Dorsey in response to “What we lack”

To the editor,

I’d like to begin by thanking Andrew Breland and Jacob Martin for having the courage to speak out against the scourge of radical political correctness and the threat it poses to our freedom of expression. I agree that when student lives are policed by the specter of administrative overreaction, the campus culture suffers. We can no longer have lively intellectual debates about the merits of racial slurs and hanging nooses from trees. We cannot have honest, respectful discussions about race if we aren’t allowed to use racial slurs.

This is not what I want for my campus, and this is not the America I want to live in. No student should be forced to live in fear of retribution for perpetuating systemic racial oppression. We did not fight and struggle and slave away to build this great nation only to have our rights constantly trampled on and our safety threatened. It is a sad day when our freedoms are curtailed because so-called liberals are too closed-minded to understand the deep, expressive nature of hanging a noose from a tree.

As Breland and Martin put it, “Education requires thinking, and thinking requires diversity. Diversity is most simply the presence of difference, so a requisite for education is the presence of different thought. Anything short of this is illogical.”

That’s right. When our freedom to racially oppress others is limited, our education suffers. It’s illogical to think otherwise.

I’ll leave you with this poignant poem about freedom, responsibility and cowardice:

“First they came for the noose hangers, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a noose hanger.

Then they came for the racist chanters, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a racist chanter.

Then they came for the slur users, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a slur user.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

J. Dorsey
Junior