Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
From Melissa Chen, who wrote about this issue on her Facebook page, we learn that Colorado State University has put the familiar phrase “Long time, no see” (meaning, “I haven’t seen you for a while”) onto a list of offensive “non inclusive” phrases (click on screenshot to go to the article). But below that you can read the original piece, by CSU student Katrina Leibee, who writes at the CSU student newspaper The Rocky Mountain Collegian (the piece has a disclaimer by the paper that it doesn’t represent the stand of the editorial board).
The original report:
Leibee reports that words like “freshman” is sexist and should be replaced by “first-years”. I have no problem with that, because I can see how women would take offense at the repeated use of “man” to imply “people,” as with “mankind.” Likewise, the phrase “you guys” seems a bit sexist; would anybody not see this if it were replaced with the phrase, “you girls” directed at everyone?
I try not to use such phrases myself. But Leibee also reports more innocuous phrases that have been swept up in the Pecksniff Net:
After getting involved in residential leadership, I was told not to use the word “dorms,” and replace it with “residence halls.” Apparently, dorm refers to only a place where one sleeps, and residence hall refers to a place where we sleep, eat, study and participate in social activities.
A countless amount of words and phrases have been marked with a big, red X and defined as non-inclusive. It has gotten to the point where students should carry around a dictionary of words they cannot say.
In a meeting with Zahra Al-Saloom, the director of Diversity and Inclusion at Associated Students of Colorado State University, she showed me an entire packet of words and phrases that were deemed non-inclusive. One of these phrases was “long time, no see,” which is viewed as derogatory towards those of Asian descent.
Al-Saloom believes inclusive language is important at CSU.
Melissa, a Singaporean who speaks Mandarin, informed her Facebook friends that the “long time no see” phrase is not (as Wikipedia implies) derived from mocking Chinese or Pidgin speakers using broken English. The phrase is a literal translation of the Mandarin. It’s not like the phrase often used to mock the Chinese who ran laundries in America, “No tickee, no washee.”
As Melissa pointed out:
There must be a great deal of projection going on if you find “long time no see” racist to Asians.
It’s literally a direct translation of Mandarin syntax (好久不见) and has become a common turn of phrase.
Two other Mandarin speakers piped in:
“好 can also translate as ‘very’ so it would be ‘very long time, no see’ as well.”
and
“It’s more like “Good (好) Long-Time (久) No (不) See (见) , but that’s a negligible difference.”
It’s curious that that phrase, whose origins really are unknown, doesn’t seem to be objectionable to any Chinese people, just as Kimono Day at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts wasn’t objectionable to many Japanese, some of whom demonstrated in its favor. And I doubt that more than 0.01% of people who use the “long time no see” phrase even know that its origins may be a direct translation from the Chinese.
All too often it’s those who aren’t ethnically “qualified” to judge the degree of offense produced by a phrase—like Zahra Al-Saloom—who make these lists. But just to be sure that Ms. Al-Saloom isn’t Chinese and has a Middle Eastern name, here’s her photo from her Linked In profile, which has mysteriously disappeared:
If you’re a Saturday Night Live fan, you’ll surely remember the old King Tut routine of Steve Martin. In case you don’t, here it is, about forty years old now:
According to both New Jersey 101.5 and The Atlantic, the video was somehow played in class as a joke at Reed College in Oregon. BIG mistake! The group Reedies against Racism (RAR), which is famous for disrupting the Humanities 101 course, calling it racist and an enabler of white supremacy, took huge offense at the video. As The Atlantic reports (my emphasis):
At Reed College, a small liberal-arts school in Portland, Oregon, a 39-year-old Saturday Night Live skit recently caused an uproar over cultural appropriation. In the classic Steve Martin skit, he performs a goofy song, “King Tut,” meant to satirize a Tutankhamun exhibit touring the U.S. and to criticize the commercialization of Egyptian culture. You could say that his critique is weak; that his humor is lame; that his dance moves are unintentionally offensive or downright racist. All of that, and more, was debated in a humanities course at Reed.
But many students found the video so egregious that they opposed its very presence in class. “That’s like somebody … making a song just littered with the n-word everywhere,” a member of Reedies Against Racism (RAR) told the student newspaper when asked about Martin’s performance. She told me more: The Egyptian garb of the backup dancers and singers—many of whom are African American—“is racist as well. The gold face of the saxophone dancer leaving its tomb is an exhibition of blackface.”
