In response Hammer himself took to Twitter: ‘Your chronology is spot on but your perspective is bitter AF. Maybe I’m just a guy who loves his job and refuses to do anything but what he loves to do . . .?’ And then he quit Twitter. Others came to his defence. One Twitter user stressed that Hammer had spent the past two years pushing ‘black and gay filmmakers and stories. He’s one of the good guys.’ But a film and TV critic from Forbes magazine attacked those defending Hammer: ‘Ask yourself if you champion PoC actors/actresses as much. If you don’t then kindly STFU [Shut The Fuck Up].’ Others reminded everyone that Luca Guadagnino, the director of Call Me By Your Name (who is at least gay), had come under fire earlier for not casting gay actors in the gay roles in his film.2 In an interview Guadagnino tried to explain that he had wanted to cast people who he thought had the right chemistry rather than the right sexuality. In his own defence he stressed that he was ‘fascinated with gender theory’ and had studied the American gender theorist Judith Butler ‘for so long’.3 This appeared to get him off the hook. But the ‘problematizing’ of one white actor proved to be a very typical imbroglio of the age.
Although there may be some people who think that an actor like Hammer can take it – that even if not at the top of his profession, he has done better in his field than most actors and been compensated well – there is still the problem that ‘problematizing whiteness’ means ‘problematizing white people’. Rather than taking the heat out of anything it seems clear that when race games like this become commonplace they add to a situation in which everything becomes considered not merely in race terms but in the most aggressively racist terms possible.
Even anti-racism becomes racist. One of the primary principles of anti-racism in recent decades was the idea of ‘colour-blindness’ – the idea of which Martin Luther King was dreaming in 1963. The idea that skin colour should become such an unimportant aspect of a person’s identity that it is possible to ignore it completely – to get beyond race – is perhaps the only solution available, as well as a beautiful idea, for how to prevent race colouring every single aspect of human interaction for all of the future. Yet even this concept has found itself under attack in recent years. For example, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, President of the American Sociological Association, who is also a professor at Duke University, has said that the very idea of society being ‘colour-blind’ is in fact part of the problem. In his own war on the concept of ‘colour-blindness’ Bonilla-Silva has declared the concept of ‘colour-blindness’ itself as an act of racism. In his 2003 book Racism without Racists (reprinted four times to date) Bonilla-Silva even coined the term ‘colour-blind racism’. Other academics have extended this argument.
By 2018 hundreds of university lecturers in Britain had to attend workshops where they were told to acknowledge their ‘white privilege’ and recognize how ‘whiteness’ can make them racist even without knowing it. At universities across the country they were invited to agree that white people enjoy unearned advantages because of the colour of their skin and that black staff, students and colleagues are routinely discriminated against. A speaker at one session in the University of Bristol, hosted by the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Staff Advisory Group, promised that his institution would invite university lecturers to ‘examine and acknowledge the destructive role of whiteness’.4 Such ideas started in America, with its very different history of race relations. Yet one of the fascinating things about the racism of the anti-racists is that it presumes that the situation of race relations is the same everywhere and always and that institutions which must be among the least racist in history are in fact on the verge of racist genocide.
As Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt have shown in their 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, catastrophizing has become one of the distinctive attitudes of the era. Just as women can be told that we live in a culture so rife with rape that it can fairly be described as a ‘rape culture’, so too people behave as though they live in a society teetering on the edge of Hitlerism. One oddity in both cases is that the most extreme claims are made in the places least likely to experience any such catastrophe. So whereas there are countries in the world which might be described as having something resembling a ‘rape culture’ (where rape goes unprosecuted and indeed is sanctioned by law), Western democracies could ordinarily not reasonably be accused of being among them. In the same way, whereas there are places in the world where racism is rife and there are societies which could at some point teeter back into some kind of racial nightmare, one of the places least likely to switch into ethnic cleansing in the style of 1930s Germany must surely be a liberal arts college in a liberal state within North America. Strangely, it is at precisely such places that the most extreme claims are made, and the most extreme behaviour is found.
‘Decolonize’ Evergreen
Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, has for decades had a tradition known as ‘The day of absence’. Taken from a 1965 play of the same name by Douglas Turner Ward, the idea was that once a year all students and faculty who were black (later all people of colour) would leave campus for a day, partly to meet and discuss relevant issues, and partly to highlight their contribution to the community as a whole. This tradition continued until 2017 when an announcement was made that this year’s ‘day of absence’ would be flipped the other way around. This time around the organizers announced that they would like all white people to stay away from campus for the day.
One member of the college’s faculty – the biology professor Bret Weinstein – objected to this. Having taught at the college, along with his wife, for 14 years, he had no problem with the earlier arrangements for the day. But as he pointed out in a message sent on a campus email list:
There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and underappreciated roles (the theme of the Douglas Turner Ward play Day of Absence, as well as the recent Women’s Day walkout), and a group encouraging another group to go away. The first is a forceful call to consciousness, which is, of course, crippling to the logic of oppression. The second is a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself.
