Imagine that there’s a person who demands that people’s opinions be respected and protected from criticism. Surely that same person would never bash people who disagree with him.
You would think.
In a speech to incoming freshman at Northwestern University, President Morton Schapiro called out those who criticize safe spaces—and he did it in a very non-social justice warrior way. “The people who decry safe spaces do it from their segregated housing places, from their jobs without diversity—they do it from their country clubs,” Schapiro said. “It just drives me nuts.”
He is making the oft-made and misguided assumption that anyone who criticizes safe spaces is a rich, white person. I have never been in a country club, I live in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood, and I criticize safe spaces. Even President Obama has criticized safe spaces before when he spoke at Howard University earlier this year.
“So don’t try to shut folks out, don’t try to shut them down, no matter how much you might disagree with them. There’s been a trend around the country of trying to get colleges to disinvite speakers with a different point of view, or disrupt a politician’s rally. Don’t do that” -President Obama
His speech seems like a shot at the University of Chicago, which earlier this year told students not to expect safe spaces or trigger warnings on campus. Schapiro’s comments are a new volley in the long-running “North Side/South Side” rivalry that is incredibly intense in Chicago. Interestingly, this time it’s the South Side, which has more minorities and more people from lower income classes, that is against safe spaces, and the north side, which is one of the richest and whitest parts of Chicago, that is for them.
Schapiro claimed that anyone who denies the existence of so-called microaggressions is an “idiot” because he clearly remembers every microaggression he has ever experienced. He makes the leap in logic, if it can be called that, that because he feels like he has experienced something, everyone else has and therefore must be protected.
It’s one thing to warn people about graphic content such as the Holocaust and lynchings of black Americans—that is the one point Schapiro made that has some credence. But not everything is graphic or horrific. If someone says something you disagree with, you don’t have a right to be protected from that. Schapiro believes safe spaces are needed because people say mean things, but screw anyone who disagrees with that.
Follow me on Twitter @KFoleyFL
