In that heat and the months that followed (to this day), I expressed my dissent to my American partner over racism and its claimed "systemic" nature. I politely endorsed the Trump administration for Warp Speed and the Abraham's agreements. I used a "European" approach to the conversation (I am from the Old Continent), naively thinking my positions would have been regarded as intellectually stimulating. I became instead a "deplorable", lost my partner, was left in absolute dismay. The wind that is blowing is leaving a trail of devastation behind.
You will undoubtedly feel lonely at times, but you are in good company and I could not imagine any better place for an internship. Your friendship sounds deep and genuine, hold on to it. You won't have many like it.
In 2020, I made contact with an old friend from many years ago. She was single, as was I, and we reminisced about old times and had a wonderful conversation. Initially. Then the upcoming election came up as a topic, and she began what could only be described as a nonstop rant against the Republican presidential candidate. None of her diatribe was about disagreeing with policy; it was 100% personal - an attack on the candidate himself. It was as if Mr. Hyde had just walked out of this person's body; one of the most unhinged things I'd ever witnessed. When she brought up Trump's alleged "Charlottesville" quote, my response of, "That's not what he said," was met with immediate derision. "Tell you what, I'll email you a couple of news articles that give the entire quote, with no editing. Would that convince you?"
"Yes."
I did that very thing, and then phoned her the next day. Her response? "Thank you." That was it. We've had no contact since.
Oh, baby, your journey through life is just beginning. You need to get out of NYC and the far Left northeast. The center of the country is a worldview away from the insular, parochial, paralyzing groupthink you have been subjected to. I would love to meet your friend. She is an admirable person of character.
Ms. Rackoff offers a small glimmer of hope, albeit, at this point, a small one. Of course we remember the Floyd narrative at the time. When people fell over themselves to be "anti-racists" and swooned for the swill of Kendi and D'Angelo. And then we saw racism in full display. The racism of low expectations that permitted an summer long orgy of destruction, violence and murder. That saw C-suite dupes shoveling millions to the grifters of BLM. And that even mind-bogglingly ascribed "systemic racism" to a system of governance that had outlawed discrimination based on race, spent trillions to remedy past racism and even showered benefits based on being a member of one race.
Do students to whom this swill is peddled know they are being lied to? Do the teachers and administrators who dish it out know that they are peddling lies and indoctrination? Why are there so few with the courage to say "no, this is madness and we won't have it?" So, yes, this is a glimmer of hope, but, sadly, Ms. Rackoff, who managed to maintain a shred of decency, still hasn't completely opened her eyes to the lies of the left and the damage they are willing to inflict on our nation.
I love this! I recently just had an argument with one of my best friends from college about politics. It was tough because we come at things from different angles. After some tears and tough conversation, we worked through things. That said, I explained that my beliefs are a part of who I am and cannot pretend not to care about what I see going on in this country. The main stream media, education system, and now even corporations have really tried to shut down half of this country's viewpoints but there is an angry, frustrated undercurrent. People must rise up and speak out even if it risks friendships. Intolerance is NOT the answer, conversations and compassion is what we need more than ever. We must start by finding the good in each of us. Thank you Maya for listening to and conversing with your friend. You can accomplish far more together than as enemies.
It is great that the author learned a lesson in tolerance.
However, she should have understood earlier that she was doing what others had been accusing her friend of doing:
"I embraced the BLM slogans and ignored the violence that accompanied some of the protests. I even dismissed the antisemitism that seemed to be entangled in some of BLM’s statements."
Glossing over violence and ignoring the obvious racism were wrong, but she appears not to be apologetic or have modified her stance:
"It wasn’t that I regretted many of the slogans I shouted that summer"
Becoming tolerant is commendable, continuing to be a bigot not so much.
Having started, myself, at Brown, in 1956, I have seen the place change. Back then professors weren’t allowed to force their political views on students and girls lived on a different campus from boys. There was an unacknowledged but real quota for blacks and Jews. 2 black girls in each new class and a few Jews, most of whom commuted. We attended chapel twice a week. The Dean of Pembroke college discussed such topics as whether it was worth it for girls to go to college. Her reasoning? “When you educate a man you educate an individual. When you educate a woman you educate a family.” We’d be laughed off campus if we even hinted at that idea today. I was there on scholarship since my Dad was the janitor at University Hall. We commuters had a dorm to stay at occasionally and to meet at every day. We thought a couple of the seniors were bonkers because they were running around working for a political party. Politics was not one of our major concerns. Now who to invite to the Pembroke Dance, THAT was up for serious discussions.
