A Response To Real Racists' Projects

The following correspondence occurred in the last issue of The Claremont Independent. Ms. Viebeck, the CI's magnanimous and beautiful editor-in-chief, has graciously given the text so that I might post it here. The writers directly challenge me on the question of racial retreats and their balkanizing effects on school race relations. Here's the original article, "Race Retreats Antagonize Students," for your perusal.

Concerning “Race Retreat”

Volume XIV, Number 3

In “Race Retreat Antagonizes Students,” Charles Johnson provides a biased account of the recent AdBoard retreat, quotes only those opinions and thoughts condemning the retreat’s activities, and does not open himself for a balanced argument.

Johnson introduces the debate over the recent race retreat with OBSA, CLSA, and AdBoard. His article only bashes the Asian American student retreat, while Johnson fails to consider, or at least include, OBSA and CLSA in his argument to make for an evenhanded piece.

At its heart, the AdBoard retreat tries to increase awareness about the situation of Asian Americans; it does not “try to break down class unity” as Johnson claims. Yes, the AdBoard retreat had flaws. However, Johnson makes assumptions on the basis of his own opinions and obtains others’ opinions in the same light of his own ideals.

Simply put, Johnson fails to report fairly and include in his article even those involved in AdBoard. Shiyuan Deng (Scripps ’08), who was part of the committee that organized the retreat, explained that Johnson’s article “encourages students to stop talking about unpacking racism and privilege on our campuses, [which] is in itself a racist project.” Shedding light on the real reason for the AdBoard retreat, Deng says, “Sure, the AdBoard retreat could be improved. We need to get better at politicizing students without alienating them. Johnson would wish that we stopped talking about politics completely. He’s advocating for woeful ignorance among the student body about issues that affect members of our community.”

Also, the identity sheet Johnson writes about had several options which were not constricting, contrary to what he reports. The worksheets were intended to make us think about our identity not as Asian Americans, but as people.

Another problem in Johnson’s article was his assertion of who was considered “Asian American.” The AdBoard retreat takes Asian Americans as defined by the colleges, which is in turn dictated by society. AdBoard tried to educate the retreat attendees on the problem of diversity even within the Asian American group and their classification into one entity.

AdBoard never told us that “white people” thought up stereotypes about Asian Americans—it was the culmination of society’s social constructs that want to define our identity—and such is what we need to be aware of.

Further, contrary to what Johnson’s article reports, we were also encouraged to mingle with the OBSA and CLSA students. I remember doing so, but I also remember several other freshmen from the AdBoard retreat sitting in their seats despite being prodded to mix.

One of the most problematic thoughts I found in the article was one student’s remark on the Asian Americans on campus wanting an office with professional staff like OBSA: “Special needs are for the disabled.” That would imply that OBSA or CLSA is “disabled” and have “special needs”-- which is not true. The model minority myth has been engrained in the minds of our Claremont institutions and apparently in those of some of its students who assume that all Asian Americans achieve and strive in the same manner and do not have separate needs.

Obviously this does not pertain to everyone, and each individual can and will decide whether he or she has these needs. It is important, however, not to disregard those who do have other needs and these needs must be accounted for.

Courtney Wai & Rachel Wong, Scripps ’11

Charles Johnson responds:

First and foremost, I apologize for not interviewing OBSA and CLSA students. These students were not the focus of my investigation. Ms. Deng’s suggestion that I am involved in a “racist project” because I honestly report the sentiments of a segment of the Asian community is prima facie wrong and deeply offensive to me. Presumably, students that speak to me are collaborators in this racist project. No wonder they refused to go on record.

Fortunately, that offensive is countered by Deng’s words. She says that my article hurts the “unpacking racism and privilege on our campuses.” On the contrary, I am unpacking racism - racism that Asian students all have special needs and that their definition of themselves can be neatly put into several boxes.

Further, I see nothing more “privileged” than the use of school funds to “politicize students” to one particular point of view. Deng herself admits that this is the point of these racial retreats: “we need to get better at politicizing students without alienating them.”

Every fact I asserted was confirmed by my sources. (One of those sources will respond on both my blog and on the Claremont Independent website.) According to my sources, Ms. Wai and Ms. Wong are mistaken about the identity sheets. My source stands by what s/he told me earlier - that they were too limiting. Their definition of Asian, they confess is one the school uses and that society uses. As I mentioned earlier, it leaves out Israeli, Russian, and Middle Eastern students’ culture and explicitly defines those students as not Asian enough.

Of course, the overall problem in trying to define an Asian culture is that it does not exist. If one cannot find any overriding similarity - be it religion, race, nationality, or culture - within a community, there is no need to form a special needs group.