RAR needs to get a grip. If you can get this offended by an innocuous comedy routine, seeing ancient Egyptian clothing as “racist” and the gold face of the saxophone player, clearly meant to represent the gold “death mask” of Tut and other Pharaohs, as “blackface”, you’ve lost the plot. The “activism” of RAR, though of course driven by motivations we all agree with—the elimination of racist bigotry—seems limited to scrutinizing everything in their school for possible offense and then calling it out. Seriously, is equating gold face paint to “blackface” a way to expunge racism from America?
Watch the video (it’s only 3 minutes) and judge for yourself.
Last week the local student newspaper (the Maroon) published several letters and editorials expressing outrage about a party apparently held by a fraternity at the University of Chicago. The outrage seemed to be connected with racism, cultural appropriation, and the Cinco de Mayo holiday; but I couldn’t make out what was going on. Some of the letters, like this one, were so badly written I couldn’t understand them (note to students: please explain your topic at the beginning of your piece.)
Then I found out from an article in the paper that a local fraternity, FIJI (Phi Gamma Delta) was being accused of all sorts of bad things because it held a party on May 5—Cinco de Mayo. Was the party Mexican-themed, causing outrage and accusations of cultural appropriation? Did the students wear serapes or sombreros? No. The theme was construction. Yes, as in “construction of buildings”.
It turns out that the FIJI house had been under renovation for two years, and the fraternity (none of these formally affiliated with the University) were celebrating the completion of renovations with a party. Attendees were invited to wear construction-worker outfits and “get hammered” (U.S. slang for “get drunk”). Here’s the original announcement, as the paper reports:
The original cover photo of the event pictured four FIJI brothers with Photoshopped construction hats, with the party title “FIJI Presents: Get Hammered.”. . . The theme was later changed, and the time of the event was switched to midnight—changing the date of the party from May 5 to May 6, after the end of Cinco de Mayo.
But there was a mistake, though it didn’t figure in the subsequent conflagration:
One fraternity brother also posted on the event page, “What’s the mustache policy for tonight? Asking for an amigo.”
That’s all that happened, but it was enough to start a fracas here.
As the College Fox reported (verified by the Maroon article):
The left-wing Latino student group MEChA issued a veiled threat May 4 to anyone who might violate “the fine line between celebrating culture on a national holiday and undermining the cultural dignity of a group through ignorant and ill-intentioned appropriation.” (Note to MEChA: May 5 is not a national holiday in Mexico.)
After “individuals wearing hard hats, reflective construction vests, and overalls” were spotted at the party, several multicultural organizations penned an open letter calling the party “racially insensitive.”
It discloses that a MEChA member directly asked a party organizer to change the construction theme, and that person agreed.
Because some people showed up in construction gear anyway, FIJI showed its “privilege and authority by blatantly disregarding the concerns of marginalized groups without facing disciplinary actions,” the letter says:
“Moreover, this event was an attack on the mental and emotional well-being of marginalized students on campus.”
The “veiled threat” didn’t even say anything about mustaches; it simply mentioned the “potential for yet another incident of collective, overt, and insensitive racial stereotyping.” (The letter was co-signed by the Organization of Latin American Students, the Organization of Black Students, and the African Caribbean Students Organization.) On May 8, another letter was written by the same group, expressing outrage that the construction-themed party had apparently place after being told the theme would be altered. Here’s a screenshot of part of that letter:
I don’t get it. It wasn’t a racist party, but one highlighting construction of the FIJI house. I’m truly baffled at how anybody could consider that offensive—unless the party was on Cinco de Mayo (a Friday)—but even that’s not offensive, as there was no Mexican theme. Is nobody supposed to hold a party on that date? Apparently not.
Nevertheless, the fraternity issued an abject apology, which included this:
Unfortunately this [an admonition to the members to abjure construction-themed clothing] did not dissuade some brothers from wearing construction themed attire.
