking Up the Workplace,” a book that only last year portrayed young workers as entitled and in a hurry. “It has to be a huge wake-up call for this generation.”
Numbers provide the backdrop to the story — not just the grimly familiar national unemployment rate, 9.5 percent in June, but the even scarier, less publicized unemployment figure for 16- to 19-year-olds, which has hit 24 percent, up from 16.1 percent two years ago. Internships available to college students have fallen 21 percent since last year, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Across the country, there are countless tales like that of Morgan Henderson, a student at the University of San Francisco, who, along with friends, planned a big road trip to Las Vegas this summer. With so few of the friends finding jobs, they downgraded plans to a road trip to Reno, then to no road trip at all. They’re spending time watching DVDs at one another’s houses.
Or Kathryn Estrada, a high school senior in Hialeah, Fla., who has no summer job after Circuit City, which employed her during the school year, went out of business. She is finding that even this early in the summer, attempts to while away the hours playing Scrabble and Cranium have grown stale. “We all just wish school would start so we would have something to do,” she said.
Or Will Ehrenfeld, a political science major at Tufts, who worked at a think tank last year and this summer was aiming higher: a White House internship. When the White House didn’t come through, and neither did the State Department or dozens of companies he applied to, Mr. Ehrenfeld, 20, moved back home to Vernon, Conn. Even the local Boston Market had no work.
Mr. Ehrenfeld, a top student who has always held leadership positions in clubs and academic groups, loafs through days, rolling out of bed around 11 and reading or playing trumpet or guitar. Nights, he sometimes meets up with friends who also have nowhere that they have to be in the morning, and they share a few cheap beers. “At worst, misery continues to have company,” he said.
While young people in earlier decades might have cherished the chance to goof off and sleep in for a few months, the current generation, experts like Mr. Alsop are apt to point out, “have always been told they can achieve anything they can put their mind to.”
“They were always given trophies just for showing up,” he said. “Now, they’re being told ‘no’ when they really want a job or an internship.”
To them, a staycation at Mom and Dad’s can feel more like house arrest.
If the only problem were tedium, students might find a recessionary summer unpleasant but endurable. But some expressed concern that the economic gloom might be a preview of harsh career realities that await.
“The worst thing about this summer is the lack of hope felt by so many kids,” Lydia Wiledon, a Barnard undergraduate, wrote in an e-mail message. “College students ready to thrust themselves into work find nothing, and those most in need are edged out by older, more skilled individuals who are overqualified for such foot-in-the-door opportunities. I worry about how this employment drought will affect my generation in the future.”
There may be reason for concern. Students who enter the job market during a recession can see their wages lag behind comparable students who graduated in better times for as long as 15 years, according to a recent study by Lisa B. Kahn, an economist at the Yale School of Management.
Even for students who remain optimistic about their long-term career prospects, an unexpected move home — back under the roof of Mom and Dad, where many had barely alighted in years except for brief Thanksgiving breaks — can require an attitude adjustment.
“Communication patterns are different when students come back from college,” said Roni Cohen-Sandler, a clinical psychologist in Weston, Conn., specializing in adolescent issues. “Kids may not be as interested in sharing who they’re hanging out with and why. The level of disclosure is different, and parents have not made the shift in their mind. They’re asking a lot of questions, and students are chafing.”
When students try to stave off the boredom by watching television, parents may wonder aloud if there is not a more productive use of their time. Curfews and household chores that seemed natural at 16 can seem oppressive at 20.
This has been the experience of Kelly Fabian, an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, who hoped to study art history in Rome this summer, but returned home to Orange County, Calif., instead, when her family asked her to work to help pay her tuition.
It’s an adjustment, she said. Living on her own for two years, including summers, she got used to doing chores like washing dishes and taking out the recycling — but not when instructed to.
“It’s not weird doing them, it’s weird having someone tell you to do them,” she said.
Ms. Fabian said she was close to her parents and valued the time spent together, but the new proximity did take getting used to, on all sides. Ms. Fabian, 20, found work at a cable-television company, and with four family members sharing two cars, she commutes for nearly an hour each way with her father, Jim Fabian.
The opportunity to bond is, in theory, delightful, she said — but does it have to be at 7 a.m.? “My Dad is a morning person and I most certainly am not,” she said. She needs a second cup of coffee just to make her lips move. When they reach for the radio knobs to pass the time, father and daughter encounter a generation gap: He likes sports talk radio; she would rather listen to the New Pornographers.
“I’m a relic of the ’70s — I still listen to the Stones, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac,” said Mr. Fabian, a financial consultant. “Her music, I’ll just describe it as different.“
Some other college students unexpectedly back home described frictions with their families that were less amusing and more fraught. Daniel Bortz, a junior at Syracuse University who was unable to find a summer job for the first time in five years, told of unpleasant friction in his household over money.
In the short term, the lost summer of 2009 might actually be a blessing, some psychologists said, especially because members of this generation have lived their lives like track stars trying to run a marathon at the pace of a 100-meter dash — their parents typically waiting at every turn with a stopwatch.
