To the Editor:
In recent letters in the Review my colleagues and my program have been blasted for programming events that have been interpreted as discriminatory and/or not sufficiently politically correct.
The atmosphere here at Oberlin has become so judgmental and repressive that anyone trying to address issues of diversity is liable to come under public attack. It has gotten to the point where it is safer to keep a low profile than to engage in honest discussion or initiate action in the hope of offering a healing and positive influence in this community. Someone is bound to take offense and accuse one of the very things which one finds abhorrent.
My program has been referred to as discriminatory, yet no one mentions that there is an increasingly strong movement toward separatism in this college and this nation. I lament the fact that members of this community feel so excluded or lacking in representation that they feel the need for a separatist system, and I do think this problem must be addressed. Yet separatism and integration are not compatible, and the lack of integration is not, in the presence of separatism, one-sided.
In this brief letter, I cannot hope to address all the complexities of these issues, and that is not my intention. What I do wish to say is simply that we need to rethink what it means to be politically correct, and whether a blatantly obvious PC attitude gives us the right to judge without further investigation, or to censor.
Some recent student letters in the Review have begged this community to find ways of coming together, rather than still more ways of splintering. I write in support of these individuals, and suggest that we look at all the wonderful complexities of each person whether he/she appears to belong to a "group" or not, and withhold judgment in the interest of furthering honest discussion and constructive action.
Each of us may yet learn something.
Copyright © 1997, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 125, Number 24, May 9, 1997
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