Since Americans have freedom of expression, there is nothing to be done.  That is what some have said.  So that’s why we sometimes end up with the odd situation that when someone makes ugly racial, anti-gay and lesbian, anti-some-group statements,  people act as if there is nothing to be done.  We Americans have the right to freedom of expression.  We seem to think that that freedom means that we have to shut up in the face of someone else’s ugly use of freedom of expression.  No we don’t because we don’t have a right to free expression, we have a right to freedom-of-speech.  All of us have that right.

    I am happy to report that Americans are beginning to realize that. 

   There’s a group of Americans who turn out to yell and scream at the funerals of soldiers.  Members of the Westboro Baptist Church say that the death of a soldier is god’s punishment for the sins of America.  So they come out to a funeral to make that point in front of a family burying a loved one who served our country. And they have the freedom-of-speech right to do so.  Indeed the Supreme Court ruled that they cannot be stopped from doing so, based on freedom-of-speech. That was the right reading of our Constitution.  But that does not mean other Americans cannot use their freedom-of-speech to shout down this mean spirited behavior at the funeral of soldiers. 

    That’s what happened when the Westboro Baptist Church members showed up at the funeral of Elizabeth Edwards (former wife of presidential candidate John Edwards).  Since Ms. Edwards had been in support of marriage rights for gays and lesbians, members of the church came to her funeral to shout out that she was damned. But members of that church found themselves peacefully blocked by a “…line of love.”

At the funeral of Ms. Edwards, when that church group assembled where permitted, other Americans were there to block their position.  This has started to happen at the funerals of soldiers; people line up early early to stand in front of the assigned position of the Westboro Baptist Church, to block their signs from the sight of those attending the funeral.

    That is also legitimate freedom-of-speech. 

    So too was what people did in New York city on the first day that gays and lesbians could be legally married in that state. Knowing anti-gay and lesbian protestors would be there, people, some strangers to each other, some straight, showed up with colorful umbrellas.  With those umbrellas open they took positions that blocked the view of the protesters from those couples who, in love, had showed up and lined up to get married.

    That was also legitimate freedom-of-speech.

    One person’s freedom-of-speech does not negate other Americans’ freedom-of-speech.  Let’s not forget that because when we do, we allow ugly speech to rule the day.

    Why object?  “What’s the big deal,” some students asked.  Even some professors wondered about the level of risks some African American students had been willing to take.  Speaking with a degree of accuracy, some said “I’ve seen worse graffiti on the stalls in men’s bathrooms on campus; so why this big reaction to this particular racial graffiti?”

     Yes we have seen worse things in bathroom stalls.  So I asked myself, what are we not teaching these African American students who are so outraged as to be ready to break the law?  Here the law was not unjust or immoral.  The law in question had to do with physically blocking other students’ access to a tunnel to their legitimate destinations on campus.  Why were students willing to risk being arrested for that?

    Then it occurred to me that for these African American students, like for all the other students, this is college.  This is college and university life that was supposed to be the “…best time in their lives.” For all of our students, and college students everywhere, this time is supposed to be that time between being a child, a minor, and being a real adult (full-time-job, paying rent and all that).  So this is supposed to be football and basketball games, parties, frivolity, while taking classes to get that degree.  But now, with public, offensive, racial graffiti aimed at your group, it’s not that.  Damn, the real world is already here and so the dream is deferred; sadly, probably forever.

     That is why African America students were demanding something even they knew was ridiculous; a guarantee that this will never happen again; or at least while they are still a student here.  Those students are angry at the loss of the college dream; at the loss of their innocence.  So that’s why they say “…oh it’s on…” as a threat, but an empty threat. 

     What happens to a dream deferred is what Langston Hughes asked:

     “Does it stink like rotten meat

     Or fester over like a syrupy sweet.

     Maybe it just sags like a heavy load…

     Or does it explode.”

    A dream deferred in the name of “…free expression.”  But it is a dream deferred only for students who are members of certain American groups.  Is that really the point of “…free expression,” or the result of completely confusing the idea of “…free expression” with the constitutional right of Freedom-of-Speech?

    So once again, racial graffiti had appeared in NCSU’s Free Expression Tunnel.

    At North Carolina State University, we have a Free Expression Tunnel. 

    Turns out that a train track runs through our campus, and so to get from one side of campus to the other, tunnels were built under that train track. In the 1960s, by university administration, one tunnel was designated the Free Expression Tunnel making it the place where students could paint in any graffiti they would like.  In that tunnel, no surprise, there have been all manner of ugly racial, anti-gay, anti-female graffiti.  But with the election of Senator Barack Obama to the presidency, the racial graffiti has caught the attention of university students and administration because President Obama has been featured in that graffiti.

