In light of the April 9 alleged bias incident on this campus, Will Ehrenfeld's April 14 column ("Alleging bias") has prompted an outcry of opposition on TuftsDaily.com. His argument, that the actual bias aspect of the event is exaggerated, was aggressively criticized, mostly by people who feel his opinion on what constitutes "bias" is invalidated by his status as a heterosexual, white male. As someone who has never met Will Ehrenfeld but supports the rights of all people, heterosexual white males included, I think dismissing his opinion based on his sexual orientation, race and gender is hilariously asinine, and doing so underscores the overall immaturity manifested by the Tufts community's response to the event.
I first heard the word "chink" as a racial slur in middle school. Some obnoxious kid was sitting at my desk, I told him to move, he refused, tensions rose, and he called me a chink. I didn't know or particularly care what he meant, but a teacher overheard me discussing it later. She said it was an unacceptable, racist word before leaving to find and presumably reprimand the perpetrator. Still, the knowledge that someone had called me a derogatory term didn't particularly hurt me, and I couldn't think of a good reason to let it.
I told my mother about it. For context, she grew up in Hong Kong and moved to the United States to attend college. Her family was poor and she made her way through college and graduate school via scholarships, part-time jobs and living with relatives. Her English wasn't great at the time, so my dad (one of those infamous heterosexual, white men) helped type up her doctoral dissertation.
So how did my mother, who worked from the ground up through racist and sexist barriers, respond when informed that someone had called her daughter a chink? She rolled her eyes and laughed. When she went to the least expensive college in New York she could find, people called her a chink. In graduate school, she was the only Asian, and when she went into the male-dominated chemistry field, her predominantly male coworkers marginalized her as a foreign woman with an accent. My (paternal) grandmother initially hated her, not understanding the difference between the Chinese and the Japanese who had bombed Pearl Harbor, and she described how she and my dad used to get judgmental looks as an interracial couple. Her advice was simple: People are going to use whatever they can against you; they're going to call you names that are hateful and ignorant, and the best way to deal with it is ignore them. Spending all day getting upset because someone called you stupid or ugly or a chink is not only a waste of time; it's their victory.
Hear me out, Tufts, because I'm going to make a completely radical suggestion. What if the next time someone tries to hurt or offend with a homophobic, racist or sexist term, instead of calling it a bias incident and holding rallies, you roll your eyes and forget about it? Yes, racial slurs are disgusting and conjure awful images of hatred, and yes, they are wrong — and we reinforce their power with these overblown responses. We continue to let them mean disgusting things and reference social injustice, because fury and outrage give them validity. Words are only as powerful as we determine them to be. I know that this campus-wide indignation is supposed to show that racism is unacceptable and will not be tolerated, but all it shows is that if you really want to piss someone off, derogatory slurs are exceptionally effective. I'm pretty sure that this drunken freshman's intent was to piss off the KSA students, and by the looks of it, mission accomplished.
I'm aware that the racist term was just one part of the story: It was alleged that spitting, shoving and mocking unfolded before the physical altercation, and later racial slurs, ensued. Whoever this kid is, he sounds like an idiot, and I'm not defending any of his actions. My point is that he was humiliated and angry and sought the most effective retaliation against the KSA students, so he called them chinks, to great effectiveness. I've been called a chink, too (in New Jersey public schools, they call you just about anything), and I can say from experience that if you ignore it, people get a pouty look because their insult didn't land, and life goes on. Arguably, doing so is implicitly permissive of hate speech and a racist attitude, but based on my experiences, when someone called me a chink and I blew it off, they realized the insult was meaningless, their plan to make me fly into hysterics failed, and I never heard it from them again.
Do we really believe that making groups on Facebook.com, bickering online, and standing in front of the library is going to change how this freshman, or anyone else for that matter, perceives Asians? These activities don't show solidarity: They reveal a shallow, insecure need to display cultural sensitivity, which at no point actually improves race relations. For those of us who don't let our identities hinge on never hearing a single word we dislike, rallies and Facebook groups are equal parts immature and meaningless. In online discussions, people say that racist incidents such as this one "will no longer be ignored." When have we ever, even once, ignored a racist incident that went public? After four years here, the one response I have yet to see from our student body is dignified, calculated indifference.
I understand that my apathy to racially charged terms is a personal attribute which not everyone shares. I'm not arguing that it's wrong to be upset; I'm not saying the freshman shouldn't be punished; I'm not saying he doesn't owe the Korean students a genuine apology. I'm saying maybe we, as a school, should leave it between the parties involved, and maybe, just maybe, not dignifying this kind of behavior with overblown reactions is worth a shot.
Maybe I'm just incredibly insensitive because my experiences with racism didn't scar me. For those who have been victims of racism or homophobia extending beyond name-calling, I apologize if my opinion is hurtful. I'm sure plenty of Tufts students will find it offensive, regardless. Maybe I don't understand what it's like to be a minority because I'm one of those weird hybrids. As Barack Obama can tell you, mixed people are categorized by their non-white half, but I digress. Maybe my mother lacks cultural pride, selling out to mainstream white culture by marrying a guy from Michigan and not teaching her children to be mortally wounded by ridiculous names. If you want to say that I'm "whitewashed" and "don't get it," go ahead. It would be ironic, holding me to a preconceived racial stereotype, but I'm not getting worked up either way.
I'm not arguing that racism doesn't exist, or that it's over, or that it can't be hurtful. Far from it. But I sincerely doubt that at this time, at this school, the outcry over this incident accomplishes anything. Anyone whose racist perceptions have been shattered by these events, please step forward. Anyone who threw around the word "chink" and never will in the future, please step forward. Anyone who now realizes that Tufts students don't like racism, please step forward. Everyone yelling back and forth in the choir, remain seated. If we, as a community, actually want to undermine the power of careless racism, then let's give it all the attention it truly deserves — none whatsoever.
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Leslie Hayward is a senior majoring in International Relations and environmental studies.