I took 4 years off in the middle of my college journey to get married and have a son. (Met my husband in the old Hay Library while recovering from a flu epidemic that, looking back, was as bad as COVID.) I returned to Brown in the fall of 1962. Drugs had arrived while I was gone. Being an older married student made me a suitable ear-cum shoulder for some of the younger students to confide in. The rules had changed, but it was still my beloved Brown.
Over the years, reading the BAM monthly I could tell, as the decades passed that something disturbing was happening. The college bragged that its minority students included Portuguese Americans. In a state where about 30% of the population is of Portuguese descent, and the fact that the Portuguese students were as white as those of English or “Yankee” heritage was odd. They never bragged about it when my neighbor Lenny and I, both of Portuguese descent were there in the fifties.
Dorms became co-ed. A young orthodox Jewish woman was shamed because she refused to shower with the boys. Efforts to make her conform included questions like, “What? Are you ashamed of your body?” Her parents eventually got permission for her to live off campus. Understand that back in the fifties there were strict rules about how and when we girls interacted with boys on campus. So this was alarming to hear.
When I went back for my 25th reunion (That was the year they gave Bill Crosby an honorary doctorate) the major question regarding behavior was insensitivity. You could be shamed for being “insensitive.” The major political cause was divest from South Africa. Students shouted, fists raised, as they marched down college hill for commencement services at First Baptist. The percentage of students’ ethnicity and gender had changed. The balance between men and women had changed from one Pembroker (girl) to Brunonians (boys) in the fifties to the elimination of Pembroke College and an almost even ratio of girls to boys in the late 70s. Blacks were no longer restricted. There were enough Jewish students that one Unitarian friend of mine said, “I won’t let my daughter go to Brown, it’s too Jewish.” Hardly that, but there were more than in the fifties.
As I read BAM over the years it increasingly became an unpleasant reminder of the radical changes at my beloved Alma Mater. ROTC was banished. They started changing the names of holidays. Now they don’t even have “Christmas” break. They call it Winter something or other. No Columbus Day. He was a bad guy. But Brown is still Brown even though it’s named after a slave owner who made a huge financial contribution.
Nowadays I cringe when I hear the things that Brown is up to. Ms Rackoff’s article makes it even clearer that it’s not a place where I would want my grandkids to attend college. On the other hand, they were as brainwashed at the colleges they went to, so it’s irrelevant.
I mourn for my old college. I still love the Brown I went to, but I am horrified by what it has become.
I’m an old lady. 83 last birthday. Thank God I’m still able to get out, even work at a big box store for pin money. The gang there are more like my old college mates at Brown. They aren’t carried away with causes. They work hard. They are bright and relatively unpolluted by what is going on in the college world. Nobody is fighting about pronouns. They are working to make ends meet, put food on the table, feed their kids, and if it comes up, puzzled by the nonsense going in in the mainstream media and on our college campuses. They are a very diverse gang. Old and young, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Arabic, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, etc.
brown should come down to Florida, visit Home Depot, and get a taste of the people who make the world go round.
Glad to hear that Maya realizes the value of tolerance. But I cannot help but wonder if she is nothing more than a single grain of sand on a large beach. How many others at Brown or from her high school ( and thousands of others at other colleges, schools , and sundry other organizations and businesses) have had epiphanies like Maya? How many who have excommunicated their friends have said "I'm sorry?" It is easy to say that one hopes we are turning the corner regarding all of the above, but is that really true, especially in cities like NY, SF, LA and various others around the US? Or college campuses. The daily venomous rhetoric and labelling emanating from many of our elected leaders on whatever may be the issue du jour does not suggest that these Orwellian times are about to end anytime soon.
This post really spoke to me. I've been greatly saddened by the version of anti-racism I see in universities and in my former high school, which had been an amazing academic institution. When I expressed concerns about a Zoom session in which white alums were asked to examine themselves for "microaggressions" and hidden prejudices which "had" to be there, when I questioned the wisdom of so-called racial affinity groups and called for a return to the wisdom of Dr. Martin Luther King, the response from very old friends ranged from nervous guilt to outright rage ("I won't speak about this with you!") To me, it's sad to see the phenomenon John McWhorter has dubbed "woke racism" entangling so many smart, thinking people, who seem hobbled by misguided guilt. I've lived in Germany a long time, and see what happens when the grandchildren of nazis feel the guilt that ought to have been felt by their forbears. That guilt impedes the understanding effected by honest, friendly conversations. A friend is someone with whom one can speak freely. When that freedom is gone, we are all the poorer.