. . . We would like to express our sincerest apologies to any individual who may have felt discriminated against by the event. We should have been more proactive in preventing any sort of perceived discrimination to be involved in our event. Our intent was only to host an event in celebration of the (near) completion of the lengthy construction process of our house, which is still ongoing. The intent was entirely positive, and in no way meant to belittle any people group. Still, unintended consequences are consequences. Going forward, this will not happen again. While unintentional, it is unacceptable that people felt marginalized in any way by the event. For all future FIJI events, the entire cabinet will have to approve the theme unanimously.
Further, we do ask from now on, that the president is contacted directly when concerns about an event or theme arise. The email address of the president of the chapter for any given year can be found on the FCS website, fraternitiescommittedtosafety.com.FIJI was and is meant to represent a safe space on the University’s campus, and we fell short of our goal. We again apologize to any individual or groups that may have felt marginalized by the event.
Sincerely, Clyde Anderson President, Chi Upsilon chapter of Phi Gamma Delta
And the party was reported to the University’s Bias Response Team as a racist event:
First-year and MEChA chair of community engagement Andrés Cruz Leland says he saw individuals dressed in construction gear at the FIJI party from his window in Max Palevsky East.
“I glanced out and could see various, I assume, FIJI brothers in construction hats, as well as vests and overalls. So I was immediately extremely alarmed and frustrated because I thought that this would not be happening at all that night and they had made it very clear that they did not want that to happen and were doing their best not to have this stereotype of Mexicans be portrayed on Cinco de Mayo,” Cruz Leland said in an interview with The Maroon. “But that was not the case at all.”
Cruz Leland thought at the time that immediate action was necessary, primarily because some students were considering a violent response. He contacted his Resident Heads (RHs), who informed him of the various avenues he could use to report the incident, namely the Bias Response Team and administrators addressing Title IX.
According to Cruz Leland, at around 11 p.m., his RHs filed an incident report with the Assistant Dean of Housing on-call that night.
“It was made clear in the conversation with the Assistant Dean that this was seen by me as a racist event,” he said.
Fortunately, the University of Chicago found no grounds for complaint, with the Maroon reporting that “the administration [did] not see this incident as harassment as it was neither ‘pervasive’ nor did it occur on multiple occasions.”
But suppose it had: suppose there were two construction-themed parties? What then?
I’m truly puzzled by how this event could be construed, even by the most delicate snowflake, as racist or offensive. Can someone enlighten me? This is especially distressing to me as it’s happening on my campus, and I see stuff like this almost daily. I’m living right in the middle of the Rise of the Student Outrage Culture, and it’s not pretty. Students seem to be looking for an excuse to be offended and outraged.
At any rate, Bias Response Teams are proliferating in American colleges and universities, and they can have a chilling effect on free speech. Check out the “further reading” below.
The University of Chicago’s Bias Response Team page, which seems less invidious than most because it seems to enforce only harassment prohibited by law.
Calvin Trillin writes for The New Yorker, and is one of my favorite food writers (I recommend American Fried). But, like many, he’s run afoul of the Easily Offended. In the April 4 issue of the magazine, he published a poem called “Have they run out of provinces yet?”
Have they run out of provinces yet? If they haven’t, we’ve reason to fret. Long ago, there was just Cantonese. (Long ago, we were easy to please.) But then food from Szechuan came our way, Making Cantonese strictly passé. Szechuanese was the song that we sung, Though the ma po could burn through your tongue. Then when Shanghainese got in the loop We slurped dumplings whose insides were soup. Then Hunan, the birth province of Mao, Came along with its own style of chow. So we thought we were finished, and then A new province arrived: Fukien. Then respect was a fraction of meagre For those eaters who’d not eaten Uighur. And then Xi’an from Shaanxi gained fame, Plus some others—too many to name.
Now, as each brand-new province appears, It brings tension, increasing our fears: Could a place we extolled as a find Be revealed as one province behind? So we sometimes do miss, I confess, Simple days of chow mein but no stress, When we never were faced with the threat Of more provinces we hadn’t met. Is there one tucked away near Tibet? Have they run out of provinces yet?
Now if you’ve read Trillin, you’ll know that he loves all sorts of Chinese food, and writes about it constantly. He HATES chow mein, as he noted in American Fried. In light of that, the poem above is clearly satirical: there’s no way that Trillin would be dismayed about the arrival of new provinces with new dishes!