“Parents have really put a lot of pressure on the kids — everything has been organized, they’re all taking A.P. courses, then summer hits and they’re going to learning camps,” said Peter A. Spevak, a psychologist in Rockville, Md. Now, he said, with opportunities for achievement at a minimum this summer, “there is something to be said about sitting out on a warm evening and looking at the stars — they need more of this contemplation and self-evaluation.”
Sara Germano, a senior at Fordham University who was hoping to find a journalism internship in New York, ended up moving home to Albany, where she found part-time work as a research assistant. And she has gotten to know her family again after an educational career that usually led her off on one adventure or another during vacations, so that, she said, “I come home on Thanksgiving, they don’t even know who I am.”
Now she has time to watch Yankees games with her younger brother and sister, and in the evenings, she sometimes drops in to the bar that her father owns. At 21, she is now able to share a drink with him and to talk sports and politics with the regulars.
“I think he enjoys having a child who’s matured and can talk about adult things and enjoy adult pastimes,” she said. “Since I’ve been gone so long, it’s all new territory.”
Her father, Phil Germano, agreed. “She completes the family,” he said.
Will Ehrenfeld, right, a Tufts senior, hoped for a White House summer internship but ended up with no job. He’s shown with Josh, his brother, a college graduate who is also jobless.
Say Hello to Underachieving
By ALEX WILLIAMS
Published: July 2, 2009
ERIN McAULIFFE had a vision for this summer. A 20-year-old junior at Bowdoin College, she had lined up an internship at a New York publishing house and imagined stimulating days leafing through manuscripts, and evenings of sparkling conversation with friends at downtown cafes.
She ended up starring in a real-life version of the movie “Adventureland” instead. In that recent comedy, a recent college graduate is forced by economic hardship to work at a suburban amusement park.
Life is imitating art for Ms. McAuliffe. With her parents unable to help bankroll three months of unpaid work in Manhattan, she gave up the internship offer and moved home to Andover, Mass., where she took the one job she could find: working 12-hour days at an amusement park. For $7.80 an hour, she tends bumper cars and the big swing, and endures the many carny jokes of her friends.
“It’s rain or shine,” Ms. McAuliffe said dryly about her job. “You’d be really surprised how many people go to an amusement park in the pouring rain.”
School’s out for summer 2009, and instead of getting a jump on the boundless futures that parents and colleges always promised them, students this year are receiving a reality check.
The well-paying summer jobs that in previous years seemed like a birthright have grown scarce, and pre-professional internships are disappearing as companies cut back across the board. Recession-strapped parents don’t always have the means or will to bankroll starter apartments or art tours of Tuscany.
So many college students and recent graduates are heading to where they least expected: back home, and facing an unfamiliar prospect: downtime, maybe too much of it. To a high-achieving generation whose schedules were once crammed with extracurricular activities meant to propel them into college, it feels like an empty summer — eerie, and a bit scary.
“Things have changed drastically,” said Ron Alsop, author of “The Trophy Kids Grow Up: How the Millennial Generation Is Shaking Up the Workplace,” a book that only last year portrayed young workers as entitled and in a hurry. “It has to be a huge wake-up call for this generation.”
Numbers provide the backdrop to the story — not just the grimly familiar national unemployment rate, 9.5 percent in June, but the even scarier, less publicized unemployment figure for 16- to 19-year-olds, which has hit 24 percent, up from 16.1 percent two years ago. Internships available to college students have fallen 21 percent since last year, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Across the country, there are countless tales like that of Morgan Henderson, a student at the University of San Francisco, who, along with friends, planned a big road trip to Las Vegas this summer. With so few of the friends finding jobs, they downgraded plans to a road trip to Reno, then to no road trip at all. They’re spending time watching DVDs at one another’s houses.
Or Kathryn Estrada, a high school senior in Hialeah, Fla., who has no summer job after Circuit City, which employed her during the school year, went out of business. She is finding that even this early in the summer, attempts to while away the hours playing Scrabble and Cranium have grown stale. “We all just wish school would start so we would have something to do,” she said.
Or Will Ehrenfeld, a political science major at Tufts, who worked at a think tank last year and this summer was aiming higher: a White House internship. When the White House didn’t come through, and neither did the State Department or dozens of companies he applied to, Mr. Ehrenfeld, 20, moved back home to Vernon, Conn. Even the local Boston Market had no work.
Mr. Ehrenfeld, a top student who has always held leadership positions in clubs and academic groups, loafs through days, rolling out of bed around 11 and reading or playing trumpet or guitar. Nights, he sometimes meets up with friends who also have nowhere that they have to be in the morning, and they share a few cheap beers. “At worst, misery continues to have company,” he said.
While young people in earlier decades might have cherished the chance to goof off and sleep in for a few months, the current generation, experts like Mr. Alsop are apt to point out, “have always been told they can achieve anything they can put their mind to.”
“They were always given trophies just for showing up,” he said. “Now, they’re being told ‘no’ when they really want a job or an internship.”
To them, a staycation at Mom and Dad’s can feel more like house arrest.
