My letter to the editor of a non-existent paper

[fr_defenestrato]

UPDATE: The below opinion letter is wholly misguided. I was fooled completely by the desperately bad construction/writing of the news story to which I was reacting. I am relieved that the whole UD campus is not crazy, leastways as far as this story shows. But I still like the letter I wrote as rhetoric.

This morning I did an unusual thing and looked at the news stories in the e-mailed teaser version of the University of Delaware Review before deleting the email. The top story?
Party pictures raise questions of racism, about UDel students who were accused of racism for wearing, to a Cinco de Mayo party, Mexican flag-colored T-shirts with words like "hott," [sic] "spicy," and "full of tequila" on them. Holy crap... a decade away from the university and suddenly I am seeing what everybody said back then: that political correctness is out of control. I wrote a long Letter to the Editor, actually hoping that they would make it a guest opinion column (esp. since I am a former Editorial Editor of The Review)... only to realized that today is el quince de mayo and the end of the school year. Today's Review issue is the last until the fall. Uh... ooops.

So since I need to shove my opinion down somebdy's throat, here it is:

As a former Editorial Editor for The Review (fall 1994), I read with growing incredulity the story "Party pictures raise questions of racism," (May 15, 2007) regarding students pilloried for wearing so-called "racial slurs" on their shirts at a Cinco de Mayo party. I felt like a witness to the trial of Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible, amazed at the ease with which my peers and neighbors fall prone to the hysterically accusations of witchcraft. The part of the principal accuser, Abigail Williams, is here played by La Raza Alumni Association rep Craig de Mariana Aleman—although it's unclear what crow or other invisible familiar has been whispering allegations of racism in Aleman's ear.

Reporter Alyssa R. Jimenez, every bit as uncritical as Judge Danforth, provides a veritable soapbox for Aleman (171 words, or 13.9 percent of the story, consists of quotes from him!). Ms. Jimenez quotes a half dozen UD community members who parrot the allegations of racism without question. She goes so far as to state, as a point of fact, that "the words written on [Lauren Boroski's] shirt includ[ed] a racial slur..."; this "fact" even got picked up in the story's subhead! Ms. Jimenez does not explicitly identify that slur, but if the photographs accompanying the story are of Boroski and her friends—which is the only reasonable assumption—then "HOTT" is the slur in question. "Hott," it must be noted, is not even English, much less Spanish.

Here is the only place in the entire 1,200-word article that pinpoints what Boroski and friends supposedly did wrong: "Aleman ... said the pictures were suggestive and portrayed Latinos as drunks and sexual objects."

In fact, Cinco de Mayo and the trappings thereof cannot be regarded as pertaining to Latinos; not only is the holiday specific to Mexico, it isn’t even a national Mexican holiday but is celebrated primarily in the state of Puebla to commemorate the defeat of French forces in the Battle of Puebla (May 5, 1862). Furthermore, consumption of alcohol does not a drunk make; surely Mr. Aleman knows the difference between borracho and un borracho. I would suggest it is he who is doing the racial profiling here.

I am sincerely sorry Mr. Aleman was offended by the T-shirts in question. But his stated opinion of the wearers' intent does not preempt other plausible explanations why someone would wear green, white, and red T-shirts featuring the slogans "HOTT," "SPICY," and "FULL OF TEQUILA." Though I've been out of college for a while, one possibility that comes to mind is that the wearers intended to portray themselves as sexually desirable and/or intoxicated (and therefore attainable). I seem to recall, hazily, such behaviors from my own distant youth.

So the only accusation in the story with any substance behind it—upon which hinge the myriad aggrieved, uncritical cries of "racism"—turns out to have no substance behind it.

Mr. Aleman does not, one surmises, know the students in question and thus has no idea of their background with respect to Mexico. Their celebration may have been as meaningless as the beer and tequila ads that aggressively peddle Cinco de Mayo to Americans. (Has Mr. Aleman contact the manufacturers to protest these, by the way?) But any or all of the partiers may have a real regard for Mexico based on visits thereto, friendships with Mexicans or Mexican Americans, the study of the nation's history... The fact is, I don't know, and neither does Mr. Aleman. That the University and The Review have given him an uncritical pulpit from which to accuse strangers with impunity is unconscionable.

According to Wikipedia, "Cinco de Mayo ... is perhaps best recognized in the United States as a date to celebrate the culture and experiences of Americans of Mexican ancestry, much [like] St. Patrick’s Day, Oktoberfest, and the Chinese New Year... As a result, the holiday is observed by many Americans regardless of ethnic origins." Among university students nationwide, it is also an excuse to hold a party. And among other lamentable aspects of this story, it is a shame that a person of Mexican origin has here neglected an attempt to build pride and interest in the rich history and culture of his ancestors in favor of persecuting your average college reveler. ("Aleman said he would have liked to see the students receive a harsher punishment.") Should I accuse Mr. Aleman of "portraying Latinos as vindictive jerks"?

My incredulity peaked at the notion that, even buried in the jump where she's lost 90 percent of her readers, Ms. Jimenez cites no party on campus willing even to question this absurd rush to judgment. If she was truly unable to find such a party, I am astonished and frightened: is everyone at the University of Delaware afraid of the stake or the noose? But finally, I don't quite believe the unison of opinion. In the age of Bush and Gonzalez and Wolfowitz, we no longer care in the least about "the appearance of impropriety"—such as how it may look to assign a story about highly questionable anti-Latino racism to a Latina student and print that story without a single dissenting voice.

When I was a student and employee at UD, I fought vociferously against conservative voices who claimed political correctness on campus amounted to intellectual fascism. If it wasn’t true then, it certainly is now: Junior Jordan Mebane says, "... people act racially [sic] and think racially all the time without even realizing it. Everyone commits that crime." Thoughtcrime, huh? Where have I heard of that before?

My advice to Ms. Boroski and her friends: Attend no parties next dieciséis de septiembre, and watch out for the torches and pitchforks.