  

    Our neo-diverse student body has been outraged.  Not only outraged, but oriented toward finding ways to object and reduce the occurrence of this kind of racial graffiti.  The quandary is that the tunnel is a place for “free expression.”  Not only is it designated so by the university, many students see it as part of the tradition of the campus.  At the same time, many students at NCSU are not only offended by the graffiti but want others to know that this is not who they are. 

    So now there is a tension between the tradition of the Free Expression Tunnel and the neo-diverse identities of the student-citizens of the campus. Although a predominantly white campus of students, North Carolina State University is close to 20% non-white.  As importantly, no one can reasonably assume that all white students are the same with the same racial or other values.  White students are among those objecting to these racial-hate and anti-gay messages. 

    But can objecting matter?  After all, it’s called the Free-Expression-Tunnel.  How should we citizens of America think about these matters?  We need to think about these matters because eventually, in some form, these matters will show up in our particular communities.

    From June 1 until July 29 (today) I have been on my summer break.  As a professor with a (standard) nine-month contract, I have the opportunity and privilege to use my summer as I chose. In recent years, I have used my summers to work on my writing… not technical writing but fiction writing.  Summer 2010, for example, I spent a week at the writer’s conference at Santa Fe College, under the tutelage mystery writer Michael McGarrity.  I learned a lot.

    This summer I have spent revising my book manuscript which I have now titled “Briefing for Life on the Neo-Diversity Frontier.”  That book takes on in longer form some of the ideas I have been writing about on this blog.  I’ll let you know when I find a publisher.

    Otherwise this summer, I have been reading for fun.  In fact, one of the last things I did as the Spring semester was ending was make a list of books I intended to read this summer.  I don’t usually do it that systematically, but I got a request from our library to let them know what I planned to read.  Marian Fragola, the librarian making the request was doing so to put together a webpage that would highlight what selected faculty members planned to read over the summer.  Ms. Fragola did a great job with that webpage idea.  To see my reading list go to:

http://news.lib.ncsu.edu/wolfpacksummerreads/

    If you haven’t yet read them, I highly recommend the novels of Mary Doria Russell. At the beginning of the summer I read her newest, “Doc”; historical fiction about the true Doc Holliday; wow! I also read her science fiction novels “The Sparrow” and the follow-up “Children of God.” Religious science fiction of the highest caliber; not orthodox and preachy, but a good story filled with theological quandaries; also, wow!  

    I am telling you this to explain why I have been away from this blog. I needed a break to refresh myself, to give my brain a different focus.  So now I will again be posting regularly.  There’s a lot going on to comment on.  But first, my posts will be mostly about the evolution of “Wake Up! It’s Serious: A Campaign for Change.”

    My summer interlude is over.

    Like I said (see “Another Racial Graffiti Storm” April 12, 2011), at the end of the busiest semester of my twenty-three -year career as a professor (Fall 2010), something new and important was starting.  When I returned to campus for the Spring-2011 semester, that something new and important was waiting for me. 

    I had promised to pull together a planning committee to keep the Wake Up! It’s Serious movement going.  Taylor Elkins met with me to begin that task.  We came up with names, and she sent an email out to those students.  Nothing happened… and I realized that I had to give the weight of authority and commitment to this effort.  I sent an email and seven out of eight students responded. 

    Lo and behold we held our first meeting on January 22, 2011.

    To start that meeting, I asked each student to introduce themselves.  Then I asked each to say something about “…why do you want to be part of the Wake Up! It’s Serious Movement?”

    Taylor, a white female said she wanted to learn to be an advocate for diversity.

    Natalia, of Columbian heritage, talked about living in the international dormitory, and seeing the power of diversity.

    Hayat talked about her traditional Middle Eastern, Arab-American parents and growing up in Cary, NC, and the hurt of the jokes she heard after 9/11.

    Mario, an African American male, said that for him the idea of the movement was about moving himself and other people up through education.

    Komal, of Turkish-Indian descent, said that as a resident-advisor she had seen that when the Free Expression incident happened, no one on her hall wanted to talk about it. That disturbed her and motivated her to want to work for change.

    Melody, an African American female, said she had seen too much stubbornness among her college peers about addressing racial issue, and wants to be part of a movement for change.

    Christie, a white female, said she came from a small, mostly white town, where race was not discussed in any positive way.  She said that she thought that it would be different in Raleigh, at N.C. State, but found the silence was even worse in a way.  She wants to be part of a movement to get people talking about race.

    Brittany said, “I’m white as they come; no I’m really white.”  She went on to say that as a resident-advisor, when she talked about how much the racial graffiti and anti-gay slurs offended her and something needed to be done, students laughed and asked her “…why do you care?”  She wants people to come to understand that these kinds of things hurt us all.

    Sascha, a white male, of German-Jewish heritage, said, he wanted to be part of Wake Up because “…silence in the face of intolerance is worse than the intolerance itself.”

