My rant today about "safe spaces"

As a rule, I try to keep my commentary here at DU separate from my DK commentaries. However, I am increasingly frustrated at the way the issues of "safe spaces" is being bandied about.

Here is the link to my commentary (rant, really) at Black Kos today on "safe spaces." The piece is well-linked and you can go to DK which look so strange now!) and study the link; I will add the links here before the end of the night and before I give another swift kick to a certain post.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/11/17/1450407/-Black-Kos,-Tuesdays-Chile

A Rant about Safe Spaces and Public Squares
Commentary by Chitown Kev

Talk of safe spaces and public squares (especially on college campuses) are back in the news following the events and protests at the University of Missouri last week that resulted in the resignation of University of Missouri system president Tom Wolfe and Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin.

First, a working definition of “safe space” is necessary. The blog for the youth advocacy group Advocates for Youth offers a useful definition of "safe space."

Safe space: A place where anyone can relax and be fully self-expressed, without fear of being made to feel uncomfortable, unwelcome, or unsafe on account of biological sex, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, cultural background, age, or physical or mental ability; a place where the rules guard each person's self-respect and dignity and strongly encourage everyone to respect others.

According to Wikipedia, the specific nomenclature “safe space” evolved out of the women’s movement. I disagree, somewhat, with Wikipedia’s notion that the first “safe spaces” were gay bars and consciousness raising groups. While, certainly, the name “safe space” was not given to black churches, according to the website of the first majority black church denomination in America, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the seeds of what have come to be known as “safe space" are certainly there:

The AMEC grew out of the Free African Society (FAS) which Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and others established in Philadelphia in 1787. When officials at St. George’s MEC pulled blacks off their knees while praying, FAS members discovered just how far American Methodists would go to enforce racial discrimination against African Americans. Hence, these members of St. George’s made plans to transform their mutual aid society into an African congregation. Although most wanted to affiliate with the Protestant Episcopal Church, Allen led a small group who resolved to remain Methodists.

In 1794 Bethel AME was dedicated with Allen as pastor. To establish Bethel’s independence from interfering white Methodists, Allen, a former Delaware slave, successfully sued in the Pennsylvania courts in 1807 and 1815 for the right of his congregation to exist as an independent institution. Because black Methodists in other middle Atlantic communities encountered racism and desired religious autonomy, Allen called them to meet in Philadelphia to form a new Wesleyan denomination, the AME.

Certainly the spirit in which the AME Church was founded was that of creating a “safe space” for African Americans to practice
religious worship without racist harassment.

It might be useful to compare the treatment of those 18th century black parishioners to the treatment of black Mizzou students on campus and in Columbia, Missouri in the 21st century as described in the Mizzou student newspaper, The Maneater, written by Jennifer Prohov:

Another student shared a story about an interaction she had with a white man in front of Roxy’s. She said she was with a group of protesters when he came up to her, said, ‘You are a joke,’ then lunged his head backward and spat in her face.

She said it is frustrating for the students demonstrating to resist reacting to such incidents.

“If anything happens, it’s us going to jail, not them,” she said.

During the demonstration, a resident from Todd Apartments yelled at the demonstrators, saying, “You niggers just need to go home,” the panelist said.

Another student shared how his mother had tried very strongly to sway him from choosing MU, even on the car ride before dropping him off his first day. She kept telling him, "This institution is not for you. This institution is not for you. They are not going to protect you." He didn’t believe her, he said.

Then he got to MU.

Three weeks into school, he was walking through Greektown to Taco Bell with several white friends when a man yelled at them, “Oh look, there goes a nigger.” He had to tell his friends to keep moving, he said.

Of course, this type of behavior isn’t limited to black students even at Mizzou. I wonder how secure Muslim students at Mizzou felt (then and especially now, given the terrorist attacks in Paris last Friday) when the flag of the Islamic State was burned on campus.

I wonder how Hispanic students at the University of Arizona feel about a white-owned Mexican restaurant called “Illegal Pete’s” being opened near the entrance of the University.

Public spaces have been a daily and quasi-ritual site for white people to assert white supremacy since the beginning (and before) of the American Republic.

And the history of Mother Emanuel in Charleston, South Carolina alone demonstrates that many white people really don’t give all that much of a damn about black people in “safe spaces” as well.

(I do find it to be quite ironic that, in a sense, one could say that American law and public policies such as Jim Crow, restrictive housing covenants and redlining arose out of an apparent need for whites to create “safe spaces’...albeit for different reasons.)

Black students (and other minorities) attend college for the same reasons that white students attend college: To find a vocation, to get out from under their parent’s wing, to party, etc. But it seems as if with the exception of attending HBCU’s, black students, by and large, also have to deal with the utter stress of racism in the classroom, in socializing, in off-campus activities, and other areas.

For many white students (especially white men) attending American colleges and universities, public spaces are already safe spaces. That is not necessarily the case for students of color, LGBTs, and many women.

I’m as big an advocate of free speech rights as anyone. However, it also seems as if far too many white people (liberal and conservative) interpret “free speech rights” as license to spew anything that they want at anyone, without regard to whom may be harmed as a consequence.

The idea that people of color, LGBT’s, women, and others should simply “suck it up” infuriates me. Because for minorities, it is often a case of being quite literally a matter of life and death.

For the record, I, myself, can be a bit uncomfortable about “safe spaces” in practice. As a black gay man who is also an agnostic, my skepticism has as much to do with the areas inside designated “safe spaces” as it does with areas outside safe spaces (to an extent I talked about that skepticism of “safe spaces in my essay on the Black Church).

But I understand the need for “safe spaces” (or, for me, safer spaces) .

And I suspect that anyone who doesn't understand that need for others to have a “safe space" has never found it necessary to seek out a room of their own because the one that they are in works just fine.