The College Fix

It’s okay to just…deal with things

At the University of Southern California, a doctoral student in currently engaged in an effort to implement “critical race theory” workshops after someone in her class allegedly said some unpleasant things as part of a class project. In a shared document discussing “challenges in urban education,” a white woman argued that minority women “should be sterilized” and that the government should “take away their babies at birth.”

The arguments were apparently not intended to be serious at all; rather, they were meant only “as a possible solution, as that was [the students’] understanding of the exercise.” Nevertheless, the doctoral student in question has begun demanding “accountability practices” from the university; a petition started for that purpose has garnered hundreds and hundreds of signatures so far.

Here is a modest suggestion for anyone signing this petition: Don’t get so upset about this. It’s not a huge deal. There is every indication that the person who wrote the clumsy comments didn’t mean them even in theory, but even if she did that would not necessitate a university-wide response. There’s no reason that some awkward comments—even possibly racist ones— need to sweep up the entire campus community. It’s just not necessary.

College students today tend to lack the ability to see things in their proper scale. A graceless remark, once the sort of thing people might shake off or at worst briefly engage, now becomes the basis for a enormous new “critical race theory” effort. This is silly. It’s okay to just deal with things. You don’t need to make a crusade out of every slight or uncomfortable incident. You’ll be a lot more happy, and a lot less stressed, if you figure out how to put stuff like this in its proper context.

MORE: Clueless students call white-robed priest a Klansman

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