If the only problem were tedium, students might find a recessionary summer unpleasant but endurable. But some expressed concern that the economic gloom might be a preview of harsh career realities that await.
“The worst thing about this summer is the lack of hope felt by so many kids,” Lydia Wiledon, a Barnard undergraduate, wrote in an e-mail message. “College students ready to thrust themselves into work find nothing, and those most in need are edged out by older, more skilled individuals who are overqualified for such foot-in-the-door opportunities. I worry about how this employment drought will affect my generation in the future.”
There may be reason for concern. Students who enter the job market during a recession can see their wages lag behind comparable students who graduated in better times for as long as 15 years, according to a recent study by Lisa B. Kahn, an economist at the Yale School of Management.
Even for students who remain optimistic about their long-term career prospects, an unexpected move home — back under the roof of Mom and Dad, where many had barely alighted in years except for brief Thanksgiving breaks — can require an attitude adjustment.
“Communication patterns are different when students come back from college,” said Roni Cohen-Sandler, a clinical psychologist in Weston, Conn., specializing in adolescent issues. “Kids may not be as interested in sharing who they’re hanging out with and why. The level of disclosure is different, and parents have not made the shift in their mind. They’re asking a lot of questions, and students are chafing.”
When students try to stave off the boredom by watching television, parents may wonder aloud if there is not a more productive use of their time. Curfews and household chores that seemed natural at 16 can seem oppressive at 20.
This has been the experience of Kelly Fabian, an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, who hoped to study art history in Rome this summer, but returned home to Orange County, Calif., instead, when her family asked her to work to help pay her tuition.
It’s an adjustment, she said. Living on her own for two years, including summers, she got used to doing chores like washing dishes and taking out the recycling — but not when instructed to.
“It’s not weird doing them, it’s weird having someone tell you to do them,” she said.
Ms. Fabian said she was close to her parents and valued the time spent together, but the new proximity did take getting used to, on all sides. Ms. Fabian, 20, found work at a cable-television company, and with four family members sharing two cars, she commutes for nearly an hour each way with her father, Jim Fabian.
The opportunity to bond is, in theory, delightful, she said — but does it have to be at 7 a.m.? “My Dad is a morning person and I most certainly am not,” she said. She needs a second cup of coffee just to make her lips move. When they reach for the radio knobs to pass the time, father and daughter encounter a generation gap: He likes sports talk radio; she would rather listen to the New Pornographers.
“I’m a relic of the ’70s — I still listen to the Stones, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac,” said Mr. Fabian, a financial consultant. “Her music, I’ll just describe it as different.“
Some other college students unexpectedly back home described frictions with their families that were less amusing and more fraught. Daniel Bortz, a junior at Syracuse University who was unable to find a summer job for the first time in five years, told of unpleasant friction in his household over money.
In the short term, the lost summer of 2009 might actually be a blessing, some psychologists said, especially because members of this generation have lived their lives like track stars trying to run a marathon at the pace of a 100-meter dash — their parents typically waiting at every turn with a stopwatch.
“Parents have really put a lot of pressure on the kids — everything has been organized, they’re all taking A.P. courses, then summer hits and they’re going to learning camps,” said Peter A. Spevak, a psychologist in Rockville, Md. Now, he said, with opportunities for achievement at a minimum this summer, “there is something to be said about sitting out on a warm evening and looking at the stars — they need more of this contemplation and self-evaluation.”
Sara Germano, a senior at Fordham University who was hoping to find a journalism internship in New York, ended up moving home to Albany, where she found part-time work as a research assistant. And she has gotten to know her family again after an educational career that usually led her off on one adventure or another during vacations, so that, she said, “I come home on Thanksgiving, they don’t even know who I am.”
Now she has time to watch Yankees games with her younger brother and sister, and in the evenings, she sometimes drops in to the bar that her father owns. At 21, she is now able to share a drink with him and to talk sports and politics with the regulars.
“I think he enjoys having a child who’s matured and can talk about adult things and enjoy adult pastimes,” she said. “Since I’ve been gone so long, it’s all new territory.”
Her father, Phil Germano, agreed. “She completes the family,” he said.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
SIT Ireland
When I was studying abroad in Ireland during the fall semester of 2008, I composed a lengthy research paper which, turns out, was pretty ok. It was one of three that was posted by the program on World Learning's website.
Here's the link. Check it out.
Here's the link. Check it out.
Last Regular Column
This is the final "Stuff Tufts People Like" column published in the Tufts Daily during the Spring semester of 2009. There is a commencement issue, to be published May 17 (commencement), with one more column from yours truly in it, but this is the last thing most readers will see from me.
The Bubble
Published: Tuesday, April 21, 2009
If you spend most of your time at Tufts and rarely venture off campus for anything more than a latte at Starbucks or a movie in Davis Square, you might become convinced that there no longer is a world outside the gates of our Medford/Somerville campus. Even if you regularly visit, shop and dine all around the Boston area, it’s easy to forget what real life away from Tufts is like. It happens to me on occasion. I get stuck in a routine: wake up, go to class, club meetings, anti-bias rallies, party on the weekend, then repeat ad nauseum. It can be difficult to keep in touch with what happens in the “real world” when we’re so insulated inside the Tufts Bubble.