Weinstein said that he at any rate would not be forced to stay away from campus for the day. ‘One’s right to speak – or to be – must never be based on skin color.’ That’s what he thought.
As a self-identifying progressive, left-winger and Bernie Sanders supporter, Bret Weinstein was not an obvious person on whom to affix accusations of racism. But they came anyway. When news of the email emerged, a group of students organised outside Weinstein’s classroom. There he tried to engage them in a civilized discussion, discuss the misunderstanding and reason with them. The results were caught on a range of students’ camera-phones. Weinstein tried to point out that there is a difference ‘between debate and dialectic’. As he said, ‘Debate means you are trying to win. Dialectic means you are using disagreement to discover what is true. I am not interested in debate. I am interested only in dialectic, which does mean I listen to you and you listen to me.’ This suggestion did not go down well with the assembled students. ‘We don’t care what you want to speak on,’ one young woman screamed at Weinstein as he held his hands on his head. ‘We are not speaking on terms of white privilege.’ Others barracked and shouted as the general mood got uglier. ‘This is not a discussion,’ one student yelled. ‘You have lost that one.’
Weinstein persevered: ‘I am talking about terms that serve the truth.’ His comment was immediately greeted with snorts of derision and shouts of laughter. ‘You said some racist shit,’ one student shouted: ‘Fuck what you’ve got to say.’ As the shouting increased nobody could hear anybody speak in any case. ‘Would you like to hear the answer or not,’ another person said to the students. Only to get a resounding ‘No’. On it went: ‘Stop telling people of color they’re fucking useless,’ shouted one student. ‘You’re useless,’ she shouted at him. ‘Get the fuck out. F
uck you, you piece of shit.’5
Across campus the situation continued to get ever more out of hand. Police were called and were then insulted by the students who started chasing in crowds around the campus. One group gathered outside the office of George Bridges, the College president, with chants of ‘Black power’ and ‘Hey hey, Ho ho, these racist teachers have got to go.’ On one video a black male student with pink hair instructs the other students on how to make sure Bridges and other staff cannot leave the president’s office. This same student later explained that ‘free speech is not more important than the lives of, like, black, trans, femmes and students on this campus’. Eventually the students occupied the president’s office, and for anyone in the outside world what ensued was surreal. For example, once there the students refused to allow Bridges to leave. At one point he says that he needs to go to the bathroom but is told he is not allowed to go. ‘I have to pee,’ he begs. A student directs him simply: ‘Hold it.’ Eventually it is agreed that he can go to the bathroom but only if two students escort him there and back.6 For people apparently worried about fascism these students proved startlingly good at organizing and behaving like stormtroopers.
More footage taken later on mobile phones showed the president (who as a product of the social sciences had spent his career advocating social justice) pleading with students in a larger venue on campus. As Bridges tries to engage with them they shout things like ‘Fuck you, George, we don’t want to hear a goddam thing you have to say. You shut the fuck up.’ One woman tries to explain to the president that ‘These people are angry and so what matters is what they’re saying not how they’re saying it.’ There are shouts about ‘white privilege’ and as the college president nods thoughtfully he gets abused by student after student. One black student accuses him of sounding like he is trying to simplify things for them. ‘We’re not simpletons,’ she says. ‘We’re adults. And so I’m telling you, you’re speaking to your ancestor. Alright. We been here before you. We built these cities. We’ve had civilization way before you ever have. Coming out your caves. OK?’
‘You have the fucking nerve to fucking dehumanize like our . . .’ says another. Somebody else interrupts them to raise the oppression of ‘the trannies too’ because there is ‘targeting of trannies’. ‘Fuck yeah’ some people say, but there is less applause for the trannies’ point than for anything to do with race. Eventually the meeting breaks down as several students stand close to Bridges and shout in his face, with one large male waving his arms threateningly. Shortly afterwards the president meekly uses his hands to try to emphasize a point. ‘Put your hand down, George,’ one student instructs him. ‘Don’t point, George.’ ‘That’s not appropriate,’ warns another. A student goes over to him to show him how he should stand, with hands straight down by his sides when he speaks to them. ‘You got to put your hands down. You know you got to put your hands down,’ people shout. When he does exactly as they tell him to do there is audible laughter.7 It is not the sound of relief that the danger of a pointy finger has passed, but the audible glee of people who have managed to make a much older and more experienced man abase himself for them.