Ms. Wai and Ms. Wong try to attack me for the model minority problem, but this too is offensive. I simply use the words of students who say that they do not have “special needs.” I challenge the authors to list any special need that an Asian student has that the rest of us do not have. If the student needs tutoring, many other students need it as well. If the student needs language instruction, many other students need that as well. Perhaps the real danger is that the authors and others know that there are these voices in their very ranks who disagree with their argument’s racist underpinnings. As past polling has indicated, many Asian students do not support an Asian student center, probably because they find the notion of “special needs” for Asian students only as offensive.

Why The Blog For Human Rights Lacks Credibility

It's a shame that the Blog For Human Rights goes out of its way to attack The Claremont Independent. Ms. Becky Grossman CMC '08 uses her position as a blogger for "human rights" to pursue a narrow partisan agenda.

Yes, it's true that The Claremont Portside addresses "human rights" explicitly and that The Claremont Independent focuses on school issues -- it is after all a school newspaper -- Ms. Grossman ignores that several of my articles further the aim of securing human rights.

Ms. Grossman singles my articles out explicitly by mentioning my article, posted earlier, that goes after the cult around Bono as weakening economic freedom and human rights in Africa and my other article, about racial retreats that addresses racial balkanization at the Claremont Colleges. She is dismissive of both of articles without providing any justification. Her response isn't only a mischaracterization, but also an attack and as such, it needs to be addressed.

As Ms. Grossman must accept my comments on her blog post before they are put up, I have taken the liberty of posting my reaction to her piece on this blog.

What a mischaracterization of my article on Bono! Aside from making fun of Bono, my article addresses substantive ways to make African development accelerate. Development stops genocide. Rich and economically upward countries seldom exterminate poor people.

What's more, you attack my article about the racial retreats without going into the substance or providing a link. After all, the phenomenon of seeing fellow students as 'other' is the foundation of all genocide.

You nicely show why the Blog for Human Rights has lost all credibility. Too bad, you could have done some good in the world.

A Muslim CGU Student Sues County Over Interpretation of Religion Clause

Over at Religion Clause, a blog about religion and the Constitution, there’s a post about the ACLU of Southern California’s lawsuit on behalf of Claremont Graduate University student, Jameelah Medina against the San Bernardino County for forcing her to remove her hijab during a booking.

Here’s the post in its entirety.

The ACLU of Southern California has filed suit on behalf of a Muslim Ph.D. student at Claremont Graduate University who was arrested-- but never charged-- when she was discovered to be riding a Los Angeles commuter train without a valid ticket. The AP reports that graduate student Jameelah Medina was forced by the San Bernadino County Sheriff's Department to remove her headscarf for booking at jail. She also says that while being driven to jail, she was intimidated by Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy Craig Roberts who called Islam an "evil" religion. Medina's lawyer, Hector Villagra, argues that if the federal prison system can allow female Muslim inmates to wear the headscarf while in custody, there is no reason that the San Bernadino sheriff's office cannot have the same policy.

Though she says she isn’t looking for monetary damages, defending the policy will most certainly cost the taxpayer money. Who do you think pays for the attorneys, the judges, and the sheriffs? Taking the sheriffs off the beat to testify in court might even make the County less safe. If they are defending their actions in Court, they aren’t doing their job on the streets.

That, is unless the County settles.

(I put aside the question of whether or not the sherrif’s deputy called Islam an “evil” religion. That’s hearsay unless admitted by both parties.)

In my view, the County ought to not settle. They ought to fight this action. I happen to think that when a woman is booked for a crime, she should have to remove her headscarf. I wouldn’t go as far as the French school system, which outright bans the headscarf, but I wouldn’t go as far as the secular route of allowing anything to go.

At a booking, where a photograph must be taken, wearing a headscarf is against the interest of the public safety of the state. Imagine if everyone were to wear a full burkha and that the police could never ask a woman to remove that burkha. What would stop criminals from wearing burkhas? Identification of booked individuals before and after a crime is an important state function.

This position is somewhat akin to why courts have ruled that you can’t wear a hijab and get a driver’s license.

A federal prison is another matter entirely. At a federal prison, the woman has already been stopped and subdued. As far as the law is concerned, she can wear anything she wants so long as it is safe. My guess - and someone please let me know if this is wrong - is that male Sikhs in the prison system must forego their kirpans, the traditional knife they get upon baptism, at the jail house door. But a hijab does not impinge upon this freedom.

My guess would be that the arrested woman cried “Islamophobia” or some such other thing to avoid getting charged. They will probably settle and create some policy as a means of appeasing the ACLU and the woman. The precedent will then be used to get monetary remedies for police disrespect of Islam. Meanwhile the safety issue will be lost.