Likewise, people can forget societal norms and the way things tend to work elsewhere when they are at Tufts for long stretches. When I go home for a weekend or for break, I’m often surprised that my friends do, in fact, say words like “fag” without a second thought about the impact it might have. After freshman year, I got in a serious argument with a good friend of mine over his use of that word because after living at Tufts, I knew that it promoted societal bigotry and heteronormativity (a word that, honestly, I have never heard outside of Tufts).
Then, as I became re-attuned to the norms of my hometown, I started thinking that if he wanted to use “fag” as an insult after I had laid out my arguments against it, I really had no place to tell him otherwise. Unlike Tufts, the real world — in my experience, at least — doesn’t have a bias awareness team; there is no thought police, and so slurs which really hurt people are occasionally uttered.
I’m not sure that I made the right decision to overlook future uses of the word, but I was concerned that I was starting arguments for the wrong reasons — I was never personally offended by the word “faggot,” but I still thought I should try to stop it from being used, for whatever reason. Doesn’t it feel good to accuse someone of bigotry? I enjoyed it, I really did. The moral indignation and self-righteousness just flowing through your veins — you feel empowered, like you’ve grabbed the higher ground and you’re not giving it up. In that moment, it feels good to be angry because you’re right, the “other” is wrong, and you’re fighting the good fight.
This is what occurred with many of those at the anti-bias, anti-drunk-freshman rally on Thursday. Even people from outside Tufts came and basked in the glow of righteous indignation emanating from people at the rally who take any and every opportunity to get angry and offended, regardless of whether they themselves have been specifically targeted. It becomes like an addiction — if you’re not decrying racism or sexism or whatever the -ism of the day is, you start to feel adrift and without direction. But that doesn’t justify the idiotic behavior being exhibited.
The real anger we have all seen in the pages of the Daily and at the rally wasn’t, in my opinion, over the alleged racial violence that occurred two weeks ago. It was about puncturing the Bubble. Let’s admit: Most of us are very proud to tell people that we go to Tufts, and when something like this happens, it betrays the image most of us have of our school. We think we go to a progressive, unbiased university that is not only not racist, it’s anti-racist.
So, when I write a column that questions the campus’ reaction to a particular incident that seems extremely clear-cut to some, I become a target. I’ve been ridiculed for my opinions in any number of ways and called terrible names that I won’t repeat in print, but the only comments that bothered me were those that suggested that there must be some unknown reason belying my opinions, whether it was my own race, my lack of education or sheer ignorance. I was told to take classes, read books, and even invited to meet by some readers, all in the interest of enlightening me and/or converting me to buy into every bit of liberal orthodoxy that Tufts represents to these individuals.
Want to know a secret? I have read books. I’ve taken classes that deal very explicitly with racism and discrimination, and I can’t control my whiteness any more than the Korean Students Association students who were involved in the fight can control their race. The fact that I have a different point of view doesn’t mean that I don’t know or understand the issues, and this assumption that I must be unaware of critical race theory because I don’t buy into it really bothers me.
This punctured my Tufts Bubble. I foolishly thought that, while Tufts has many viewpoints and a variety of backgrounds represented on campus, mutual respect exists which makes discussing and acknowledging our differences so fruitful and beneficial. I also was under the (apparently ridiculous) impression that no one’s view would be disregarded or given less credence because of his or her background — even if that background is straight, white and male. It turns out that I was wrong.
The Bubble
Published: Tuesday, April 21, 2009
If you spend most of your time at Tufts and rarely venture off campus for anything more than a latte at Starbucks or a movie in Davis Square, you might become convinced that there no longer is a world outside the gates of our Medford/Somerville campus. Even if you regularly visit, shop and dine all around the Boston area, it’s easy to forget what real life away from Tufts is like. It happens to me on occasion. I get stuck in a routine: wake up, go to class, club meetings, anti-bias rallies, party on the weekend, then repeat ad nauseum. It can be difficult to keep in touch with what happens in the “real world” when we’re so insulated inside the Tufts Bubble.
Likewise, people can forget societal norms and the way things tend to work elsewhere when they are at Tufts for long stretches. When I go home for a weekend or for break, I’m often surprised that my friends do, in fact, say words like “fag” without a second thought about the impact it might have. After freshman year, I got in a serious argument with a good friend of mine over his use of that word because after living at Tufts, I knew that it promoted societal bigotry and heteronormativity (a word that, honestly, I have never heard outside of Tufts).
Then, as I became re-attuned to the norms of my hometown, I started thinking that if he wanted to use “fag” as an insult after I had laid out my arguments against it, I really had no place to tell him otherwise. Unlike Tufts, the real world — in my experience, at least — doesn’t have a bias awareness team; there is no thought police, and so slurs which really hurt people are occasionally uttered.
