UPDATE: Upon opening Thursday’s issue of the Barometer, there is a column reprinted from the University of Colorado - about Senioritis. The space issue seems even more specious, now.
Michael just posted about this, and included my column with it. Here is my letter to accompany it. Feel free to forward.
BEGIN
11/07/07
I’m no longer writing for the Barometer.
It pangs me to write that statement, not because it means I lose a paycheck (I haven’t been paid for writing in the Barometer since becoming a graduate student a year and a half ago), but rather because it’s a clear sign that I am angry, frustrated and hurt enough to disengage with my beloved school newspaper. Angry enough at the poor decision-making, missteps, and censorship I’ve discovered at the Barometer that I’m making a personal choice to stop writing and supporting an organization that no longer represents the best of OSU - the best of the “Open Minds, Open Doorsâ€? policy that I believe can lead to great things.
If my words surprise you, then you should know that they surprise me as well. Even though I’ve felt that the Barometer continually prints articles, op-eds, letters and advertisements which I don’t agree with, which I may find disturbing, insulting, or harmful, I’ve never felt that disengaging was something I should seriously consider.
After all, I could always write a column about what I read. Frequently I discovered that someone quicker would address it before I could, leading me to believe that the Barometer encouraged debate about their decisions, their writing, and their ‘process of learning.’
But like the quick changing and temperamental weather of fall, I’ve experienced an unbearable astonishment at the policies and written work found in the Barometer as of late. The picture of the student in blackface, with the connotation of ‘intimidating’ that went along with it, was a mistake. The Barometer’s lackluster apology was another, for various reasons. Requiring Renee Roman Nose to edit her column was another.
I was a floating columnist for the Barometer and wrote and submitted a piece about the image they used and my issues with the apology on Monday evening, November 5th. I was told that it would run in that week’s Wednesday’s issue - space requirements and other columns had priority. Come Wednesday, my column (”op-ed” if you want to be technical) was nowhere to be found. I suspected it was being held because of its content. I love the Barometer but I wasn’t going to sugar coat what I felt I needed to say, and there was so much to address I even had trouble keeping it under the 1,000-word limit of a column. Nonetheless I edited, rewrote, and cut enough away to make it just under.
After inquiring about the status of my column on Wednesday afternoon, I received a message from the Barometer forum editors: my column was being held because of space requirements, and a backlog of pieces were to be published ahead of mine. Later that day I received another email from the forum editor:
We regret to inform you that currently The Daily Barometer is not accepting opposition-editorials on the subject of the October black out at Reser stadium. Op-eds are printed at the discretion of the staff of The Daily Barometer and based on space available in the Forum pages. We will continue to print letters to the editor based on the subject matter, that fall into the criteria: under 300 words, and include name, major, class standing or job title, department name and phone number. The Daily Barometer reserves the right to refuse publication of any submission.
Susie Bafico & Ashley Slocki
737-6376
Like I said before, I was astonished. The message is designed to placate me into thinking that it wouldn’t be printed because of length considerations, when the real reason is clear: they feel like the issue is taking up more space than it’s worth. The issue of the image and their response to it is no longer relevant or newsworthy, or at least not deserving of any more column inches.
I respect their right to publish based on space available. I also understand the need to prohibit publishing material that is false, poorly written, advocating violence, etc. But to then reject my already-submitted column because it contained a topic - at length - which they deemed suddenly taboo is inexcusable.
This has never happened to me before. And it’s troubling. When a newspaper refuses to publish material which is critical of itself, and gives reasoning which is (at best) designed to be tricky, it’s a symptom of a larger disease eating away at the publishing standards of any media organization. If they are unwilling to put themselves out there - to learn about the responsibility of media organizations in an intense and painfully public way - then my Barometer has lost the professionalism I need.
I firmly believed that the Barometer, as imperfect as it can be at times, represents the process of learning, revision, and mistake making that I love about higher education. I feel like we all go through this in our lives, all the time. But shutting down conversation is not a part of that process. It’s a sign that the mind is no longer open, and that neither is the door.
If this concerns you, or if you do enjoy the Barometer, please pass this along to whomever you like. The 800-odd words of this letter and the nearly 1,000 of my unprinted column below may not seem like much, but they represent much more to me than I ever imagined or realized.
In solidarity,
ML Sugie
My unprinted column:
Blackface is not nice.
