IN HIS book, "Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America," UCLA linguist John McWhorter suggested that elements of the African-American community are holding the group back from progress. McWhorter's argument is especially pertinent when looking at racial diversity on The Cavalier Daily's staff.
Like any other mainstream media outlet, this paper is comprised primarily of standard English. To the extent that white, left-wing multiculturalists racialize language, and promote the notion that minorities should reject standard English, they are hurting diversity not only at this paper, but also at every other institution in America where standard English is the primary accepted medium of expression. While everyone suffers, the ones who are hurt most are the minorities themselves.
At a Cavalier Daily community concerns forum two weeks ago, African-American Affairs Dean Rick M. Turner expressed concern over a "culture of exclusion" at this paper.
Asked to elaborate, Turner responded in a voicemail message, in which he related his views about the University being "a predominantly white institution." "The majority culture," he explained, "has traditionally empowered themselves to have ownership to a certain extent. And we continue to operate -- this is still an all-white institution."
Although Turner no doubt expresses a feeling shared by many minority students, as another columnist has noted, this self-defeating view, if not countered by a message of self-empowerment, creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.
McWhorter, who is himself African-American, has documented the destructive effects on the black community of this worldview to fear and loathe all things over which the white race is deemed to have "ownership," to use Turner's term. If the majority white society values success or academic achievement, then African Americans who value the same must be "acting white." In the same vein, if the majority white society expresses itself using standard English, then African Americans who don't want to be stigmatized as "Uncle Toms" should speak "Ebonics" instead. Along this line of reasoning, one could hardly blame minorities if they came to the conclusion that they should have nothing to do with The Cavalier Daily because it happens to be majority white, published in the language of the white majority.
This confusion of numerical majorities with the oppression of racial minorities results from wearing blinders and looking at the world through nothing else but the lens of race. Even the word "race" itself suggests a group competition and divisiveness that simply doesn't always exist. To a certain extent, unless the racial demographics of the Commonwealth were to drastically change, this will be a majority "white institution" for the foreseeable future. We can no more help the fact that the United States, and particularly the Commonwealth, is predominantly white than the Saudis can help the fact that they are -- surprise, surprise -- predominantly Arabs.
Of course, American history is vastly more complicated, in that our country is only predominantly white because whites drove out the Native Americans and imported African slaves. But sometimes we need to put aside the bitter recriminations over a history we can't change. To play the blame game only results in the pernicious school of thought that tells minorities standard English is racist or culturally insensitive, and that they should be able to express themselves however they wish.
Those who worship at the altar of subjectivism are correct in the sense that language is subjective. Still, for the purpose of having a convenient, uniform mode of verbal expression, our society has subjectively determined that the language used by the majority is the objective standard. In the past, this has never been an issue for minorities. In fact, some of the most eloquent orators using the standard English language have been African-American civil rights leaders, who were able to cross racial lines because their mode of expression was universally understood.
Nonetheless, there is today a subculture that glorifies poor education and speaks a nonstandard language completely foreign to the civil rights generation. "Gangsta rappers" express themselves in a manner that is at once resentful of and repugnant to mainstream society. Racial minorities are impressed with the notion that this is the model they should emulate.
The lack of more racial diversity in the press is an incredibly complex problem for which there are no easy explanations. While it would be grossly reductionist to pin the blame on any single factor, one cannot help but wonder if part of the problem is the minority subcultures that resent all things majority and disparage standard English -- the staple of any mainstream media. Until the social elite that fostered these pathologies renounces them, racial diversity will be precluded by the reality of racial separatism.
Eric Wang's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at ewang@cavalierdaily.com.
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