Featured Image by Max Goldberg on Flickr, used under license (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic/CC BY 2.0).
I can hear already the most common objection to my writing an article on the University of Missouri student protests: What does it have to do with men? Surely these are a bunch of isolated fanatics who really won’t have any influence outside of their little safe spaces?
But the problem is, much like feminists/women, these activists, without producing a shred of evidence, were able to get people in influential positions in their college to step down from those positions. While they feign weakness and victim-hood to get what they want, these activists ARE getting what they want, much more often than not. And that should scare anyone, male or female. (But especially men, because this is not only tied with feminism, but parallels what is also happening with feminists, women, and accusations of wrongdoing so commonly being taken by the media and even by law courts as evidence in and of itself, which denies men due process systematically.)
What happened at Mizzou is really just one blister on a sick body of American youth that is infected with them. The signs of the disease are present there, and at many colleges throughout the country:
Activists coming from entitled and privileged backgrounds get the nerve to “call out” other people for being privileged.
They demand, not equality, but special treatment.
They do not protest peacefully, but angrily, against people who did no wrong.
Instead of seeing the media as an ally that can help them get their message out to the world, they attempt to block reporters from documenting their behavior, even if it is taking place in a public space.
They think their Visine tears can be used in the place of evidence of wrongdoing against them.
But the sad, sad, thing is, they’re right. They can use tears and angry shouting and protests as evidence by itself. At least, they can use these things to embarrass people into stepping down from positions of authority when they’ve earned those positions fairly and did nothing to merit the loss of them, other than happen to be in charge when a bunch of ignorant students decided that not getting exactly everything they asked for, plus some groveling, was proof that society and people in power were racist and/or sexist against them. And even when they got the groveling and some of the things they asked for, they weren’t happy. Because “social justice” activists aren’t happy until they can make someone else suffer.
What I hate about this movement is that it is in opposition to the previous Civil Rights movement for black equality of the 1960’s. Legal and social equality of the races was not won in this country without a long and in some places bitter fight. But it was eventually won, in legislation, in court cases, in practice. Segregation ended, and no one who advocates it today would ever be taken seriously.
That is, unless they happen to be black, favoring segregation, and calling it something else, like a “safe space.” One injustice that you make up cannot and should not be allowed in an attempt to make up for past injustices that worked the other way around. To oppose 1940’s-style segregation would not be to say “let’s give blacks the superior separate spaces” but to say,” all humans are equal, regardless of race or color, and have as much right to share in public spaces as anyone else.”
And, this flies in the face of another fact about race that these black separatists refuse to acknowledge by wishing to create separate “black spaces” for (the new PC term) “students of color”: Race is far from concrete, or black-and-white. I took multi-cultural studies in high school, and one of the things driven home to me by that course was that definitions of race vary tremendously from culture to culture and era to era. This is of especial concern to mixed-race students, who may or may not feel like they belong in a “black space,” or who might feel pressured or excluded if they happen to look more white than black (creating a feeling of separation, identity crisis, and appearance-focus that does not need to be there, and does not serve such students’ needs). It’s also true that “of color” or “minority” does not only mean black, these terms seem to be used to apply only to giving special privileges to black students, but not necessarily to other students who are also a member of a racial minority.
All this does is fan the flames of tension and division that are tearing this country apart. All it does is give fuel for real anti-black bigotry to occur in the future, further causing hateful outbursts which could continue to ruin the lives of innocent people.
There are real parallels in this to the struggle against feminism. Feminism used to be about how women were strong and equal to men, now it’s saying women are superior to men, but somehow still fragile enough to warrant giving us a weak, kiddie-like “content warning” lest we might read something online that offends our delicate female sensibilities.
This country should continue to be a beacon of democratic principles for the rest of the world. This means that nobody should be treated differently because of their race or sex under the law. I also want, in the spirit of the Bill of Rights, to make a stand for due process, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, which I feel are all currently under attack from these kinds of ignorant mob-mentality-having student protest groups. They are an embarrassment to this country and to the millennial generation of which I am a part. They make a mockery out of the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and use it as a smokescreen, behind which they instead trample the rights of others.
This goes beyond the petty bickering of the gender wars and gets to the heart of the real political issues of this country, asking; is this the future of America that you really want, fellow college students?