I’m not sure that I made the right decision to overlook future uses of the word, but I was concerned that I was starting arguments for the wrong reasons — I was never personally offended by the word “faggot,” but I still thought I should try to stop it from being used, for whatever reason. Doesn’t it feel good to accuse someone of bigotry? I enjoyed it, I really did. The moral indignation and self-righteousness just flowing through your veins — you feel empowered, like you’ve grabbed the higher ground and you’re not giving it up. In that moment, it feels good to be angry because you’re right, the “other” is wrong, and you’re fighting the good fight.
This is what occurred with many of those at the anti-bias, anti-drunk-freshman rally on Thursday. Even people from outside Tufts came and basked in the glow of righteous indignation emanating from people at the rally who take any and every opportunity to get angry and offended, regardless of whether they themselves have been specifically targeted. It becomes like an addiction — if you’re not decrying racism or sexism or whatever the -ism of the day is, you start to feel adrift and without direction. But that doesn’t justify the idiotic behavior being exhibited.
The real anger we have all seen in the pages of the Daily and at the rally wasn’t, in my opinion, over the alleged racial violence that occurred two weeks ago. It was about puncturing the Bubble. Let’s admit: Most of us are very proud to tell people that we go to Tufts, and when something like this happens, it betrays the image most of us have of our school. We think we go to a progressive, unbiased university that is not only not racist, it’s anti-racist.
So, when I write a column that questions the campus’ reaction to a particular incident that seems extremely clear-cut to some, I become a target. I’ve been ridiculed for my opinions in any number of ways and called terrible names that I won’t repeat in print, but the only comments that bothered me were those that suggested that there must be some unknown reason belying my opinions, whether it was my own race, my lack of education or sheer ignorance. I was told to take classes, read books, and even invited to meet by some readers, all in the interest of enlightening me and/or converting me to buy into every bit of liberal orthodoxy that Tufts represents to these individuals.
Want to know a secret? I have read books. I’ve taken classes that deal very explicitly with racism and discrimination, and I can’t control my whiteness any more than the Korean Students Association students who were involved in the fight can control their race. The fact that I have a different point of view doesn’t mean that I don’t know or understand the issues, and this assumption that I must be unaware of critical race theory because I don’t buy into it really bothers me.
This punctured my Tufts Bubble. I foolishly thought that, while Tufts has many viewpoints and a variety of backgrounds represented on campus, mutual respect exists which makes discussing and acknowledging our differences so fruitful and beneficial. I also was under the (apparently ridiculous) impression that no one’s view would be disregarded or given less credence because of his or her background — even if that background is straight, white and male. It turns out that I was wrong.
Shout out? What what!?
So, in the wake of the previous column, I got called out in an "anti-bias rally" that happened a few days later (in response to the original incident, not my column--at least ostensibly). See below the article from the Tufts Daily.
Rally goers: We will not be silenced
Ben Gittleson
Published: Friday, April 17, 2009
Around 200 people gathered on the Tisch Library patio and steps midday yesterday, decrying hate crimes and bias incidents against all groups and demanding that the administration take substantive action to prevent racism and hatred from continuing to pervade the Hill.
Under a sunny sky, students, administrators, faculty members and others spoke against the prevalence of discrimination, stereotyping of and biases against Asian-Americans and other minority groups. A large percentage of attendees wore red clothing to mark the rally, which had the goal of raising awareness of what many presenters said were often seemingly invisible acts of hate.
An altercation in the early-morning hours last Thursday between members of the Korean Students Association (KSA) and a freshman spurred the organization of the event. The administration is conducting a judicial investigation into the alleged bias incident, which many rally participants yesterday labeled a hate crime.
"If this was truly an isolated incident, we wouldn't have given it too much thought," said Jenny Lau, the incoming president of the Asian American Alliance, during a speech yesterday. Lau, a junior, explained the rally's aims and said the incident was representative of a much greater problem.
"As students, we have the right to feel respected and safe on ... campus," she said, calling on the administration to include the study of Asian-Americans in the curriculum. "The Asian-American voice is only one example of many voices of people who have been ... marginalized."
Last Thursday morning, a drunken freshman shouted racial slurs at a group of 13 Korean students practicing in the main lounge of Lewis Hall for their weekend culture show, KSA members at the scene said; the freshman told the Daily in a statement that he yelled obscenities, but he did not mention uttering racial epithets or being drunk.
The racially charged alleged remarks came after violence broke out between the KSA members and the freshman, according to KSA members. Both parties said the other side started the scuffle.
The Daily is withholding the freshman's name because the administration has not taken any action against him.
Yesterday's rally did not focus primarily on the details of the event itself, but rather on the wider implications of what many speakers called hate incidents that occur too frequently.
KSA Co-President Young Jeong spoke on behalf of two members of his group who were in the Lewis Hall lounge on Thursday morning.
"'F--k you ... Go back to your country,'" he told attendees the freshman had said that night. "Imagine these words being thrown at you."
"We are not here to ask for retaliation or revenge or any kind of punishment," Jeong, a senior, said. "We are here to raise awareness ... to give voice to those who have been silenced."