Great article. I think the pendulum is swinging back toward tolerance. True 'diversity' will only be achieved when we can express uncomfortable positions on the issues of the day, engender honest debate, & still remain friends without the acrimony that we seen for the last several years. That is true "liberalism".
So glad they remained friends and grew from this. This reminds me about a book I just read, The Coddling of the American Mind. They should be making that manditory reading before going to these instituions, LOL!
It's so observably sad that this very thing has happened to so many. I've read many accounts throughout my Substack newsletters. Different causes--racism, mandates, vaccines, etc, but all with one thing in common, moral outrage and self-righteousness. Another one, today, from one of my favorite essayists decrying the same thing. It has happened to all of us, especially in the last 2 years, 3 years, now, torn and scattered friendships.
Genuine people are hurt deeply, and it seems to be okay among the in-group. Of course, like a lover who ends an affair and moves on to the next, it's easy for them. The rest of us are left to wonder why, and to patch up yet another scar. How can those friendships be so easily discarded? Were they ever really friendships or just mutual aid societies? Were they ever of any depth, except maybe on one side, like a deep and shallow end of a pool? There's no sense to it.
This demand for Cosmic Justice among the social and cultural warriors, and the certainty that our tribe deserves it, always ends in war. Little wars, big wars. We devolve into squabbles that demand redress. What tribe ever, in all of history, did not wage war continually on its neighbors? We tend to think of our groups as peaceful hunter-gatherers that can somehow ably co-exist, like the silly bumper sticker. That's a faulty remembering of history. It's war, going forward, continual, vengeful, and re-vengeful wars.
You see that a lot these days - people saying that they're ashamed because they felt complicit in supporting systemic racism. How did they support it I wonder? If you knowingly and willfully support racist ideologies then yeah, you've got some serious flaws that need fixing.
What gets me are the people who fall into the belief that just their VERY SKIN COLOR (white) makes them racist - somehow completely missing the fact that being "put in a box" because of the color of your skin IS racist, no matter what color your skin is... man are people really THAT damn dense?
We are reliving the Salem Witch Hunts. Facilitated by the new nuclear weapon—social media. Let’s exorcise this from our lives as much as possible.
In that heat and the months that followed (to this day), I expressed my dissent to my American partner over racism and its claimed "systemic" nature. I politely endorsed the Trump administration for Warp Speed and the Abraham's agreements. I used a "European" approach to the conversation (I am from the Old Continent), naively thinking my positions would have been regarded as intellectually stimulating. I became instead a "deplorable", lost my partner, was left in absolute dismay. The wind that is blowing is leaving a trail of devastation behind.
You will undoubtedly feel lonely at times, but you are in good company and I could not imagine any better place for an internship. Your friendship sounds deep and genuine, hold on to it. You won't have many like it.
In 2020, I made contact with an old friend from many years ago. She was single, as was I, and we reminisced about old times and had a wonderful conversation. Initially. Then the upcoming election came up as a topic, and she began what could only be described as a nonstop rant against the Republican presidential candidate. None of her diatribe was about disagreeing with policy; it was 100% personal - an attack on the candidate himself. It was as if Mr. Hyde had just walked out of this person's body; one of the most unhinged things I'd ever witnessed. When she brought up Trump's alleged "Charlottesville" quote, my response of, "That's not what he said," was met with immediate derision. "Tell you what, I'll email you a couple of news articles that give the entire quote, with no editing. Would that convince you?"
"Yes."
I did that very thing, and then phoned her the next day. Her response? "Thank you." That was it. We've had no contact since.
Oh, baby, your journey through life is just beginning. You need to get out of NYC and the far Left northeast. The center of the country is a worldview away from the insular, parochial, paralyzing groupthink you have been subjected to. I would love to meet your friend. She is an admirable person of character.
Ms. Rackoff offers a small glimmer of hope, albeit, at this point, a small one. Of course we remember the Floyd narrative at the time. When people fell over themselves to be "anti-racists" and swooned for the swill of Kendi and D'Angelo. And then we saw racism in full display. The racism of low expectations that permitted an summer long orgy of destruction, violence and murder. That saw C-suite dupes shoveling millions to the grifters of BLM. And that even mind-bogglingly ascribed "systemic racism" to a system of governance that had outlawed discrimination based on race, spent trillions to remedy past racism and even showered benefits based on being a member of one race.
