In this column, I argue that freedom of expression is a good and worthwhile thing. It is an uncontroversial stance on the face of it, for our country guarantees the freedom in its Constitution. It should be altogether less controversial at academic institutions where freedoms are yet more important. There is, however, a growing call from university students who demand severe restrictions to individual expression and the cultural crossover that results from it.
I will address the specific claims of these students soon. But first I challenge you to think of a single instance in history where denying or discouraging freedom of expression has caused a good and desirable outcome, except in the case of bans on obvious hate symbols.
An example of this is hard to conjure; counterexamples are easy. The people of North Korea know well what a country looks like when it is closed to other cultures. Song Eun-byul, a refugee who fled the country two years ago, recounted to the Guardian her story about the time she was stopped by the Socialist Youth League for wearing boots that looked too “foreign.” To escape and avoid the labor camps that fashion dissidents can be sent to, she gave the authorities a fake name, just as a fake name for her has been given here.
Different parts of the world censor expression for different reasons. In Saudi Arabia, “religious police” patrol the streets enforcing restrictions. There, men may not cross-dress, and women areprohibited from dressing in too revealing a manner.
I am not equating the culture cops of college campuses to the authoritarian regimes of North Korea and Saudi Arabia. Rather, I am pointing to them as the extreme conclusion of this ideology. If we begin to go down this path, we must do so carefully and be sure that our reasons for it are good.
For we have already begun on this path. The posters displayed on Goheen Walk for the week leading up to Halloween represent the restrictive ideology well. One showed a picture of a cross-dresser with the warning, “My gender identity is not your costume.”
“My culture is not your costume,” another poster read.
The way these catchy slogans misinterpret the purpose of Halloween — which, after all, is about spending a night as someone other than yourself — is almost beside the point. The really alarming thing is how they call for Americans to restrict themselves to the same narrow avenues of expression afforded to the people of totalitarian states.
And for what good? Who does the woman hurt when she dresses as a man? The best I can gather, from extensive conversations with students who support the movement, is that there is offense in the mere act of wearing an item normally associated with another identity. They call this “cultural appropriation.”
The term is a misnomer. At least, it is not what the academics who invented the phrase meant by it. They were referring, instead, to the commercialization of minority culture by white artists. Think Elvis. There was profit to be made from rock-and-roll, but white consumers wanted a white singer. The black musicians who developed the genre were cut out of it.
In a case like this one, it is easy to see the way minorities are hurt. There is a thing — money — that they are deprived of. It is not easy to see the harm in wearing an outfit on Halloween or another day. Imagine that I, a non-Hispanic white, wear a sombrero. There is nothing that Hispanic whites are deprived of. They have the same access to their cultural identity as they did before. I have not “stolen” their culture because culture cannot be stolen.
There is, of course, a kind of hurt that does not involve the loss of anything tangible. I could put on a sombrero and purposely engage in behavior that reinforces negative stereotypes of Hispanic whites. This behavior is rude and certainly should be avoided.
But the question at hand is this: If someone puts on a sombrero and acts respectfully, are Hispanic whites harmed? There is a simple answer to this question. No one is deprived of a physical thing; no stereotype is reinforced. Nobody is hurt, unless he orshe chooses to be.
Our society must realize this and then choose what it will do. We can either encourage people to find offense and demand that expression be restricted, or we can encourage people to accept others who express themselves as they choose.
The first option is preposterous. There is no reason to encourage people to look for ways to be offended, for this can have no effect but to make their lives worse. Further, they will spend energy fighting these meaningless things; this energy would be better spent addressing the real issues of economic inequality and lingering oppression. Too often, discussions of urban segregation, poverty and police brutality are eclipsed by talk of “microaggressions.”
The way these important discussions are eclipsed should concern us. Perhaps the threat of losing our freedom should concern us even more. Take a look at the countries that restrict expression in the world today, and decide if you want those same things happening in America. I, for one, do not.
Newby Parton is a sophomore from McMinnville, Tenn. He can be reached at newby@princeton.edu.
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