Senior Lecturer of American Studies Jean Wu denounced certain online discourse, including comments on TuftsDaily.com, that suggested rally organizers and supporters are "addicted" to reacting to bias incidents and hate crimes, she said.
The remarks the freshman allegedly made, she explained, cut deep.
"For Asian-Americans, these words are not the garden-variety putdown," she said.
University President Lawrence Bacow's chief of staff, Michael Baenen, attended the meeting in Bacow's place.
"Expressions of bias are insidious ... they are always hurtful, they erode community and they are not what we want Tufts to be about," he said. "I don't think any of us, especially those in Ballou, thinks we are where we want to be."
But later during yesterday's event, Lau chastised Bacow for sending a representative in his place and Baenen for not using a stronger term than "bias."
Reached later for comment, Baenen said that Bacow had been on the Boston campus attending meetings with overseers of the School of Medicine. Those meetings had been planned months in advance, Baenen added.
Boston City Councilor Sam Yoon, the city's first Asian-American councilor, spoke at the rally, too. He said that he had experienced hateful speech when he was on the campaign trail.
"This is not an isolated incident," said Yoon, who is running for mayor of Boston. "It's something that's endemic in our society."
Asian-Americans have long had to face stereotypes of them as passive, defenseless members of society, although other groups have had to endure hate, as well, Yoon said.
"When injustice or racial hatred happens to one of us," he said, "it happens to all of us."
Seniors Sofia Nelson and Jen Bailey told the crowd about similar incidents that have occurred in the past few years, saying the fact that they were attending yet another rally against bias was disappointing.
Nelson also railed against what she called "unacceptable" media coverage of the incident, particularly calling out Daily columnist and junior Will Ehrenfeld's Tuesday article, "Stuff Tufts People Like: Alleging bias." She criticized the piece in an op-ed she co-authored with senior Sarah Robbins that appeared in yesterday's Daily.
Nelson expressed anger at a decision by Daily editors to insert the word "allegedly" at certain points in her article that dealt with the particulars of last Thursday morning's events.
"Nothing about this incident is alleged," Nelson said yesterday. "I know what happened."
Two students delivered spoken-word pieces during the latter half of yesterday's presentation, poetically expounding on race and stereotypes in America. A Harvard University lecturer and a lawyer from the University of Massachusetts Boston also spoke.
Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Lee Coffin, who delivered a short speech, said that he was proud of yesterday's rally, even though it came during the biannual diversity-focused Telescope event that yesterday brought admitted students to campus.
"I want prospective students to see Tufts in action," he said.
Over 40 student groups co-sponsored the event, which was organized by members of the KSA and other students encouraged to act after last week's incident, according to Kim. Part of its title, "We will not be silenced," became a refrain during the rally.
A number of Greek organizations came out for the event, including a couple Alpha Omicron Pi sisters who handed out stickers reading, "Hate is not a Greek value."
Estelle Davis, a senior, wore red and stayed on the patio after the event. She said she attended yesterday because the conversation that arose after last week's incident was "an incredibly emotional, personal experience" for her.
"This points to ... a lack of understanding about the way race and power structures work at Tufts," she said, calling on the administration to act by altering the curriculum and hiring more diverse faculty. "It's more than just talking about it ... Not just saying racism is bad, but saying that we understand that this is part of a deeper issue."
Rally goers: We will not be silenced
Ben Gittleson
Published: Friday, April 17, 2009
Around 200 people gathered on the Tisch Library patio and steps midday yesterday, decrying hate crimes and bias incidents against all groups and demanding that the administration take substantive action to prevent racism and hatred from continuing to pervade the Hill.
Under a sunny sky, students, administrators, faculty members and others spoke against the prevalence of discrimination, stereotyping of and biases against Asian-Americans and other minority groups. A large percentage of attendees wore red clothing to mark the rally, which had the goal of raising awareness of what many presenters said were often seemingly invisible acts of hate.
An altercation in the early-morning hours last Thursday between members of the Korean Students Association (KSA) and a freshman spurred the organization of the event. The administration is conducting a judicial investigation into the alleged bias incident, which many rally participants yesterday labeled a hate crime.
"If this was truly an isolated incident, we wouldn't have given it too much thought," said Jenny Lau, the incoming president of the Asian American Alliance, during a speech yesterday. Lau, a junior, explained the rally's aims and said the incident was representative of a much greater problem.
"As students, we have the right to feel respected and safe on ... campus," she said, calling on the administration to include the study of Asian-Americans in the curriculum. "The Asian-American voice is only one example of many voices of people who have been ... marginalized."
Last Thursday morning, a drunken freshman shouted racial slurs at a group of 13 Korean students practicing in the main lounge of Lewis Hall for their weekend culture show, KSA members at the scene said; the freshman told the Daily in a statement that he yelled obscenities, but he did not mention uttering racial epithets or being drunk.
The racially charged alleged remarks came after violence broke out between the KSA members and the freshman, according to KSA members. Both parties said the other side started the scuffle.
