Keeping labels relevant: Stand up to the identity obsession

Reactions to the recent issue of "The Princeton Tory" ran the gamut: The customary contempt and praise were to be expected, and probably in that order. Somewhere between those poles, however, was a contingent of readers set on determining the authorship of specific portions of a section titled, appropriately, "The Rant."

Concern with the page's arguments turned into an unrelenting search for the arguers themselves. A good friend inquired: "Who wrote that one? Can you at least rule yourself out?" Another remarked that "if someone has an opinion that strong about something, he or she should stand behind it."

The importance of anonymity in some forms of opinion journalism is lost on many Princeton students; the alleged importance of a person's identity in political discussions — a person's name in the case of the "Tory," a person's social background in other instances — is, in contrast, recognizable in crucial parts of campus life.

This is problematic, as both plausible explanations for nailing down the identity of one's ideological adversaries are counterproductive. Generally, one of two forces is at work in the campus' identity obsession: First, a desire to socially ostracize someone or, second, a professed inability to understand that person's argument without comprehending her underlying "identity."

Vindictiveness is the most natural and indefensible explanation for wanting to unearth the names of non-mainstream writers on campus. At the risk of sounding like the weekly sermon Tom Friedman delivers from the mount of The New York Times, I'd encourage those who feel this way to stop. Not much else can be said.

The second explanation deserves more serious consideration, for it stems from a fashionable tendency to judge statements of principle primarily according to the social or historical context in which they've been put forth — a form of moral relativism. If an action can only be judged by the standards of the time or the society in which the action took place then, I'm guessing, moral truths written anonymously can only be evaluated by tracking down and understanding the situation confronting the guy or girl who penned them. For students partial to relativism, no authorial context implies incoherence.

The trouble with this mentality is highlighted in its various manifestations on campus, beginning with the lecture hall. Take, for instance, the inevitable "caveat" in lectures touching on figures in Western history: "Aristotle, Plato, Jefferson, Lincoln — these fellows are pretty smart, but remember for the exam that they're old white guys." Of course, I have little doubt that race and gender influenced the words and thoughts of these thinkers; equally so, I have no doubt that their social identities have no bearing on the validity of the moral propositions they set forth. To use identity as an informational tool is one thing, helping to describe and understand the development of particular ideas; to use it is a normative tool in judging the worth of the Constitution or the Gettysburg Address is quite another.

A normative tool — a way of judging "should" statements — is precisely what it has become at Princeton and other college campuses. When pressed, faculty members in the Politics and History departments may at least concede that identity is but one tool to be used in understanding an argument. In stark contrast, many campus activists — too often, cheered on by administrators — make no distinction between a person's identity and the argument: Indeed, the person's identity is the argument. Being white or Asian quickly lessens the value of one's credibility on whether affirmative action policies should be continued in their present form. One's wealth and views on tax policy, military experience and opinions about Iraq, religion and stances on homosexuality . . . the list of credibility-affecting identities goes on. In the hierarchy of an argument's important components, unfortunately, the "who" consistently leapfrogs the "what."

I recall attending several forums on race last year, an atmosphere highly vulnerable to the identity obsession. What strikes me in retrospect is how severely this obsession cut in both directions. Black students often discussed their understandable feeling of awkwardness in precepts when instructors singled them out during race-related topics. Likewise, at a USG-sponsored forum designed to push against these trends, one student dared to speak ill of the impact ethnic student groups have on freshmen during the first weeks of school, only to be greeted by mutterings and laughter from the audience. When she casually referred to her Hispanic roots, she was permitted a second chance.

A person's background and life experiences are often important to grasp, and can serve a great purpose when understood properly. But no matter how important it is to grasp, for example, a Jewish student's view of the ongoing divestment campaign, his being Jewish should be immaterial. It might help to explain why he falls on one side of the debate — but too frequently this is mistaken for determining whether that side of the debate is right or wrong.

Likewise, at the end of this piece, you will not see the identity affix, "Brad Simmons is a fantastically wealthy black student from New York," partly because it is not true, but mostly because it is irrelevant. Let's keep it that way. Brad Simmons is a Politics major from San Jose, Calif. He can be reached at bmsimmon@ princeton.edu.