But of course people took it as some kind of denigration of the diversity of China. As The New York Times reports, these included a writer in Jezebel, who mocked Trillin by writing a critique from the perspective of “a sixth grader” (12 year old in the U.S.):
The imagery of the poem is scary and the mood of the poem is confused and troubled. As Calvin Trillin says in the poem, “Now, as each brand-new province appears/ It brings tensions, increasing our fears./ Could a place we extolled as a find/ Be revealed as one province behind?” He misses “simple days of chow mein but no stress/ When we never were faced with the threat/ Of more provinces we hadn’t met.” This line rhymes with the title of the poem, which is “Have They Run Out of Provinces Yet?” which is a question that is connected to the world because everyone understands that China is too big and they are taking American jobs and there are too many kinds of them.
In conclusion, Calvin Trillin hopes the answer is yes, China has run out of provinces.
And here’s the title of a critique of the poem that appeared in The Stranger, a weekly Seattle alt-mag. Click on the screenshot to go to it:
And the writer, Rich Smith, accuses Trillin of racism (the magazine’s emphasis; note that although this sounds like a parody, it is not):
The poem announces its regressive ideologies in several ways, starting with the title’s employment of the othering “we/they” binary, where “they” are “foreigners” who have a seemingly endless number of those whatsits—Provinces?—and “we” white Americans are the stately realists who have a comprehensible number of states and cuisines.
This longing for a time of chow mein—which is, as I’m sure the food writer knows—a westernized dish—is a longing for the days of a white planet. Those days when we white people comfortably held power, when they made food for us, when the only fear was the fear of another cuisine to conquer, the days before we had to ask ourselves stuff like—does this poem rest on an unexamined racist sentiment?
Trillin’s concluding thought in this poem recalls Tony Hoagland’s concluding thought in “The Change,” which Claudia Rankine famously (relatively speaking) and powerfully and gracefully discussed at the 2011 AWP conference. Like Trillin’s speaker, Hoagland’s speaker yearns for a time when the divide between white people and black people was even more institutionalized than it is now.
Aside from adding insult to the centuries of injury done to people of color in the U.S., Trillins’s and Hoagland’s poems commit the poetic sin of resting on stereotypes. Trillin’s talk of potentially endless provinces plays on the stereotype of the Chinese horde and stokes xenophobic fears, and his exoticization of food (“as each brand-new province appears”—brand new to who?) plays into Orientalism. All of these are stereotypes, all stereotypes are cliches, andall cliches are boring. In fact—and here’s some etymology for you, Trillin—the word “cliche” comes from the act of boring into a stereotype. So cliche is born from the stereotype—in that it’s supposedly onomatopoetic of the “sound of a mold striking molten metal” to make a printing plate.
None of this is to say that white writers shouldn’t write about race. After all, as I remember Ta Nehisi Coates quoting Baldwin at a recent talk in Seattle—we invented it. But the idea is to try to write about race without perpetuating racism.
Now here’s a person who’s all heated up over nothing, but his button has been pressed, and the prose comes out automatically, like one of those old dolls that would speak when you pulled a ring on its back.
At the end of his article, Smith adds an update in which he says that, in light of new information he got, this might possibly be an ironic poem. POSSIBLY? Did the author look up anything about Trillin’s history of writing about Chinese food? Apparently not; he just splattered his kneejerk reaction on paper that Trillin’s poem was “racist.” This is the way things work today: shoot first; ask questions later, all the while signaling your moral purity.
In the end, though, Smith dismisses the possibility of Trillin being ironic:
I think that’s a bold bit of irony! It requires you to trust the New Yorker wouldn’t publish a poem like that (and, to their credit, they have been publishing such good ones lately!) and it rests on Trillin’s reputation, which me and many poets my age seem to be unaware of.
This is sheer idiocy. If you’re unaware of Trillin’s history, look it up before you start calling him a racist.
Writer Karissa Chen appears to be obsessed by this poem, as you can see on her Twi**er feed. Here are but two of her reactions, one written after she belatedly realized that the poem might be humorous:
In the face of this food-related social media onslaught (I’ve omitted some other attacks), Trillin was forced to explain himself to The Guardian, saying “his poem was being misinterpreted and that it ‘was simply a way of making fun of food-obsessed bourgeoisie’ – and further defended the piece by saying that it was a device that he’d used before. The Guardian explains:
It was used in a previous poem:
Trillin pointed out another poem he published in the New Yorker, entitled What Happened to Brie and Chablis?