At another meeting with students there is a further demand that the president shouldn’t make hand gestures. ‘Put your hand down,’ demands one young woman. ‘That’s my problem, George,’ says another young female black student, getting up. ‘You keep doing these little hand movements or whatever, like. And I’m going to decolonize this space. I’ll just be roaming around.’ Everyone applauds and cheers. ‘My hands are down,’ Bridges promises, as he tries to continue the dialogue with his hands behind his back while the young woman walks around, ‘decolonizing’ the space.8
As the mood of rebellion across campus grew, Evergreen students persuaded themselves and each other that they were facing an openly racist professor and an overtly racist institution. Soon a gang of students wielding baseball bats and other weapons were found prowling the campus, chasing, assaulting and intimidating people and apparently planning to do harm to Professor Weinstein and his family who were then living opposite the college. The threat of violence became so great that the campus went into lockdown for days. The police were forbidden to enforce the law and locked themselves inside the police station, though they called Weinstein and told him to stay away from the campus and move his wife and children into hiding for their own safety. The day after the scene outside his classroom, the police told Weinstein that protestors were searching from car to car in the area and asking for ID documents of the occupants because they were looking for him. His own students – and others suspected of holding divergent opinions – were themselves stalked and harassed by mobs. One student kept his phone running as he was assaulted by a mob. After the incident one young woman involved in the assault claimed that the reason they had confronted the student was because they had found him ‘writing hate speech’.9
To say that Evergreen became race-obsessed during this period is grossly to understate things. At a subsequent meeting of the college’s Board of Trustees one white student recounted, ‘I’ve been told several times that I’m not allowed to speak because I’m white. This school seems to focus so much on race that it is actually becoming more racist in a different sort of way.’10 But other students took a different view. One white girl (again with pink hair) who was interviewed said, ‘I don’t care what happens to Bret any more. He can go and be racist and be a piece of shit wherever he wants to do that. Hopefully long term we can just weed out people like Bret.’11
As it happened, Weinstein never taught at Evergreen again. Only one of his or his wife’s academic colleagues at Evergreen ever came out publicly in support of his right to take the stand he took. After a period of some months he and his wife negotiated a settlement with the college and left their positions.
There is a whole dissertation to be written about what went on at Evergreen in those days, and about what students and others really thought was going on. All the characteristics of a modern campus outburst were there. The catastrophizing, the claims made which bore no resemblance to provable facts, the unleashing of entitlement in the guise of creating a level playing field, the turning of words into violence and violence into words.
But events at Evergreen were not very unusual on an American campus. They were only an extension of a movement that had first come to wide public notice two years earlier at Yale University. Catastrophizing about racist incidents has become so common that it is unsurprising that students at Evergreen might have thought they could take it to the next level. Again and again when they did they found that the adults had either left the room or (if they had not) were willing to take instruction.
In 2015 – two years before events at Evergreen – a lecturer at Yale called Erika Christakis had questioned in an email whether university administrators should be giving advice to adult students over what to wear to a Halloween party. This followed another round of Halloween wars on campus in which fears of insensitive, possibly culturally appropriative, costumes being worn had become the central aspect of that annual celebration. As a result of Erika’s email, dozens of students surrounded her husband Nicholas (also a professor) in the courtyard of the residential Silliman College of which he was Master. For several hours they barracked him, insulted him and accused him and his wife Erika of racism. Again students had camera-phones at the ready.
Early in the exchange one black female student told Nicholas Christakis, ‘This is no longer a safe space for me’ because his words and his wife’s email were ‘an act of violence’. Throughout this Christakis was mild, placatory and trying to be helpful. He is visibly trying to engage the students and encourage them to see that there was another point of view from their own. It did not go down well. One black female student started wailing and crying just during the dialogue with him. Everything Christakis tried to tell them was in vain. As he tried to explain that he had a vision of common humanity parts of the crowd tittered and giggled as their contemporaries would later
at Evergreen. Others waited to pounce. Christakis tried to explain his view that even if two people do not share exactly the same life experiences, exactly the same skin colour or gender, they can still understand each other. It didn’t work. At one point he smiled and was berated by students for smiling.
‘I am sick looking at you,’ shouted one young Yale woman. A tall black male student strode forward to instruct Christakis: ‘Look at me. Look. At. Me. Do you understand: you and I are not the same person. We’re humans, great – glad we understand that. But your experiences will never connect to mine.’ Here the surrounding students began to click (the non-‘aggressive’ alternative to clapping). ‘Empathy is not necessary for you to understand that you are wrong. OK’, the student explained. ‘Even if you don’t feel what I feel ever. Even if nobody’s ever been racist to you, because they can’t be racist to you that doesn’t mean like you can just act like you’re not being racist.’ Christakis was then again instructed by the same student that the situation ‘does not require you to smile’. When he politely said he agreed with a student, another person screamed at the professor that agreement wasn’t needed or wanted. ‘It’s not a debate. It’s not a debate,’ that student shouted. Another young black female student laid into him: ‘I want your job to be taken from you. OK. Understand that. Look me in my face first of all.’ She went on to tell him to his face how ‘disgusting’ a man she thought he was and that she was leaving him now – leaving him with ‘his sick beliefs, or whatever the hell this is’.12
The Madness of Crowds Page 16