Do students to whom this swill is peddled know they are being lied to? Do the teachers and administrators who dish it out know that they are peddling lies and indoctrination? Why are there so few with the courage to say "no, this is madness and we won't have it?" So, yes, this is a glimmer of hope, but, sadly, Ms. Rackoff, who managed to maintain a shred of decency, still hasn't completely opened her eyes to the lies of the left and the damage they are willing to inflict on our nation.
Maya your wisdom gives me hope, thank you
I love this! I recently just had an argument with one of my best friends from college about politics. It was tough because we come at things from different angles. After some tears and tough conversation, we worked through things. That said, I explained that my beliefs are a part of who I am and cannot pretend not to care about what I see going on in this country. The main stream media, education system, and now even corporations have really tried to shut down half of this country's viewpoints but there is an angry, frustrated undercurrent. People must rise up and speak out even if it risks friendships. Intolerance is NOT the answer, conversations and compassion is what we need more than ever. We must start by finding the good in each of us. Thank you Maya for listening to and conversing with your friend. You can accomplish far more together than as enemies.
It is great that the author learned a lesson in tolerance.
However, she should have understood earlier that she was doing what others had been accusing her friend of doing:
"I embraced the BLM slogans and ignored the violence that accompanied some of the protests. I even dismissed the antisemitism that seemed to be entangled in some of BLM’s statements."
Glossing over violence and ignoring the obvious racism were wrong, but she appears not to be apologetic or have modified her stance:
"It wasn’t that I regretted many of the slogans I shouted that summer"
Becoming tolerant is commendable, continuing to be a bigot not so much.
Having started, myself, at Brown, in 1956, I have seen the place change. Back then professors weren’t allowed to force their political views on students and girls lived on a different campus from boys. There was an unacknowledged but real quota for blacks and Jews. 2 black girls in each new class and a few Jews, most of whom commuted. We attended chapel twice a week. The Dean of Pembroke college discussed such topics as whether it was worth it for girls to go to college. Her reasoning? “When you educate a man you educate an individual. When you educate a woman you educate a family.” We’d be laughed off campus if we even hinted at that idea today. I was there on scholarship since my Dad was the janitor at University Hall. We commuters had a dorm to stay at occasionally and to meet at every day. We thought a couple of the seniors were bonkers because they were running around working for a political party. Politics was not one of our major concerns. Now who to invite to the Pembroke Dance, THAT was up for serious discussions.
I took 4 years off in the middle of my college journey to get married and have a son. (Met my husband in the old Hay Library while recovering from a flu epidemic that, looking back, was as bad as COVID.) I returned to Brown in the fall of 1962. Drugs had arrived while I was gone. Being an older married student made me a suitable ear-cum shoulder for some of the younger students to confide in. The rules had changed, but it was still my beloved Brown.
Over the years, reading the BAM monthly I could tell, as the decades passed that something disturbing was happening. The college bragged that its minority students included Portuguese Americans. In a state where about 30% of the population is of Portuguese descent, and the fact that the Portuguese students were as white as those of English or “Yankee” heritage was odd. They never bragged about it when my neighbor Lenny and I, both of Portuguese descent were there in the fifties.
Dorms became co-ed. A young orthodox Jewish woman was shamed because she refused to shower with the boys. Efforts to make her conform included questions like, “What? Are you ashamed of your body?” Her parents eventually got permission for her to live off campus. Understand that back in the fifties there were strict rules about how and when we girls interacted with boys on campus. So this was alarming to hear.
When I went back for my 25th reunion (That was the year they gave Bill Crosby an honorary doctorate) the major question regarding behavior was insensitivity. You could be shamed for being “insensitive.” The major political cause was divest from South Africa. Students shouted, fists raised, as they marched down college hill for commencement services at First Baptist. The percentage of students’ ethnicity and gender had changed. The balance between men and women had changed from one Pembroker (girl) to Brunonians (boys) in the fifties to the elimination of Pembroke College and an almost even ratio of girls to boys in the late 70s. Blacks were no longer restricted. There were enough Jewish students that one Unitarian friend of mine said, “I won’t let my daughter go to Brown, it’s too Jewish.” Hardly that, but there were more than in the fifties.
As I read BAM over the years it increasingly became an unpleasant reminder of the radical changes at my beloved Alma Mater. ROTC was banished. They started changing the names of holidays. Now they don’t even have “Christmas” break. They call it Winter something or other. No Columbus Day. He was a bad guy. But Brown is still Brown even though it’s named after a slave owner who made a huge financial contribution.
