The Liberal Bandwagon (continued) 

All right, I'm back again, and I'm ready to fisk the asinine editorial in today's Daily Orange. If you haven't read the first part of this, I suggest you scroll down a bit and see what I'm talking about, because I already responded to an article. This piece I'm covering now is about the same incident, and it displays the classic liberal idea of collective guilt. You probably know what I'm talking about, but this basically rides on the coattails of socialism and blames entire groups for the actions of a few. This leads to things like affirmative action, and in this case, it may lead to "sensitivity training" or similar indoctrination methods. I'll start by giving you the title of the editorial, which really sets the stage for the uninformed idiocy contained within it. Here we go:

"Racist incident highlights need to fight ignorance"
First of all, they haven't necessarily proven that the blackface guy was trying to be racist, and second of all, since they pretty much arrested him on the spot, I'd say their work is done. Now, on to the actual editorial, or at least parts of it:

"On Friday night, in a stunt sure to pull the strings of SU racial tension even tighter, [the author (no name was given) describes the incident here, which I've already done]. The incident is yet another act of pervasive racism and ignorance on this campus - and it again indicates the need for increased education. More than that, it begs for SU students, administrators and organizations to push toward a common goal: to promote diversity and fight racism at every turn, together." See what I mean with collective guilt? They're basically saying, "If one person (who was allegedly intoxicated at the time of the incident, if I didn't mention that yet) does it, it must mean that the entire student body is full of hate and racism and has to be taught about diversity and tolerance! Never mind the fact that students are reacting to this with outrage and saying how "disgusted" they were! They're just covering for their blatant bias! We must KILL WHITEY! KILL THE WHITE MAN! KILL HIM UNTIL HE IS DEAD! take action to promote a safe environment." Strikethroughs are fun. Anyway, here's more. It begins with my personal favorite quote, which they chose to be displayed in bold letters in New York Times fashion:

"...we cannot underestimate the ignorance of the SU student body. This supposed 'Pacific Islander' costume only represents a public instance of racism. Imagine what goes on in dorm rooms, at parties, inside the heads of students where the torrents of racism swirl and grow unchecked." Uh, excuse me, Mr. (or Miss?) All White College Students Are Bigots, but would you care to give an example of this? I have yet to observe any racism on campus, and I'm sure that if it's as common as you say, someone would've slipped up and admitted it by now. By the way, I'm willing to bet the author of this piece is a white male. I may be wrong, but if Michael Moore has taught us anything, it's that white people can only be considered tolerant when they belittle their own race. The editorial continues:

"Though the university cannot hope to eradicate racism among its thousands of students, it has a responsibility to react to these situations in a timely and constructive manner...Students and faculty from across the university are rightly outraged by the incident, but should restrain their anger to effectively fight against the racist mentalities that surface here all too often." Okay, there is a major contradiction here. It says that racism is everywhere on campus and students are basically ignorant to it, yet a large number of people "from across the university" are aware of the incident and are upset about it. Pick one! Also, I still have yet to see one actual EXAMPLE of this racist atmosphere it so knowingly speaks of. This person must hang out with a really bad crowd. Here's another accusation of collective guilt/ignorance:

"Increased education on racial/historical issues...might lend some perspective to students otherwise unaware of the implications of blackface and other historically insensitive portrayals of blacks..........[long ellipsis=lots of words in between].....Friday's incident should spark the university community to enact change and stamp out collective ignorance. If we have learned anything from past incidents, it is that we can only stop racism if we do it together." I don't get this at all. Here's a fun fact: The minimum GPA for acceptance to Syracuse is 3.5. The majority of students here were in the top 10 or 20 percent of their graduating class, and most of them got over 1000 on the SAT's. Why would anyone assume that people who meet these criteria would be this naive? I'm sure they know plenty about racism and the implications of things like blackface, but I personally think that if we're willing to laugh at things like this when they're meant to be harmless jokes and take action if they're willingly hateful, we can do a lot more than we can by accusing the entire university of bias because of what one person did. And then, of course, it ends by referring to these phantom incidents that can't be named specifically because they don't exist, and it says we can learn how to fight racism by looking at them. I really like the fact that the author actually used the phrase "collective ignorance," because it reveals the problem with this thinking. Humans are separate individuals with free will. This isn't Star Wars. We're not all magically connected by some invisible unifying force. The actions of one person do not represent what the majority is capable of. Of course, this leads to the question, "when have liberals ever cared about the majority?" That's about it. Before I go, I want to direct you to Bowling for Truth. They've got a new section called "Dude, Where's My Honesty," and it's all about Michael Moron's new book. I think you'll enjoy it. Later.