The students over at Pomona College officially went and lost their remarkably undeveloped minds this week, electing to claim that objective truth is a racist “myth” made up by white supremacists to oppress minorities.
The whole thing started when Pomona College President David Oxtoby apparently sent a campus-wide email openly criticizing the violent protests that sprung up on campus when Heather MacDonald, a conservative journalist and open Black Lives Matter critic, showed up to give a speech.
In response, several self-described “black” students wrote a letter back, bashing "free speech" and, apparently, "truth."
Free speech, a right many freedom movements have fought for, has recently become a tool appropriated by hegemonic institutions. It has not just empowered students from marginalized backgrounds to voice their qualms and criticize aspects of the institution, but it has given those who seek to perpetuate systems of domination a platform to project their bigotry.
In other words, left-wing social justice “critics” should have all the free speech in the world, and everyone else should be forcibly made to shut the hell up. Of course, nothing in the letter specifically denotes what is considered acceptable "free speech," so that's a bit of a hiccup...
Astonishingly, these vapid parrot-brains continue by claiming that objective truth (you know, basic facts like babies are babies, girls are girls, and two plus two equals four) is somehow racist.
The idea that there is a single truth--’the Truth’--is a construct of the Euro-West that is deeply rooted in the Enlightenment, which was a movement that also described Black and Brown people as both subhuman and impervious to pain. This construction is a myth and white supremacy, imperialism, colonization, capitalism, and the United States of America are all of its progeny. The idea that the truth is an entity for which we must search, in matters that endanger our abilities to exist in open spaces, is an attempt to silence oppressed peoples.
The stupid. Dear Lord, it burns.
The letter purports, with a complete and glaringly obvious lack of evidence, that MacDonald is a "white supremacist" who denies “the right of Black people to exist,” simply because she holds conservative view points these entitled toddlers don’t agree with. And, as an additional note of complete idiocy in support of their violent “protesting,” the students allege that “non-Black individuals do not have the right to prescribe how Black people respond to anti-Blackness.”
I’m guessing this extends to, say, a white guy who gets the stuffing beat out of him by black people responding to whatever they perceive as racism. He should clearly be O.K. with getting his teeth knocked down his throat. You know, for equality.
You really should just read the letter for yourself. Be warned, though, that when you’re not laughing hysterically at just how stupid it is, you’ll want to chuck your iPad through a wall.