Nowadays I cringe when I hear the things that Brown is up to. Ms Rackoff’s article makes it even clearer that it’s not a place where I would want my grandkids to attend college. On the other hand, they were as brainwashed at the colleges they went to, so it’s irrelevant.
I mourn for my old college. I still love the Brown I went to, but I am horrified by what it has become.
I’m an old lady. 83 last birthday. Thank God I’m still able to get out, even work at a big box store for pin money. The gang there are more like my old college mates at Brown. They aren’t carried away with causes. They work hard. They are bright and relatively unpolluted by what is going on in the college world. Nobody is fighting about pronouns. They are working to make ends meet, put food on the table, feed their kids, and if it comes up, puzzled by the nonsense going in in the mainstream media and on our college campuses. They are a very diverse gang. Old and young, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Arabic, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, etc.
brown should come down to Florida, visit Home Depot, and get a taste of the people who make the world go round.
Gotta go. I’m due at my service desk at 10.
Glad to hear that Maya realizes the value of tolerance. But I cannot help but wonder if she is nothing more than a single grain of sand on a large beach. How many others at Brown or from her high school ( and thousands of others at other colleges, schools , and sundry other organizations and businesses) have had epiphanies like Maya? How many who have excommunicated their friends have said "I'm sorry?" It is easy to say that one hopes we are turning the corner regarding all of the above, but is that really true, especially in cities like NY, SF, LA and various others around the US? Or college campuses. The daily venomous rhetoric and labelling emanating from many of our elected leaders on whatever may be the issue du jour does not suggest that these Orwellian times are about to end anytime soon.
This post really spoke to me. I've been greatly saddened by the version of anti-racism I see in universities and in my former high school, which had been an amazing academic institution. When I expressed concerns about a Zoom session in which white alums were asked to examine themselves for "microaggressions" and hidden prejudices which "had" to be there, when I questioned the wisdom of so-called racial affinity groups and called for a return to the wisdom of Dr. Martin Luther King, the response from very old friends ranged from nervous guilt to outright rage ("I won't speak about this with you!") To me, it's sad to see the phenomenon John McWhorter has dubbed "woke racism" entangling so many smart, thinking people, who seem hobbled by misguided guilt. I've lived in Germany a long time, and see what happens when the grandchildren of nazis feel the guilt that ought to have been felt by their forbears. That guilt impedes the understanding effected by honest, friendly conversations. A friend is someone with whom one can speak freely. When that freedom is gone, we are all the poorer.
Great article. I think the pendulum is swinging back toward tolerance. True 'diversity' will only be achieved when we can express uncomfortable positions on the issues of the day, engender honest debate, & still remain friends without the acrimony that we seen for the last several years. That is true "liberalism".
So glad they remained friends and grew from this. This reminds me about a book I just read, The Coddling of the American Mind. They should be making that manditory reading before going to these instituions, LOL!
It's so observably sad that this very thing has happened to so many. I've read many accounts throughout my Substack newsletters. Different causes--racism, mandates, vaccines, etc, but all with one thing in common, moral outrage and self-righteousness. Another one, today, from one of my favorite essayists decrying the same thing. It has happened to all of us, especially in the last 2 years, 3 years, now, torn and scattered friendships.
Genuine people are hurt deeply, and it seems to be okay among the in-group. Of course, like a lover who ends an affair and moves on to the next, it's easy for them. The rest of us are left to wonder why, and to patch up yet another scar. How can those friendships be so easily discarded? Were they ever really friendships or just mutual aid societies? Were they ever of any depth, except maybe on one side, like a deep and shallow end of a pool? There's no sense to it.
This demand for Cosmic Justice among the social and cultural warriors, and the certainty that our tribe deserves it, always ends in war. Little wars, big wars. We devolve into squabbles that demand redress. What tribe ever, in all of history, did not wage war continually on its neighbors? We tend to think of our groups as peaceful hunter-gatherers that can somehow ably co-exist, like the silly bumper sticker. That's a faulty remembering of history. It's war, going forward, continual, vengeful, and re-vengeful wars.
This doesn't end well.
You see that a lot these days - people saying that they're ashamed because they felt complicit in supporting systemic racism. How did they support it I wonder? If you knowingly and willfully support racist ideologies then yeah, you've got some serious flaws that need fixing.
What gets me are the people who fall into the belief that just their VERY SKIN COLOR (white) makes them racist - somehow completely missing the fact that being "put in a box" because of the color of your skin IS racist, no matter what color your skin is... man are people really THAT damn dense?