In Frantz Fanon’s 1952 book “Black Skin, White Masks,” he writes that universities offer a safe haven to marginalized groups, “but outside university circles there is an army of fools.” At The University of Alabama, it seems that this army of fools has not only stormed the ramparts of academia, but in many ways it calls the shots.
This makes sense. The University of Alabama sits in a deeply conservative pocket of the country with a past mired in hatred and exclusion. This reputation steers many moderate or left-leaning potential students away from this campus (without being enticed by large financial compensation), leaving extreme conservative voices to occupy a more mainstream presence at the University.
However, this explanation is insufficient. There are certainly sensible and well-reasoned conservatives whose ideas warrant consideration.
Conservatism does not, in and of itself, result in an unaccepting space. I have met conservatives on this campus who embody this fact. Well-reasoned and understanding conservatives should agree with me that there is rampant ignorance among their peers that must be addressed if we are to have reasonable dialogue around the issues that affect students the most.
I do not think that every conservative on this campus is ill-informed, or that no conservative position has merit. I do think that many conservatives on this campus have been lied to and purposefully misled by their supposed leaders who would rather stoke the flames of hatred and ignorance than build from areas of hope and mutual understanding.
There are two recent examples that illustrate my frustration with the current conservative hive mind’s lack of seriousness.
First is the invitation of Yeonmi Park to campus by the UA Young Americans for Freedom. With her primary claim to fame being that she defected from North Korea, Park is now a conservative “thought” leader.
First, unlike YAF, I will mention that much of Park’s story has been challenged by other defectors. When I brought this up to a YAF member, I was told not to believe everything I heard from “Marxist media like The Washington Post.” You know, the same Washington Post owned by that famous Marxist Jeff Bezos.
To many conservative students, part of Park’s appeal as a speaker is not that she escaped an oppressive country committing heinous crimes against humanity within its closely guarded borders. It’s that she defected from a socialist country.
This supposed fact has been repeated by members of our campus community. I have heard it in multiple conversations with students around campus. I have even read it in this very newspaper, where one of our contributing columnists wrote that Park escaped “socialist totalitarianism.”
Really? North Korea, a socialist country? Did I skip the chapter of “Das Kapital” that advocated for a hereditary authoritarian dictatorship? Or did I miss the Rosa Luxemburg speech that advocated for internment camps?
Past sarcasm, calling North Korea a socialist country is laughable. Names do not equate to reality. Surely, my conservative peers can agree with me here. I doubt any conservative on this campus would say the current state of the Justice Department is anywhere near their vision of justice.
Just because the state of North Korea may refer to itself as socialist does not mean that it is (the same holds true for the USSR before its dissolution). The state of North Korea is nothing but a despotic serfdom ruled by a megalomaniac concerned with nothing and no one except himself. When conservatives call that socialism, they are either ignorant of what the word means or willfully misinforming others. Both are despicable.
Park’s visit to campus is tied rather closely to my second point: the recent attacks by my conservative peers — and the Alabama Legislature — on diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Despite what Park may think, tours that highlight the fact that our campus was built on the backs of enslaved people and scholarships targeted at communities with less resources, like rural and Black students, are not the same as the injustices she experienced in her youth.
Park’s sentiment was echoed by the students I talked to who showed up in opposition to the pro-DEI demonstration last week. Most of them seemed not to understand what exactly DEI was or how this ban would adversely affect their peers and the greater campus.
In fact, many agreed with the principle, when it was explained, that some have better starting points than others. And that because of this inequality, it may be helpful for a university to offer resources to those who have systematically had less opportunity than their peers.
That is at the crux of what I am speaking to here. Most of the points I came across when discussing Park or DEI with conservative students were not points of genuine disagreement over the merits of the issue based on a mutual understanding of the facts. But rather most of the proponents of Park’s speech and the ban on DEI programs seemed to have not truly thought out their positions, or even read the things they reference with such apparent ease.
I cannot in good faith conclude this without drawing attention to a darker side of our current campus debate. There is of course, in this army of fools, pure hatred. The most extreme of this, that I have seen with my own eyes, occurred at the demonstration in support of DEI programs. While most conservative students remained respectful or silent on the outskirts of the protest, a group of boys drove by in the bed of a truck.
With the cloak of anonymity giving them a voice their cowardly nature would not allow them otherwise, they repeatedly screamed a homophobic slur.
This cannot be ascribed to ignorance or differing opinions. It is only a manifestation of the pure hatred that dwells within some members of our campus community. Has the University president issued a statement condemning this? No. Has the president of the SGA, who was in attendance, issued a statement condemning those words? No.
You may draw your own conclusions from that set of facts. It is impossible not to wonder where those students would have been if they were enrolled in 1963.
When you do not understand something, it becomes easy to fear it. When you have not investigated socialism as a political ideology, you can harbor a caricature of it in your head. When you do not take the time to talk to people supported by DEI programs, it is easy to think that you are being forgotten while others are getting a leg up.
Universities should be places where we view everyone’s voice as equal. College should offer a respite for marginalized and underheard stories and people. Until this army of fools is cast out of our ranks, or, regardless of their political persuasion, converted to the compassionate, understanding and respectful students that they are all capable of being, The University of Alabama will never live up to this ideal.
