Last month, we held an event called “UnLearn Week” here at Calvin College, where the school, according to its website, “provides a safe, campus-wide forum for panel discussions, lectures, presentations and workshops that aim to increase self-awareness of deep-seated prejudices and stereotypes, encourage personal evaluation of attitudes and actions towards those with different cultural values, and increase knowledge of different cultures.”(1) Monday morning held the first session of the week titled “UnLearn Chapel” where Pastor Ricardo Tavarez of Envio Church spoke about his experiencing racial prejudice and why we, as Christians, should be actively unlearning biases, stereotypes, and racism.
As I listened and looked over the small card I picked up that held the Itinerary of UnLearn Week 2017, I realized that there was one voice missing from this conversation. In their passionate striving for “every voice to be heard” they missed an important one: mine. They do not offer a time/space for a different view or even for discussion which meant that all people hear is one side of the argument, a move some would call poor for an institution that opens its mission statement saying it “equips students to think deeply.”(2) For how can one truly think deeply about an issue without a proper understanding of the topic, without the whole story? I’ve seen nothing that suggests the school even thought to give a platform to a person who rejects the presupposition that there is evidence of institutional racism at a national level in the United States or that many issues construed as race issues might be better handled if understood as class issues.
If I had to use one word to describe my feelings once this hit me, it would be disappointment. If this school is truly “a Christian academic community dedicated to rigorous intellectual inquiry” then shouldn’t it follow that the school not shy away from controversy and instead choose to truly give a voice to all people and, more than simply let all sides of an issue say their piece, give them a public platform to do so?(2) Simply put, I am deeply disappointed in this school’s choice of action and it has failed my expectations of intellectual maturity set by their being “ranked #1 in Regional Colleges Midwest.”(3)
Another issue I have with UnLearn Week is that of its “slogan.” On the handouts that hold the schedule, there is a quote by Larry Niven, “Half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn.”(4) The reasons I take issue to the use of this quote are twofold. Firstly, an argument can be made that it is self defeating. If half of wisdom truly is learning what to unlearn, how do we know that quote is not something we need to unlearn? Secondly, and more importantly, I’ve seen no reasoning for why these people’s arguments are correct. We are expected to just take what is being said to us at face value. I take issue with this because, again, how are we to know that what we are being told isn’t something to be unlearned? One could argue, also, that the school does not respect its students’ intellect enough to explain why the views expressed are correct and instead wants them to listen and believe. It would seem that in this instance, the school does not wish for us to “think deeply” nor commit “rigorous intellectual inquiry” and instead join in intellectual lockstep with the faculty.(2)
If there is any value to be taken from UnLearn week for the community at large, it would be that of intellectual rigor. However, I fear the unintended consequences of not simply this action by Calvin College, but also the prominence of this ideology in today’s culture are immense and highly dangerous. The largest of these is division. Our current political climate is highly divisive and I would argue that identity politics and attempts to reduce people to simply the groups they are part of are one of the main causes of division. As Brendan O’Neill said in February 2015, “the more we define our social and political outlook with reference to what’s in our underpants or what colour our skin is, the more we experience every criticism of our beliefs as an attack on our very personhood, our souls, our right to exist...The end result is implicitly divisive, hinting that the young have different interests to the old, blacks think differently to whites, and women are a distinctive political species.”(5)
Another dangerous unintentional consequence of this intellectual, and cultural, climate is that people are being drawn to certain, toxic, ideologies, specifically the “alt-right” and ethnonationalism.
However, before we talk about the alt-right, we must talk about the ideology that has been integral in the expansion of it: modern progressivism. The progressivism of today is an ideology that centers around the ideas like intersectionality, with its roots in various forms of identity politics, such as critical race theory. According to the Oxford English Online Dictionary, identity politics is a “tendency for people of a particular religion, race, social background, etc., to form exclusive political alliances, moving away from traditional broad-based party politics.”(6) Today, there are many people who would agree with the feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian when she rather famously said “everything is sexist, everything is racist, everything is homophobic and you have to point it all out.”(7) This ideology can be quite dangerous, as University of Toronto professor Dr. Jordan B. Peterson argues, saying “[a]ll of these things that you hear about like ‘white privilege’ for example, they’re variants of collective guilt. I pick your bloody identity, whatever it happens to be, and then I make you a guilty member of that category and then you and the rest of the members of the guilty members of that category are judged as a unit.”(8) American political commentator Dave Rubin, who used to align himself with modern day progressivism, said that within the progressive left, “If you’re black, or female, or Muslim, or Hispanic or a member of any other minority group, you’re judged differently than the most evil of all things: a white, Christian male.”(9) He even went as far as to say that the progressive left is no longer progressive but rather regressive, “[b]anning speakers whose opinions you don’t agree with from college campuses — that’s not progressive. Prohibiting any words not approved of as ‘politically correct’ — that’s not progressive. Putting ‘trigger warnings’ on books, movies, music, anything that might offend people — that’s not progressive, either...All of this has led me to believe that much of the left is no longer progressive, but regressive.”(9)
Recently, arguments have been made that the alt-right is simply made up of racist, white supremacist, neo-natzis. As with most issues, the truth of this matter is more complex than what newspaper headlines would lead one to believe. The best definition of ethnonationalism, sometimes called ethno or ethnic nationalism, I could find was from the Oxford english dictionary which says ethnic nationalism is the “[a]dvocacy of or support for the political interests of a particular ethnic group, especially its national independence or self-determination.”(10) However, I think this definition fails to fully encompass what many, if not all, on the “alt-right” truly believe politically. In my experience, these people believe the things in the above definition, but also, and more importantly, that multiculturalism has failed and will never work and that each country should only accept people from “its” ethnicity. Many think that no race or ethnicity is superior to all others, though there is a sizable and vocal minority that do, and simply think the world would be a better place if all people only interacted with people of their same ethnicity. A good example of this sort of mindset would be this short animation.(11)
The largest issue I have with this line of thinking, besides it being wrong, is that it offers a safe haven for legitimate racists and allows them to attempt to, and often times succeed at, swaying people to their hate.