    Why were they here, at this first meeting?  In a word the answer was… passion.  Passion for change, passion to do something about the neo-diversity problem of negative language and messages aimed at fellow students; fellow citizens of our campus. With that passion, focus, and good humor we had the neo-diverse core group we needed to get things going.

    In that first meeting, I introduced the goals of the committee; strategic planning.  I know… that sounds so bland and typical.  But our goal was to do strategic planning through action.  Yes the first two meetings involved planning, but that was to set us up for action.  I promised that we would develop concrete ideas for activities, with priorities, and that we would never meet for more than an hour and a half. 

    With that, we immediately began to put together our mission/vision statement.

    America; 9/11/2001. 

    On that 21^st century “…day that shall live in infamy,” at 1:30 p.m., I was to teach my 200 student section of Introduction to Psychology. By that time of that day, all air travel had been halted, both towers had collapsed, and no civilians knew for sure the whereabouts of the President of the United States.

     Rather than go through with my scheduled lecture on “Research Methods In Psychology,” I opened the class with John Donne’s “No man is an island.” Then I said to my students, let’s talk about what has happened in our world today. Some students revealed that they had family in New York City who they had been trying to, but could not reach. From there the discussion in the class period was somber, angry, fearful and sometimes bizarre.   

    One exchange between students was intense. “I think we should nuke ‘em,” a student yelled out. 

      It was the case that in that class, five or six of the students, who often came to class in uniform, were in the U.S. Marine Corps ROTC. When the “…let’s nuke ‘em” exclamation was yelled out, immediately one of the young Marines threw up his hand and without waiting for my acknowledgement turned in the direction of that voice and said,

  “…nuke who? You don’t know what you’re talking about! Who do we aim nuclear weapons at; were we attacked by another country today! That’s just silly!”

     It was a blistering exchange and critique. Yet all of the complexity of the mood in the room was captured by the students’ who said:

    “I don’t understand how the world works anymore.”

    “I don’t feel safe anymore.”

     Osama Bin Laden’s attack of America on 9/1/01 did not change everything.  What that terrorist attack did do was jolt us into paying attention to the many social changes that were already going on around us; change in the racial mix and rules, change in gender roles and rules, change in the ways we can communicate with each other, and change in our international relationships. With that jolt, and sudden new awareness, came anxiety; neo-diversity anxiety.

     Osama Bin Laden’s death will not eliminate that anxiety. But his death at our hands can serve to help we Americans be less vulnerable to that anxiety. My hope is that we manage this moment of emotional release. That we recognize that Osama Bin Laden was only one of the things that has been haunting us, and that the other changes are not to be feared; that we cannot “…nuke ‘em.” If we can use our emotional release in that way, we will become less vulnerable to the charlatans who try to use our anxieties to keep us fearful so that they can manipulate us to accomplish their selfish goals.

    Any psychologist will tell you that one of the worse things that can happen to a person is anxiety.  It’s bad because anxiety makes the person feel creepy and haunted.  So everything in the situation feels like a threat.

    Diversity issues have always pushed on the American psyche.  What’s different now is that it’s not diversity issues, but neo-diversity issues.  To repeat myself (see my earlier post; Back to the… A Neo-Diversity Interlude, Thursday, 10 March 2011), neo-diversity is the situation we live in today where contact with people who do not look like or sound like us, is unavoidable.  One cultural observer (Arjun Appadurai) has said that because of this we struggle with the question, “…who are the ‘we’ and who among the ‘they?’” That is the question that is causing so much anxiety in America.

    President Barack Hussein Obama is the personification of that neo-diversity anxiety. Is he one of us, or isn’t he?  Well, he’s African-American… ok, he looks black but he was raised by his white mother and grandparents.  He’s a Christian… yeah, maybe, but his middle name is “Hussein.” He’s a black man… yeah right, Harvard graduate… come on.  He’s American… maybe, if you think Hawaii is really part of America… let’s be sure; let’s see that birth certificate.

    Oh look… here’s the birth certificate! 

     I don’t know… it could be a fake; I mean after all why did he take so long to decide to show it? What was he trying to hide?

    President Obama is correct; focusing on this silliness is getting in the way of our nation addressing the serious issues before us. 

    “We’re not going to be able to (meet those challenges) if we spend time vilifying each other,” President Obama stressed. “We’re not going to be able to do it if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts. We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers.”

    But that’s the other thing anxiety does to a person; it makes the person lose perspective. The creepy-haunted feelings grow more and more intense turning into paranoia. That’s why uncontrolled anxiety is so bad; that’s why anxiety is the one of the worse things that can happen to you.

    All of America is struggling with the neo-diversity question; “…who are the ‘we’ and who among the ‘they?’” That is just natural given the speed of the social changes that have come to us. Yet worse than that anxiety-of-the-day are those like Donald Trump who are feeding that neo-diversity anxiety to suit their own purpose; to keep their name in the public eye, or to sell a book that’s just ready to come off the presses.