Josh Veazey’s column on Wednesday defended an Our View from last week against a comment posted on The Crimson White’s website. The Our View was a criticism of the Catholic Church for its handling of scandals involving priests who have sexually abused children.
Veazey defended the editorial board’s decision against a commenter’s claim that we criticized the church using faulty logic and insufficient research. Veazey did not discuss what was perhaps the more important issue raised by commenters: that The Crimson White’s editorial board acted out of prejudice against Catholics.
As the principal author of that editorial, I can assure you that, while no member of the editorial board is Catholic, there was no anti-Catholic bias involved in this editorial. We approached the issue in the same way we would have approached a perceived cover-up of a sex scandal at any religious organization, whether we were members or not. The claims that we were “prejudiced” are blatantly false, for we did not judge the Catholic Church as bad, just that it had made a mistake and needed to make a good faith effort to rectify it. A comment describing the Ku Klux Klan’s hatred of Catholics, which seemingly insinuated that the editorial board was acting with same intent as the Klan, was remarkably disgraceful.
Prejudice and hate are very different things than criticism.
As articles of opinion, the columns, letters and editorials printed on this page should all be taken with a grain of salt. You definitely won’t agree with all of them, but you do have to read and understand what the writer is saying before you can judge their intent. Too often, it is easy just to shrug off the writer’s opinion as bias, but that is not always the case.
When The Crimson White’s editorial board endorses candidates for the SGA, we do not just say “this person, not that person.” We list reasons. We do this because our endorsements are not just for students to read and decide whether to vote with us or against us. We do this to help the candidates improve themselves. When someone, not just an SGA candidate but anyone, is called out on this page, it is an expression of a very real perception of what they may or may not be doing wrong. If this perception is not the truth, it should be corrected using real, confirmable facts and a logical tone. People can and do get things wrong.
More importantly, the criticism can be a tool for growth. When someone on this page calls out a leader — student or otherwise — over an issue like transparency, the target of that criticism should not just dismiss the article and The CW as biased and move on. The CW is not here to serve as a sounding board for anti-SGA critics, though that may be the perception. We are here to serve as a mouthpiece for the student body of the University of Alabama. If someone thinks you could be doing something better, maybe you could be.
Maybe the problem isn’t that the writer is prejudiced, maybe it’s that the writer is trying to help you.
Our culture has been submerged in the ideology of “you’re either with us or you’re against us” for at least the past decade. It’s about time we got out of that. It’s possible for someone to criticize another without being hateful, but our society has seemingly moved away from that kind of dialogue. Whatever is not positive is an attack. Whatever is not praise is somehow premeditated. It’s character assassination. It’s hate speech.
When the critique in question is full of the language of hate, that is an acceptable conclusion. When the critique is merely a statement that someone or something is doing something wrong and it should be corrected, that is not a critique born out of hatred. It’s a critique born out of mutual respect. The critic wants the subject to know that something is wrong, and the critic wants the subject to fix it.
When I write about the mistakes made by Republicans and Tea Party activists, it isn’t because I hate them, merely because I disagree. I accept my fallibility just as much as I suggest that of those I criticize.
Criticism shouldn’t be — and usually isn’t — about hatred. It’s about trying to make a better world through cooperation and, occasionally, correction. To neglect the misdeeds of others would be a more hateful thing than any slur or prejudice.
Jonathan Reed is the opinions editor of The Crimson White. His column runs on Fridays.