“Oh god,� you might find yourself wondering, “not another f-ing column about blackface. His tagline even says that he’s brown and uppity, this is probably going to be awful!� If this is you, feel free to read the cartoon and move along. I won’t be offended. Promise.
Still with me? Okay.
Firstly: to the best of my knowledge, black is not an official color of OSU, or at least about as official as the color white. The following is a quote from the OSU Alumni Association website: “Until the spring of 1893, navy blue was the official color of Corvallis College. All this changed on May 2 when a faculty committee appointed by President John Bloss voted to replace blue with “orange.” Not long after, “black” was selected by the student body as a background color and the Halloweenesque combination has been used ever since.â€?
The Barometer has even acknowledged this starkly orange fact, in a “Civil War Factoidsâ€? article in November 2002. So our school color seems to be officially orange, with black, white, and a panoply of other colors added at various times to cover up the fact that orange looks good with… well, almost no other color. I’m a drag queen, and I still haven’t found a good way to wear plenty of orange and not look like I have jaundice. For being so important to the history and identity of our university, this information is surprisingly difficult to find on the OSU website. So please, don’t say “black is an official color” until it’s resolved that orange is not our only school color.
Moving right along, we come up against the image of the young man in black face paint. The photo was not published because the Barometer is run by a group of racist KKK members. No one is saying that. Renee Roman Nose never said that, although lots of people seem to think she’s calling the Barometer, OSU, and fans of football racist. Read her columns again – she’s not. She’s pointing out that the image of a person with a black painted face is rich with awful historical meanings and usage.
There were many ways to respond to the furor over running the picture. The Barometer editorial board threw back a question to readers when responding to the idea that they should have known the historical use of blackface: “…couldn’t that be a good thing that the era of offensive mockery is now far enough behind us that it was not present in our active memory?”
It took me a minute to process that, if only because some kind soul had to put smelling salts under my nose to wake me from my stupor. I went into overdrive thinking about how it was that my beloved, award-winning school newspaper could print something so banal as a response.
After a second revelation and round of smelling salts, the answer was clear: the editorial board must really believe what they wrote. They must not have known the historical meaning of blackface, or how that image could be received by people of color.
If you’re wondering why in gay hell I care so much, consider my experience: the “era of offensive mockery” is about as far behind me as my flat butt. Others who identify with marginalized communities probably have similar experiences; butt size may vary.
I guess it’s not surprising that the Barometer took this route. There are few (if any) serious repercussions for not knowing the history of media and ethnicity in this country, even for an award-winning student paper. You can just apologize and claim ignorance, silently allow those who point out such instances to be vilified as uppity one-issue writers, and move on. But the problem when folks in dominant groups remain ignorant of the historical citations they make is that no such privilege exists for the “others,â€? which Jerred Taylor pointed out in his letter to the editor last Friday.
If I don’t know the ins and outs of heterosexual culture, I am liable to be physically assaulted or worse by being queer at the wrong place or wrong time. Similarly, if I don’t understand how whiteness is constructed and operated in this country I am liable to face serious negative social, personal, or physical ramifications. The opposite of the two preceding statements is rarely true.
I know the troubling and deeply embedded historical citation being made when someone dresses up like a ninja, slutty Pocahontas, or some other regurgitated stereotype for Halloween - even if they don’t. I understand that a historical citation of a stereotype such as blackface, however accidental or well-intentioned, calls forward the hurt and pain of communities who lived or continue to live with those stereotypes. If you don’t understand why the image of blackface is so powerful, even the mere appearance of blackface, it’s probably because privilege has let you ignore it without consequence.
W.E.B. Du Bois once wrote about a similar phenomenon. He called it “double consciousness,” or the experience of knowing how the culture you live in understands your ethnicity, and how you understand it. He spoke of the difficulties in dealing with the realities of being an American (read: white) and being a Black American. While I can’t take his concept carte blanche and apply it to the identities in my life, it is similar to the effect of being American (read: heterosexual) and living queerly. I’ve noticed that people who aren’t black, or aren’t queer, regularly find this concept difficult or impossible to understand.
And given the way power is organized in this society, it’s not very nice.
So when the Barometer, or other groups comprised of folks who enjoy significant privilege, accidentally offends a marginalized group and attempts to brazenly excuse their behavior with ignorance, we should be vigilant about critiquing the rhetoric of their reason. Behind it could lie something more banal and terrible than should be acceptable to anyone.
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