The Daily is withholding the freshman's name because the administration has not taken any action against him.
Yesterday's rally did not focus primarily on the details of the event itself, but rather on the wider implications of what many speakers called hate incidents that occur too frequently.
KSA Co-President Young Jeong spoke on behalf of two members of his group who were in the Lewis Hall lounge on Thursday morning.
"'F--k you ... Go back to your country,'" he told attendees the freshman had said that night. "Imagine these words being thrown at you."
"We are not here to ask for retaliation or revenge or any kind of punishment," Jeong, a senior, said. "We are here to raise awareness ... to give voice to those who have been silenced."
Senior Lecturer of American Studies Jean Wu denounced certain online discourse, including comments on TuftsDaily.com, that suggested rally organizers and supporters are "addicted" to reacting to bias incidents and hate crimes, she said.
The remarks the freshman allegedly made, she explained, cut deep.
"For Asian-Americans, these words are not the garden-variety putdown," she said.
University President Lawrence Bacow's chief of staff, Michael Baenen, attended the meeting in Bacow's place.
"Expressions of bias are insidious ... they are always hurtful, they erode community and they are not what we want Tufts to be about," he said. "I don't think any of us, especially those in Ballou, thinks we are where we want to be."
But later during yesterday's event, Lau chastised Bacow for sending a representative in his place and Baenen for not using a stronger term than "bias."
Reached later for comment, Baenen said that Bacow had been on the Boston campus attending meetings with overseers of the School of Medicine. Those meetings had been planned months in advance, Baenen added.
Boston City Councilor Sam Yoon, the city's first Asian-American councilor, spoke at the rally, too. He said that he had experienced hateful speech when he was on the campaign trail.
"This is not an isolated incident," said Yoon, who is running for mayor of Boston. "It's something that's endemic in our society."
Asian-Americans have long had to face stereotypes of them as passive, defenseless members of society, although other groups have had to endure hate, as well, Yoon said.
"When injustice or racial hatred happens to one of us," he said, "it happens to all of us."
Seniors Sofia Nelson and Jen Bailey told the crowd about similar incidents that have occurred in the past few years, saying the fact that they were attending yet another rally against bias was disappointing.
Nelson also railed against what she called "unacceptable" media coverage of the incident, particularly calling out Daily columnist and junior Will Ehrenfeld's Tuesday article, "Stuff Tufts People Like: Alleging bias." She criticized the piece in an op-ed she co-authored with senior Sarah Robbins that appeared in yesterday's Daily.
Nelson expressed anger at a decision by Daily editors to insert the word "allegedly" at certain points in her article that dealt with the particulars of last Thursday morning's events.
"Nothing about this incident is alleged," Nelson said yesterday. "I know what happened."
Two students delivered spoken-word pieces during the latter half of yesterday's presentation, poetically expounding on race and stereotypes in America. A Harvard University lecturer and a lawyer from the University of Massachusetts Boston also spoke.
Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Lee Coffin, who delivered a short speech, said that he was proud of yesterday's rally, even though it came during the biannual diversity-focused Telescope event that yesterday brought admitted students to campus.
"I want prospective students to see Tufts in action," he said.
Over 40 student groups co-sponsored the event, which was organized by members of the KSA and other students encouraged to act after last week's incident, according to Kim. Part of its title, "We will not be silenced," became a refrain during the rally.
A number of Greek organizations came out for the event, including a couple Alpha Omicron Pi sisters who handed out stickers reading, "Hate is not a Greek value."
Estelle Davis, a senior, wore red and stayed on the patio after the event. She said she attended yesterday because the conversation that arose after last week's incident was "an incredibly emotional, personal experience" for her.
"This points to ... a lack of understanding about the way race and power structures work at Tufts," she said, calling on the administration to act by altering the curriculum and hiring more diverse faculty. "It's more than just talking about it ... Not just saying racism is bad, but saying that we understand that this is part of a deeper issue."
Alleging Bias
This article discusses the issues surround an altercation, the events of which can be learned about here. This is the one that made me famous (sort of), and also probably the most hated guy on campus, for a little while at least. Check out the comments (and myriad op-eds in response).
Published: Tuesday, April 14, 2009
By now, everyone on campus has heard about the alleged “bias incident” that occurred in Lewis Hall last week involving a dance group from the Korean Students Association (KSA) and a drunk freshman. Personally, I got multiple e-mails from friends and one from Dean of Students Bruce Reitman, and an invitation to a Facebook group (which at last count had 1,824 members), and I came across multiple Facebook “notes” about the situation.
I’m not going to rehash the story. It’s been told many times, with input from both sides. My question, though, is this: What makes this a bias incident? Was there “bias” when the drunk kid started imitating the dance the KSA was doing? Maybe — they were, after all, practicing a dance for a cultural show and not just an average, mainstream dance for an average, mainstream show; if TDC were rehearsing and the incident proceeded similarly, I don’t think it would be called a bias incident, and I doubt people would be quite so up in arms about the situation in general, but I’ll get to that.