That poem, published in 2003, also pokes fun at the foibles of foodies, although the satirical tone is clearer:
What happened to Brie and Chablis? Both Brie and Chablis used to be The sort of thing everyone ate When goat cheese and Napa Merlot Weren’t purchased by those in the know, And monkfish was thought of as bait.
“It was not a put-down of the French,” Trillin wrote.
I’m sorry, but this kind of social media pile-on, completely unjustified in this case, is ludicrous. It is as if people are looking everywhere to find offense, and to see themselves as victims. Yes, sometimes they are, and pushback is acceptable. But in this case it isn’t. Before you attack someone for your perception that their ideology is impure, try understanding what they meant. That, after all, was the downfall of many who criticized Charlie Hebdo.
The Snowflake Students have now metastasized to Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where a group of students has been deeply traumatized by seeing pro-Donald Trump slogans written in chalk in various places on campus. The multiple microaggressions occurred on Monday.
Here’s a screenshot of one taken from the New York Post:
Well, all hell broke loose. As the Emory Wheel (the student newspaper reports):
Roughly 40 students gathered shortly after 4:30 p.m. in the outdoors space between the Administration Building and Goodrich C. White Hall; many students carried signs featuring slogans such as “Stop Trump” or “Stop Hate” and an antiphonal chant addressed to University administration, led by College sophomore Jonathan Peraza, resounded “You are not listening! Come speak to us, we are in pain!” throughout the Quad. Peraza opened the door to the Administration Building and students moved forward towards the door, shouting “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
They’re in pain! In pain! OMG, somebody soothe them!
It goes on, of course:
After approximately ten minutes outside from the start of the demonstration, the gathered students were ushered into the Quad-facing entrance to the Administration Building and quickly filled a staircase to continue their demonstration. Pausing in the staircase, a few students shared their initial, personal reactions to the chalkings.
“I’m supposed to feel comfortable and safe [here],” one student said. “But this man is being supported by students on our campus and our administration shows that they, by their silence, support it as well … I don’t deserve to feel afraid at my school,” she added.
Let’s put it this way: if they’re going to feel afraid at seeing a simple political slogan—or even a name—no matter how heinous the candidate, scrawled on a sidewalk, then they don’t deserve to be in a decent college. And who ever told students that college is supposed to make you feel “comfortable and safe”? (“Unsafe,” of course, is the latest college euphemism for “hearing something I don’t like”).
The President of the University noted that the chalking was against university regulations (though similar chalkings for more liberal causes have not been punished), and that the perpetrators would be tracked down and fined. He also caved in to the students a bit:
Jim Wagner, the president of the university in Atlanta, met with the protesters and later sent an email to the campus community, explaining, in part, “During our conversation, they voiced their genuine concern and pain in the face of this perceived intimidation.
“After meeting with our students, I cannot dismiss their expression of feelings and concern as motivated only by political preference or over-sensitivity. Instead, the students with whom I spoke heard a message, not about political process or candidate choice, but instead about values regarding diversity and respect that clash with Emory’s own.”
This is a president who is a master of euphemisms but not of the truth. Of course the students are expressing political preference and oversensitivity! And by claiming that Trump’s values clash with those of Emory, he’s feeding directly into the students’ feelings of entitlement. He should have just shut up and said that if students defaced school property illegally, they’d be punished, as would students who wrote “Bernie Sanders 2016” on the same spots.
Of course the President Wagner’s make-nice message wasn’t good enough. The students need (and will probably soon demand) institutional change to prevent this kind of freedom of speech:
Other students asked for improving diversity in the “higher positions” of the University, including the Board of Trustees and the faculty in general who should not be simply “diversity sprinkles” to improve statistics, as one student described it.
Grievances were not restricted to shortcomings of the administration. “[Faculty] are supporting this rhetoric by not ending it,” said one student, who went on to say that “people of color are struggling academically because they are so focused on trying to have a safe community and focus on these issues [related to having safe spaces on campus].”