What I can’t figure out is why the ACLU of Southern California is taking the position that the woman’s faith or civil liberties were infringed.

This is the same ACLU that has removed God from the public square because it might make atheists uncomfortable. They sometimes take the America’s government ought to be secular. At least, that’s the position that the ACLU used to take.

Modest Proposals for Improving the 5 Colleges’ Mail Rooms.

Jonathan D. Glater of The New York Times has a brilliant article about how college mailrooms have been swamped by the sheer multitude of random crap - some of it useful, most of it still crap - that we college students order. According to Glater, the online shopping that USC students do has doubled the number of packages received in only four years. As gas prices climb and fewer and fewer students can afford to drive places, I wouldn't bet against online shopping growing even more in the coming years among college students.

Apparently college students’ eclectic buying patterns encouraged Pomona to update its mailroom.

Dealing with the increased mailroom activity is also costing colleges money. Pomona College -- whose mailroom handled the ant farm, air-conditioner and barbecue grill -- spent thousands on a system to scan bar codes, which sends students e-mail messages notifying them when they have packages in the mailroom. Pomona has also expanded its mailroom, making room for more packages.

Oh, but I wish Claremont McKenna were as forward thinking! An email that tells me when I can come pick up my package! How revolutionary! You mean I won’t have to check my mail twice a day? With a planned expansion in the works, there doesn’t seem to be any concern for how the increased student body will affect the mail room.

The strain already exists. When I showed up at Claremont McKenna, the head of the mailroom told us not to order fridges. I cringed reflectively. I knew that I would have to make the trip to Target, then Circuit City (Target was out of cheap fridges!) and in the process potentially damage a friend’s car for life. (The fridge didn’t fit and so I busted up his door on accident. Sorry buddy!)

He explained that the mailroom was a lot like our homes - that if everyone ordered a fridge it would swamp the whole place.

Alas, this home issue makes it difficult to save money. I had hoped to use the benefits of globalization - read: laziness - to get my fridge by ordering it online. I also hoped to save a buck or two. Alas, such was not my luck.

At the time I flirted with the idea of how to make the mailroom more efficient. Often I’ll follow a package I ordered online, only to find that it has yet to be processed by the mailroom folks. As I order all of my books online, this sometimes makes it tricky to get my books on time.

If the demand keeps increasing, the evil solution that comes to mind would be for colleges to have the same kind of quota that they have on printing for packages and then to charge students who run afoul of the package limit. Overnight, the net effect of this hypothetical policy would screw me and the other low-income students that use the web to save money.

So the free market worshiper in me advocates for a competitive solution. Allow the Claremont mail rooms to compete. Make it so that we can send our packages to whichever school we want. Reward mail rooms that can meet the demand with more funding and raises for the works. Decrease funding for mail rooms that ill-serve their customers.

While we’re at it, why not allow students to pay extra for mail room to door delivery? Who knows, they might even give good tips.

Pomona's Monetary Fun(ds)

I have never really believed in the Claremont McKenna - Pomona rivalry. Yes, I know it's a good thing to have because it encourages school spirit and that in turn, gets students revved up about their college experience. Students who loved their college experience often give money back once they graduate. So as a fiscal point, I get it. Hatin' on Pomona = +$$$. (And I'm not even an Eco major - yet.)

But while we're on the topic of mullah, let's just notice one thing that the Sagehens have over us: they have the market cornered on the whole purchasing power thing. I'm sure ConfusedMinority will come on here and explain, but suffice it to say, it's a chunk of change. With an endowment that clocks in significantly higher than CMC's, the Sagehens are the big kid on the block and so it is with no surprise that they can boast a financial-diversity that bests us.

With the Stags remain stagnant on guaranteeing competitive aid packages access, Pomona has guaranteed a no-loan aid package for returning and incoming students. As I mentioned previously, this news is welcome news on one front, but is it necessarily a good idea?

Part of the reason why loans are a good thing is that they encourage students to go out there and make big bank. Fearful that they will be swept under the deck of the rising financial tide, most students decide that they will either sink or swim. They may not like I-banking or whatever right out of the gate, but the siren song of making money has encouraged many an entrepreneur.

Many students, indoctrinated by this "follow your dreams" bogus, will end up becoming art history majors. Sometimes you have to be practical if you want to make it in this world and its better to learn that lesson early when you have room to err than out in the real, wild world.

If Pomona really wanted to do a good deed by its students, it would no longer use home-equity to compute college costs. Many people who send their kids to college just happened to be fortunate enough to strike it rich when the housing market got hot. By assessing family homes in the calculus, colleges unnecessarily hurt the middle class who are house rich, but cash poor. Real reform ends the use of home equity to determine financial package.