I wonder why we've placed our ultimate value on not giving offense.
If you read my last column, you'll remember how I tried to differentiate between real diversity, which means cultural exchange, and official diversity, in which everyone is super-proud of their own identity but groups stay isolated. It doesn't take long to see that college campuses are strongholds of the official kind. What we need to break down the diversity barrier is a change in thinking.
Now, our de facto segregation can't be traced back to one source: class, dialect and our backgrounds all play a part. Self-segregation existed before we came to Duke, and it will exist after we leave; being on a college campus only makes the problem more evident.
But we have four years here in our academic bubble'Äîwhy can't we make Duke a little better than the real world?
I think the reason so little exchange happens at college is that we're all deathly afraid of pissing each other off. If we can't communicate honestly, we can't gain anything from each other'Äîthat's why the ethos of non-offensiveness has to change. Giving everyone free rein to judge and criticize will improve our racial climate.
After all, cultural fusion is an evaluative act: It requires finding something in your culture I judge highly enough to take into my own, and vice-versa.
That's not how it seems to work where modern multiculturalism has taken hold: All cultures are equally good and irreconcilable, criticism is intolerance, exchange is the mark of "inauthenticity" or "selling out." "We've come to see the world as divided into cultures and groups defined largely by their difference with each other," writes Kenan Malik in Spiked magazine. "And every group has come to see itself as composed not of active agents attempting to overcome disadvantages by striving for equality and progress, but of passive victims with irresolvable grievances. For if differences are permanent, how can grievances ever be resolved?"
What started as an honest attempt to give every culture its fair say has morphed into a militant nonjudgmentalism. At issue is not whether cultural relativism is correct or whether an absolute standard of judging cultures can ever be established'Äîthat's an unresolvable argument. At issue is relativism's soul-sapping effects, its nurturing of grievances, its elaborate system of walls between peoples. At the very least, let's pretend there's an absolute standard and that real judgment is possible. Otherwise, we'll be too afraid of giving offense to deal with each other on anything more than a superficial level.
Of course, offense comes in many different kinds. Our problem is that we've lost our ability to differentiate between name-calling and the kind of offense Great Britain is trying to outlaw with a bill that would prohibit criticizing any religion. Offense of the latter kind is absolutely central to democratic society. Debating means telling someone else they're wrong. That obligation doesn't change if your opponent comes from a different part of the world or practices a different faith'Äîthat's the great thing about the value of universality.
Offense is the fuel for the marketplace of ideas, which requires us to kill off bad ideas without regret. We can misplace our sympathy and deny the obligation, just as we can deny that bad ideas exist at all, but at this price: that the ideas that emerge victorious will be the ones so vehement they deny debate altogether.
Consider this story from 1999: the London Guardian reported on a student conference on Islamophobia at King's College, at which a speaker began by announcing, "I am a gay Muslim." And that was it. "For members of the majority Muslim audience, the expression was enough to ignite the most passionate opposition. Some people began to shout, while others came raging down to confront the speaker. Security was called and the conference came to a premature end."
Ideas are not created equal.
Adopting such an attitude would lead to a lot of hurt feelings'Äîno one enjoys being criticized. But we need to do away with this respectful distance with which we keep away from anyone different. We need to confront each other, to yell, even to cry. We need to stop being so self-satisfied and start being more honest. Whatever pain we incur in doing this will be worth it when we look at each other and understand each other for the first time.
Rob Goodman is a Trinity sophomore. His column appears every other Friday.
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