Resegregation and Other Useful Words

by Benjamin Kepple

Outrage is a useful emotion. After all, one can never deny the usefulness of impassioned rhetoric to defend even the most useless and banal causes, even if it means outright lying about your opponents or the subject at hand. Just watch how your opponents, allies, and neutral people alike will react to an issue like affirmative action when you paint affirmative action opponents as racist George Wallace clones who want to resegregate higher education. Quite frankly, I'm surprised that we haven't received a letter from some irate administrator who has claimed he is going to distribute 5,000 copies of a flyer to all freshman mailboxes reading "The Michigan Review is secretly controlled by The Vast right Wing Conspiracy and is out to resegregate higher education. Did you know they burned an affirmative action supporter at the stake, and worship their evil, right-wing Gods in a paganistic, Bacchanalian frenzy of a ceremony where they eat human flesh? Thier office is located on the third floor of the Michigan League, through the two sets of French doors, on the theatre side."

For such a demonization of opponents on an issue is becoming more common than ever before. No longer, for example, are affirmative action opponents simply people with a different view. Now they want to resegregate higher education. Then, it is implied, the rest of society shall follow! In order to save society from degenerating into the South of the 1950s, we've got to keep affirmative action!

The second half of this argument goes that the question is not about merit, but about diversity. This is, of course, ridiculous, but you'll find that affirmative action opponents are now anti-diversity. Personally, I suppose that the University enjoys having diversity - after all, look at all the many groups that sit together at lunch in a dining hall cafeteria. There's a black group over there! And a white group here! And an East Indian group back there! It's so diverse! - but of course, never realizing that something isn't exactly kosher when people consistently self-segregate by race. One might postulate that this is at the very least partially because the University is very consistent about promoting minority-only this and minority-only that, but this is obviously just because of my white world view and thought process.

But it's no surprise. This University is so spineless (I mean, accommodating) when it comes to racial preferences (I mean, diversity) that a Doonsbury-like situation where minority students ask for their own water fountains (I mean inclusion, not discrimination) is not only a possibility here, but it would be undoubtedly granted by the guilty white liberals who never matured from their 1960s radicalism. "We don't want your filthy white lips touching our water, goddamnit!" "Come on into my office! Let's discuss this in a positive manner! How can we increase diversity and help soothe the obvious emotional trauma you've been dealt by society?"

Don't think that's how administrators act? Why then, did 12 administrators take time out to meet last year with 4 representatives of LUCha (an angry militant Latino student group) when the group consisted of at most 25 people? Why then, does the Black Student Union receive $35,000 per annum from the University in guaranteed funding? Because they took over the right offices and they were smart about how they played the administrators. They knew the right buttons to push. It makes you wonder whether conservatives, the most persecuted of minorities at Michigan, can get a bit of the action too.

Yes, persecuted. After all, conservatives in general are despised here at the University, but hardly a day goes by when we aren't being attacked savagely by some fascisti in the Administration for not having the right views. Now, we're anti-diversity. Then we'll be anti-minority. The next thing you know, President Bollinger will declare all conservatives to be the embodiment of evil incarnate, and demand that a bonfire be built on the Diag to burn all intellectual products of our making. Even the Huguenots in France had an Edict of Toleration. We can't even get the modern equivalent of that.

This is not just about affirmative action, however, After all, legions of groups are now jumping on this bandwagon of opponent demonization, if they haven't alreafy. To listen to their logic, there is always something out there that is ready to pounce on them and cause more societal oppression. What lies behind the fact that Latino groups on campus aren't given the same treatment by the administration as the black groups? White racism. What lies behind the fact that Women's Studies and American Culture departments are under attack by a hateful and spirited campaign to crush them? Conservative bias. Why do minority students drop out more than white students? The unwelcome campus atmosphere created by racist whites, not to mention the hostility facing them from anti-diversity opponents.

However there are some groups that admittedly still need to work on these tactics, because they just are not working for them.

For example, let us consider the Greek system. Now, there is no doubt that this organization has many flaws, the greatest of which is the rampant hypocrisy that must go on for public relations purposes. I for one would love to know what house presidents dope up on before they repeatedly say they don't serve alcohol at frat parties, and don't allow underage drinking ever to occur. Come on. And God knows how many instances of unreported hazing continue to go on throughout the system so that willing people are proven cool enough to pay exorbitant fees, live in a rotting house, and participate in mindless charity events. Ah, the advantages of brotherhood!

Now, why have I written the above? Easy. Because at least one person out there is thinking, that son of a ... of course! I'll send The Letter! (Printing such a letter would arguably be a personal victory for me.)

The Letter, as we all know, is the stock body of text kept on file in the IFC (or Panhel) office for fraternities and sororities to gallantly defend themselves from the merely middle-class opposition who obviously weren't popular in high school. (The problem for the Greeks is that all those people went into journalism.) It reads something like this:

"My name is (name) and I am (some chair or another) at (Greek org.). I was (descriptive negative adjective) and (adjective involving anger) to read in the (campus publication) the outright lies and deception perpetrated by (whiny columnist/letter writer) in a recent issue. I'll have you know that (number) of ex-Presidents were members of the Greek system! And that (number) of Greeks make up student government! [you may notice, dear reader, that they say this as if it was a good thing.] Furthermore, we worked (number of) (units of time) and prepared for weeks on end to raise money for (choose one: the halt and the lame/sick children/the United Negro College Fund/the battered women's shelter), but did we get any mention in the (campus publication)? No we did not! You thought (minor event also held that day) was far more important!

"I just can't believe that there is so much anti-Greek sentiment at (campus publication). I'm outraged that just because you people think you run your little (publication), you can decide what's news for the rest of the campus community! but the next time one of you sees us (with a bucket on the diag/at Greek Week/helping the disabled and homeless/with our handicapped stickers in our sport-utility vehicles), you should respect the Greek system for all the hard work we do!"

Sincerely, so and so, blecch. Now, an annoying instance of this has been occurring lately because our friends at the oft-maligned Daily misplaced a Greek letter or two for some new minority Greek organization, Alpha Gamma Beta Psi, or something like that - I always thought they stopped at two or three letters, but hey, I guess anyone can name their group whatever they want - and well, the firestorm this has caused! The humiliation! The controversy! I can almost feel the hardship bleeding out of my pores!

Look, if my name was misspelled - and it usually is - I would simply call and ask for a correction. The Daily would say, "OK, even though you're editor of the Review." It would be done. This, for some reason, is not good enough. The latest suggestion by the "humiliated" sorority was that "the Daily should see to it that there is an additional article acknowledging its mistake."

Just think, if they were University administrators, it would be on the front page.

Daily Error Causes Ethnic Hardship; Apology Runs for Maligned Group

It would be the secondary lead, however: right after Conservative, Anti-Affirmative Action Racist George Wallace Clone Sues U-M. MR

This article was published in the 11 February 1998 edition of The Michigan Review (Volume 16, Number 7).
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