Safe spaces are an interesting
concept that is a place or environment where a person or category of people can
feel confident that they won’t be exposed to discrimination, criticism, harassment,
or any emotional or physical harm. Many people are drawn to a safe space
because the spaces that should be safe for them—such as home, school, community—are
not safe for them and they want to be around people are in a similar situation as
them. There is also making a publicly occupied space such as a school campus, a
recreational center, and such areas a safe space—as a well to reassure the
occupants that they will be safe during their time there. The basic structure
of a safe space is positive, but only when it occupies a space and isn’t occupying
someone’s whole life.
Although, I know I should focus on
the article by Heller, I found his piece to offer too many viewpoints and
opinions and different facts of similar problems where I found myself unable to
coherently focus on a topic. I decided the only way I could write without
feeling overwhelmed was finding someone speaking about the same issue, but a
little bit narrower.
A few years ago, Van Jones, a CNN political contributor,
spoke at David Axelrod’s institute of Politics at the University of Chicago. During
this 80 minute discussion, that included S. E. Cupp, Axelrod brought up that he
had hosted President Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, the
week before that discussion. Students protested the event, saying having him on
campus normalized the Trump Administration. Axelrod, who disagreed with the
students’ outcry, asked for Jones’ opinion on the protest.
Van Jones proposes two idea about safe
spaces—a positive and a negative one. There’s the idea that a campus should be
a safe space that is free from sexual harassment or physical abuse, or any kind
of hate speech that’s targeted—this is the normal definition of a safe space
and is in no way harmful and should be adopted. Then there’s the idea that
these student are being “safe ideologically” and think they need to feel good
all the time—almost putting a blanket over their eyes to anything they disagree
with. Jones’ explains that he doesn’t like the second idea as it assumes that we
don’t care about people’s emotional safety and wellbeing. Instead of criticizing those who want safety, we should be pushing people to be stronger.
Passionately, he says, “I’m not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some
boots, and learn how to deal with adversity. I’m not going to take all the
weights out of the gym; that’s the whole point of the gym. This is the gym. You
can’t live on a campus where people say stuff you don’t like?!”
He goes on to speak about his
parents and other older black Americans who dealt with far worse adversities
such as beatings and dogs, but nowadays people cannot deal with a mean tweet. Which
is true, there is still adversity today, but it not as nearly bad as it was
fifty or sixty years ago. All these students grew up with President Obama as
their first president they knew and grew up believing times have changes. So
any instances where that shiny optimism cracks, like Tamir Rice or the transgender
military ban, it’s really disappointing. But, then again these students have
grown up dealing with a mass shooting every week in their schools, their churches,
their concerts, or their supermarkets. And with that we have tried to harden
ourselves because it hasn’t stopped and we’ve learned to get used to it—which makes
us furious. So are these students still lacking adversity and hardship?
Continuing on with more passion
Jones says, “You are creating a kind of liberalism that the minute it crosses
the street into the real world is not just useless, but obnoxious and
dangerous. I want you to be offended every single day on this campus. I want
you to be deeply aggrieved and offended and upset, and then to learn how to
speak back. Because that is what we need from you in these communities.”
I do agree that students need to
hear and absorb and deal with ideas that aren’t similar to their own. It’s one
of the ways to truly gain intelligence. How can you learn if you stay in a
bubble of what you believe if you can’t understand the things you don’t
believe? But, I also agree that the students, who pay insurmountable funds to
attend college, should have some sort of say in what their campus does. And if
they fight back on certain things that they don’t like, does that truly mean
they are weak and ignorant—closing their eyes and ears to all things scary?
The students were protesting that
the school was normalizing the Trump administration—an administration that unarguably
promotes hatred and negative messages—and as a student, I don’t know if I would
want my school to give a platform and allow someone that took part in that hatred.
It would have been different if a professor played a video of someone from Trump’s
white house to spark discussion or if a student-run republican group invited him
to speak at one of their events. I feel like it’s even different than bringing
a member of Bush’s cabinet because I don’t think it’s an issue of disagreeing with
political ideologies, but more about possible the inflammation or spreading of
a negative rhetoric. But, then again, if we don’t listen to such negative rhetoric,
how would we ever understand to combat it? It’s an interesting balancing game that
is going to take a while to truly understand.
Van Jones’ talk: Van
Jones’ Excellent Metaphors About the Dangers of Ideology Safety, Jon Haidt,
https://heterodoxacademy.org/van-jones-excellent-metaphors/
E367: Writing and Diversity 