Strange that before yesterday, I don’t remember ever having had anything offensive shouted at me. While out riding with a couple of friends yesterday late afternoon, an on-coming car’s driver yelled out very loudly “f*@# you” as he drove by. Was it because we were bikers? Or because we were Asian? Or maybe we just looked funny?
Crossing Mass Ave today, a guy who could have easily been a student was sitting in a bus stand talking on his cell phone. Then he suddenly screams very loudly, “F&*k you, you m*therf&*king n*gger”. I did a double-take, looked around instinctively scanning for anyone black, and the only people I saw were several others looking around just as I was doing. The guy went on talking on his cell phone in a normal voice, inaudible from 20 feet away, as if I had just dreamt up the whole episode. The rest of us went about our merry ways.
This made me think of all of those “racial incidents” at UVA, where people would report to the Dean’s office obscenities shouted at them from passing cars, claiming them to be racially charged. The FBI got involved with one or two of them, only to conclude that there was no evidence that the incidents were race-related, and thus they cannot be classified as hate crimes.
My personal feeling is that the FBI got involved because of the pressure Virginia administration felt from student activist groups proclaiming UVA to be a tense and hostile environment for minority students. The groups advocate that a general lack of diversity awareness in the student body, and a lack of concern for diversity by the administration, leads to these unfortunate “racial incidents.” I tend to disagree, and in general I find it a tad sad (sad-pathetic, not sad-melancholy) that the federal government had to get involved with some silly anarchist graffiti.
An incident like the cell phone guy at 77 Mass Ave today would have for sure made front-page headlines at the Cav Daily: “Unidentified Man’s Racial Slurs Intensifies an Already Tense University Environment”. Here, today, it just garnered a few stares.
So where do we draw the line between stupid, hurtful pranks and legitimate racial hate-crimes? My thoughts are that UVA is not much different from other college campuses in the “racial environment” that exists. It’s just that wahoos are now SO incredibly sensitive to every remotely-racially-involved comment made that almost everything gets interpreted as a “racial incident.” In fact, I think that the whole diversity awareness thing may even have gone a bit overboard. The “hostile” racial environment is an artificial one sustained by over-sensitivity and over-application of political correctness. Anthills are being hailed as the Rocky Mountains. Personal assaults and attacks are hate-crimes sure (and there were a couple of these), but silly anarchist graffiti? Some f-bombs shouted out from car windows? These are racial incidents? REALLY??
But maybe people like me are the problem. We are not sensitive enough, and together we make up the hostile racial environment that make minority students uncomfortable. But ought we be THAT sensitive? What is the right approach here?
I biked away yesterday not feeling particularly different about anything (except maybe a desire to react more quickly next time and give the guy the finger before he’s able to drive away). I sure as hell wasn’t offended yesterday, but should I have been? I walked away today from the cell phone guy confused as to what I actually witnessed, with more of a “WTF???” reaction than a “oh my god, I just witnessed a hate-crime, should I say something” reaction. I didn’t say anything to anyone, but should I have?