Discussions on Race: Important or Impotent
Over my one and a half years at Exeter, I have taken part in many school-organized discussions about race. These events are wide-ranging and strange. Sometimes, they are boring repetitions of dogma designed to make us feel good about ourselves. Other times, they are extremely inflammatory, yet somehow devoid of real content. Only occasionally have these discussions educated me and advanced my understanding of complex political issues.
Unfortunately, voices such as mine are often left out of the debate surrounding these workshops. While I am sure that plenty of people have also had a diversity of reactions to whatever school-organized events they’ve taken part in, school-wide discussions about social justice are a key element of the Exeter experience. Conversely, there are people who deem these discussions as useless and think they should be scrapped altogether.
Neither of these positions is inherently invalid. However, ignoring more nuanced perspectives has led to an unhealthy and negative dichotomy which results in unnecessary polarization. In my experience, some people are too blinded by their support for the educational principles which underpin events such as Martin Luther King Jr. Day to recognize when they are poorly executed. Conversely, I have also met people who turn specific bad experiences with one speaker, or disagreements with how an event is planned, into proof that even trying to have good discussions about controversial issues is pointless. When a good speaker or presenter comes to campus, they dismiss him or her without even considering their arguments or giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Given the stridency of these two viewpoints, I often find it hard to express criticisms of certain events because I fear that it could be misconstrued as an attack on the campus organizations which organized that event or worse, as a failure to recognize the necessity of campus discourse. But I know that there are others at Exeter who have had experiences similar to me. Those of us who have had a mix of positive and negative reactions to these type of events need to be heard and represented because of the unique perspective we can bring to the table.
Friday’s Martin Luther King Day mandatory workshop and the talk given by Viet Thanh Nguyen demonstrated how some school-wide discussions of social justice issues can be extremely valuable. On Thursday, I read up on what the MLK mandatory workshop presenters and Nguyen planned to speak about, researching both topics so that I would have some background knowledge.
When I found out about the focus of the MLK workshop I was honestly confused. What did the history of the ancient and modern Latin America have to do with Martin Luther King Jr.? Aztec myth was certainly interesting, but it seemed more like something a religion 999 course would discuss than an all school assembly. Sure, I could see the connection to modern political and racial debates, particularly the current immigration controversy. But given last year’s MLK day and its focus on hotly contested issues, I expected something more “newsworthy” or well-known to be featured, such as the detainment of immigrant children or the rise in hate crimes. I thought that the school just wanted to avoid controversy by picking a topic that couldn’t leave anyone offended.
On the other hand, the author Viet Thanh Nguyen’s presentation excited me. Given my father’s background as a Vietnamese refugee I felt proud and happy that his experience was being honoured and discussed. And I thought that Nguyen’s writing on “hot-button” cultural issues would spark discussion and result in a campus which would be more aware of the themes he addressed in his work.
Still, as I walked into the assembly hall for the mandatory MLK workshop on Friday, I was not sure what to expect. It started slow and at first, the academic speaking style of the presenters making me expect a dreary, boring lecture. However, as the talk went on, I became engrossed in their speech. On an intellectual level I found the history of the Aztec empire and the subsequent Spanish colonization of the new world fascinating. I enjoyed the videos of real high schoolers talking about their connection with their ethnic studies program because it helped me understand the debate on a more human level and empathize with them. Finally, I liked how the presenters extrapolated on this one issue to make wider points. I left that lecture in a thoughtful, positive mood.
While the mandatory workshop pleasantly surprised me, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s speech had the exact opposite effect. Because of both my personal connection to the topic he addressed (Vietnamese refugees) and the positive reviews he had received from the media, I came prepared for what I thought would be an emotional, informative and eye-opening experience. But when he began to speak, I quickly realized that my hopes were unfounded.
The speech was a shallow “feel-good exercise” full of contradiction and hypocrisy. Nguyen criticized American war movies for not doing enough research on the complexities of Vietnam. Yet, his accounting of the history of the war belies that same type of simplification. He continually referred to the war as “America” vs. “Vietnam,” ignoring the existence of the nation of South Vietnam and the millions of Vietnamese people who did favour American military intervention.
And that is only one example of his hypocrisy. Nguyen filled his speech with cliché Asian gags about B+’s and weird smelling food. Finally, his attempts at portraying the suffering and culture of refugees were repetitive and not particularly vivid. In a way, this is to be expected, given that he was remarkably privileged in comparison to other Vietnamese refugees. When he talked about the offense and anger he felt watching Apocalypse Now, I could only think about the stories my father and his siblings tell about the time they were almost abandoned in Guam, or the time they witnessed firsthand Ku Klux Klan members handing out leaflets at the grocery store. Yet, I heard fellow students going on and on about how amazing this writer was, nodding along to every point no matter how little sense it made and accepting his version of history without question.
These two interactions were present in my mind when I began to write this reflection. However, as I have thought about them more, I finally came to make sense of a vague emotion which I had felt since prep year and understood why some social justice events left me feeling disappointed while others helped me understand ideas I had not even thought of before. In short, I realized the essential difference between the MLK mandatory workshop and Nguyen’s speech. The workshop was an educational exercise designed to teach us something about the world which I didn’t know much about before. While the presenters certainly had their own ideological viewpoint which they expressed quite articulately, their talk was something that could have value for all, even someone who disagreed with them. Fundamentally, they realized we were capable of having our own unique views and didn’t craft their presentation to make us agree with them. They aimed to help us understand an issue. If we didn’t agree with them that was fine because that choice did not come from our own ignorance.
Nguyen, on the other hand, seemed more interested in himself and his monologues than the people whose lives he chronicled. He spent more time talking about his own life than giving voice to the community which he claimed needed to be heard. He did not talk much about refugees who he knew. And he glossed over the various criticism levelled at him in a few sentences.
The vast difference between these talks has convinced me that in order to have truly meaningful conversations about social justice, we should seek out speakers and presenters who bring some sort of unique knowledge or perspective to the table. Perhaps that means that flashy, well-known media personalities are not our best bet. Overall, I think that focusing on learning about specific issues and discreet topics will pay off in the long run.