Was it a bias incident because of what the kid said? He allegedly employed racial slurs to verbally abuse the dancers after the physical altercation had ended, calling them names and telling them to “go back to China.” I suppose this makes what up until then would have been considered merely a fight or, depending on which side you fall, assault, into an incident of racial bias. I know what you’re thinking: Well, duh. But think — what do the kid’s words after a fight have to do with the apparent motivations for the fight?
Before the violence began — we’re not sure who made the situation physical, although I’m inclined to believe the KSA members as they corroborate each others’ stories and they were sober — there was no mention of race or ethnicity. According to the Daily, the freshman allegedly called the dance “gay,” but most of us have been in groups where using that word as a placeholder for “stupid” or “bad” is common. That doesn’t make it acceptable, but it happens all the time, and the student body doesn’t get up in arms over something like that. In any event, no epithets were uttered, and no racial threats or comments were made before the violence began.
With these facts in mind, I find it hard to call what happened a bias incident; there was bias, and there was a conflict, but they seem somewhat disjointed. I’m really disconcerted by the focus on comments that were made at the tail end of the incident as a whole when a lot occurred beforehand that’s worthy of our attention. All signs point to serious physical violence with injuries sustained on both sides. And then — afterward — a drunk freshman allegedly said something stupid and yes, offensive, inappropriate, “biased” and totally unacceptable. I’m not here to defend this kid who, for the record, I don’t know and have never met. I don’t know any of the people involved, for that matter.
The real issue here isn’t racial insensitivity. It’s not “bias,” no matter how you define the word. We should be talking about violence and resorting to violence as a solution to our problems. My biggest worry is not a stupid comment that was obviously hurtful enough to raise a ridiculous furor at Tufts. Tufts people love an uproar, but apparently we also like overlooking the real issue. There’s no evidence the attack was motivated by racial anger or “bias,” but it’s obvious that both the freshman student and the five KSA members thought it totally acceptable to use violence to solve their dispute. I don’t want to discount the danger and perniciousness of racism, but it’s more worrisome to me that violence has so pervaded our school and our society that we find a racial slur more notable than a serious violent conflict.
Published: Tuesday, April 14, 2009
By now, everyone on campus has heard about the alleged “bias incident” that occurred in Lewis Hall last week involving a dance group from the Korean Students Association (KSA) and a drunk freshman. Personally, I got multiple e-mails from friends and one from Dean of Students Bruce Reitman, and an invitation to a Facebook group (which at last count had 1,824 members), and I came across multiple Facebook “notes” about the situation.
I’m not going to rehash the story. It’s been told many times, with input from both sides. My question, though, is this: What makes this a bias incident? Was there “bias” when the drunk kid started imitating the dance the KSA was doing? Maybe — they were, after all, practicing a dance for a cultural show and not just an average, mainstream dance for an average, mainstream show; if TDC were rehearsing and the incident proceeded similarly, I don’t think it would be called a bias incident, and I doubt people would be quite so up in arms about the situation in general, but I’ll get to that.
Was it a bias incident because of what the kid said? He allegedly employed racial slurs to verbally abuse the dancers after the physical altercation had ended, calling them names and telling them to “go back to China.” I suppose this makes what up until then would have been considered merely a fight or, depending on which side you fall, assault, into an incident of racial bias. I know what you’re thinking: Well, duh. But think — what do the kid’s words after a fight have to do with the apparent motivations for the fight?
Before the violence began — we’re not sure who made the situation physical, although I’m inclined to believe the KSA members as they corroborate each others’ stories and they were sober — there was no mention of race or ethnicity. According to the Daily, the freshman allegedly called the dance “gay,” but most of us have been in groups where using that word as a placeholder for “stupid” or “bad” is common. That doesn’t make it acceptable, but it happens all the time, and the student body doesn’t get up in arms over something like that. In any event, no epithets were uttered, and no racial threats or comments were made before the violence began.
With these facts in mind, I find it hard to call what happened a bias incident; there was bias, and there was a conflict, but they seem somewhat disjointed. I’m really disconcerted by the focus on comments that were made at the tail end of the incident as a whole when a lot occurred beforehand that’s worthy of our attention. All signs point to serious physical violence with injuries sustained on both sides. And then — afterward — a drunk freshman allegedly said something stupid and yes, offensive, inappropriate, “biased” and totally unacceptable. I’m not here to defend this kid who, for the record, I don’t know and have never met. I don’t know any of the people involved, for that matter.
The real issue here isn’t racial insensitivity. It’s not “bias,” no matter how you define the word. We should be talking about violence and resorting to violence as a solution to our problems. My biggest worry is not a stupid comment that was obviously hurtful enough to raise a ridiculous furor at Tufts. Tufts people love an uproar, but apparently we also like overlooking the real issue. There’s no evidence the attack was motivated by racial anger or “bias,” but it’s obvious that both the freshman student and the five KSA members thought it totally acceptable to use violence to solve their dispute. I don’t want to discount the danger and perniciousness of racism, but it’s more worrisome to me that violence has so pervaded our school and our society that we find a racial slur more notable than a serious violent conflict.
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