In essence, the alt-right is a reaction to the prominence of modern day progressivism and the power that progressives hold in modern society, specifically areas of cultural and, until the last general election, political importance. Put simply, the alt-right is a form of identity politics, only for white people instead of the identity politics of non-whites that make up progressivism. One of the famous sayings of the alt-right is the “14 words” which reads “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” which is a clear example of identity politics for people of the “white” race.(12)
I have shown why there is a clear case for the alt-right being a form of identity politics, but why is the progressive left to blame for its sudden emergence? One simply needs to peruse websites like Slate, Salon, Everyday Feminism and even the Huffington Post to see the vast swaths of articles that not only demonize white males but also articles that are proponents of vile things such as even pedophillia.(13) Or if you prefer, these two memes encapsulate this notion in a pithy way.(14)(15)
Beyond that, however, one can also look at cases of racial discrimination, plain and simple, of white people, such as what happened at the BBC last year. In May of 2016, the BBC published an advertisement for multiple internships with a caveat that “[a]ll roles advertised through Creative Access are only open to UK nationals from a black, Asian, or non-white ethnic minority.”(16) According to an article published by the newspaper Express “The taxpayer funded corporation has now been accused of potentially unlawful ‘positive discrimination in the workplace’”(16) While some may say that this is a good thing as it is a way that the BBC can now look more like the country as a whole when it comes to diversity, “Express.co.uk has analysed figures, as revealed in the corporation’s own Diversity and Inclusion Strategy 2016-20 report, which show the BBC’s workforce already represents the entire country’s ethnic make up.”(16) While I might argue that a private company should be allowed to discriminate against any people as they see fit, the BBC is a public company and as Omer Simjee, an Employment Lawyer at Irwin Mitchell LLP, said, this action could very well be illegal. “This is a potentially legitimate form of positive discrimination and it is also worth remembering that the BBC is subject to the public sector equality duty which requires organisations to consider how they can eliminate discrimination and advance equality of opportunity.”(16) Also Jane Collins, a member of the European Parliament, was quoted saying “This is a case of the BBC appointing itself as an arbiter of equality when the law requires them to provide equal opportunities for all...Discrimination of any type is abhorrent and totally unacceptable and this kind of ‘positive’ discrimination is utterly counter-productive to race relations.”(16)
Of course, if one is an astute reader then they would know that this is all anecdotal evidence, which is not enough to prove causality. I will readily admit that this is one of the largest weaknesses of my argument. This stems from both a lack of research into this topic and also the fact that this is a rather new phenomenon so there has not been enough time for this phenomenon to fully develop nor enough time for researchers to become interested in it. The only thing close to research done on this topic would be the book written by Jeffery Tucker called “Right-Wing Collectivism: The Other Threat to Liberty” published last month.(17) I have not read the book yet at the time of writing this, so I am by no means endorsing it. However, I mention it solely because it is the one piece of something akin to scholarly research done on the topic of the alt-right.
Finally, I must address the part of this issue that results from feelings. While there might not be copious amounts of definitive evidence that there is discrimination against white people, there is evidence of people thinking that discrimination against white people is a major problem in the United States.(18) While there is still an open debate about whether or not this is actually happening, that can be set aside, for the most part, since people feel like it is. As much as I don’t want this to be the case, people often act based off their feelings, rather than the facts. This leads people to wish to create their own identity politics after feeling like they are being berated by other forms of identity politics.
Before I close, I want to make one thing abundantly clear: I don’t think it is wrong to hold an event like UnLearn week. It is important for everyone to spend time in introspection and for people to think deeply about what they think and why. I truly think that offering a space for people to do this should be a secondary objective of every single post-secondary education institution. That being said, in order for this sort of intellectual training to be beneficial for every person, extra measures must be taken to make sure to offer outlets for attempts to dismantle every presupposition and worldview. When this is not done, what is accomplished is not intellectual maturity but an addition to an echo chamber where people in the intellectual minority are subtly pressured to keep their views silent and many people do not intellectually mature when simply told things they already know. One might also argue that only presenting the one side of this issue is a concession of not being intellectually strong enough to survive a fair and open debate.
For all the reasons stated previously, I am deeply disappointed in this institution and would urge Calvin College to hold this event again, if and only if, they take measures to make sure all sides of the argument have the ability to state their respective cases.
Works Cited