“Faculty are supporting this rhetoric by not ending it.” Think about that. If you don’t censor speech, you are tacitly supporting it.
I used to think these students are going to have a hard time when they collide with the real world after graduation. But now I’m starting to think that they’ll eventually constitute the real world, at least in the US and UK. And if they do, then it truly will be an unsafe space.
Read on about the most ridiculous group of demands I’ve ever seen issued by disaffected college students—and that’s among a huge list of colleges whose students have demanded ludicrous authoritarian-Leftist reforms of their institutions. In this case, though, it’s Western Washington University (WWU), where the student demands (in the document “Student Assembly for Power and Liberation Demands [WWU]”) is so beyond the pale that it’s come full circle to unadultrated fascism—identity politics gone wild.
The Daily Beast and Inside Higher Ed (IHE) report on the students’ shenanigans, summarizing their demands (there are many more, as you’ll see if you look at the link above). The worst is the call for establishing the regressive “College of Power and Liberation,” which sounds like something right out of 1930’s Russia. Here, verbatim from IHE, is a summary of what the Snowflakes want:
A new College of Power and Liberation to focus on “the study of histories and communities that continue to be mis- and underrepresented into the mainstream curriculum at Western.” In addition to the college itself, the list calls for “a cluster hire of 10 tenure-track faculty,” a new building to house the college and that the Student Assembly for Power and Liberation have “direct input and decision-making power over the hiring of faculty for the college.”
That $45,000 be allocated to compensate students and faculty “doing de-colonial work on campus,” which is defined as “providing space and resources to learn alternate histories, supporting students’ nonacademic work, emotional and intellectual labor that is not about publishing or service to the institution, providing often unrecognized trainings, workshops and/or interventions on behalf of students.”
The creation of a 15-person student committee called the Office for Social Transformation “to monitor, document and archive all racist, antiblack, transphobic, cissexist, misogynistic, ableist, homophobic, Islamophobic and otherwise oppressive behavior on campus.” Using a three-strike system, the committee would have the power to take disciplinary action up to and including dismissal against faculty members who receive citations for creating “an unsafe classroom environment.”
A mandatory online survey conducted by the faculty and administration that would “allow Western Washington University community members to confidentially express concerns of discrimination and safety.”
A new “multicultural residence building,” applications to which would be overseen by the new Office for Social Transformation.
And finally that the university provide tuition reimbursement to “any Western Washington University student who has been targeted by, harassed by or has experienced excruciating acts of violence that [were] racialized, sexualized, gendered, based on ability, employment status, citizenship and/or mental health from the university.”
Note that the multicultural residence building, for which you must write an essay to qualify, will segregate students by ethnic group—exactly the opposite of what colleges should be doing. The fascistic “Office of Social Transformation” (shades of 1984!) omits anti-Semitism as an offense, of course, and also threatens faculty members with being dismissed for creating an “unsafe” atmosphere. Since when did “safety” change from physical threats into mental challenges? And the WWU students are demanding to be paid for giving emotional attention to other students.
To appreciate the full inanity of these demands, read the full 7 pages . There you will see one of the most bizarre aspects of that document: their new spelling for two words, to wit:
As has become increasingly obvious to us since we arrive at Western, we cannot count on the University to follow through for hxtorically oppressed students. These demands come out of a long hxstory of oppression played out at all levels of schooling, and just like the events of last quarter, these demands do not come out of nowhere.
We demand the creation and implementation of a 15 persxn paid student committee. . .
These aren’t typos: they’re used repeatedly, and are apparently a misguided attempt to “de-gender” words that have “his” and “son” in them. What’s next—an amino acid called “hxstidine” and toxic compounds called “poisxns”?
Finally, the student demands at WWU end with this lovely sentence:
We expect to receive a response from the university on March 1st, 2016 at 5pm agreeing with these demands and a proposed date to meet collectively.
According to both articles, the WWU administration hasn’t agreed to these demands, and has also pointed out the numerous legal and financial strictures they’d impose on the university. But the administration hasn’t done what I’d be tempted to do: give a verbal middle finger to these students. Perhaps some of their plaints are justified, but the students are so arrogant, so entitled, that they’re ruining any chance they have to effect change.
