Monday Monday: #AllLivesMatter

As we all by now know, something terrible happened on our campus this Friday. A poster advertising a talk by Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors was found defaced with explicitly white supremacist and anti-black graffiti.

Now let me be the first to say: this was very much a racism. Whichever individual is responsible for the racism that happened should be ashamed of himself and has no place in the Duke community. But I, like much of the Duke student body, feel it is important to warn against any overreaction to what is fundamentally just a singular, isolated event.

For one thing, we do not yet know all the details of what happened or who did the racism. Many have been quick to assume that the vandalism was perpetrated by a Duke student, but there is no way of knowing that this is true. It is after all very possible that a resident of largely progressive, black Durham wrote these racist words. This non-student could have been in White Lecture Hall doing some of the many non-academic things one does in a lecture hall building when suddenly they saw and then defaced the poster. That may sound implausible—why would this individual be in White in the first place? Perhaps then this act was not casual but instead planned. This non-student may have actively targeted Duke, aiming to pull off a spectacular and visible act of racial intimidation by writing some small graffiti in translucent ink on one poster in one building at the edge of campus.

Even if the racism was done by a student, we cannot presume to know the circumstances. Let us not forget the lessons of last semester’s noose incident. When that controversy broke, many of us assumed the intentions of the noose-hanger were racist. This assumption was proved wrong when it emerged the student was merely unaware of the symbolism hanging a noose from a tree holds in America. Learning from that incident, we must not be too hasty in our judgement; for all we know, this graffiti could have been written by an innocent, uninformed student who had simply never been informed that black people exist.

I must warn also against the hypersensitivity on show recently. I understand that the sentiments expressed in the graffiti were hurtful, but they were only words. Words cannot do any real harm—when someone says something emotionally hurtful, it is entirely on you to develop a thicker skin, be mature and deal with what’s being said.

Oh also, can you stop saying all white people are racist? It really hurts our feelings.

Next I would like to urge caution to Duke’s Black Student Alliance. The course of action they are pursuing has already made the poster incident into a far bigger deal than it need be. As many of our peers have noted via Yik Yak, BSA has had a very extreme response to the poster incident, having done such extreme things as sharing photos online and standing on some steps. During the gathering on the steps, the BSA president proclaimed that he was going to smile and not let the racist graffiti ruin his day—truly, another sad example of BSA creating a toxic racial climate. BSA, end this radical course of publicly disclaiming racism—it is only driving away your potential white allies. Yes, there are some racial problems in society, but the best way for you guys to deal with them is by just being chill and polite until things get better. That’s what worked in the Civil War and the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, after all.

Of course that leads me to the #BlackLivesMatter campaign itself. I myself am strongly of the opinion that All Lives Matter. I know much has been written on this topic already, but I feel it is important to mention. My personal worry is that by using the extreme statement “Black Lives Matter” as the leading motto of the fight against racism, every black and allied activist is implicitly saying that they think I and all other white people should be gruesomely murdered and lose all legal protection against the same. This is clearly the logical end point for the “Black Lives Matter” mantra, and it cannot be read in a more moderate way by any reasonable person. #AllLivesMatter is far more reasonable because it essentially says nothing and is therefore very agreeable and so can be used to unite far more people. I would urge my black and allied peers not to violate anyone’s freedom of speech during this turbulent period by telling him or her they’re wrong about that.