Have you been on a university campus recently?
Contrary to what some reactionary conservatives seem to think, they are not generally oppressive places with no tolerance for conservative thought.
Yes, occasionally 19 year olds say and do some silly things. That's kind of what being young and having your first taste of adulthood is supposed to be about. And if you only consume media that highlights those silly things and never actually visit a university and talk to young people, yeah, you can easily get a very negative view of what universities and academic culture are like.
> People are classified as "racist" for believing that the culture that came out of northern Europe is not inherently oppressive.
Well, it is inherently oppressive, as is just about every other traditional culture, and citizens have to be constantly vigilant about to make sure that oppressive nature is held at bay as much as possible. Can there really be any doubt about this? Consider, among many other facts, the fact that Alabama just very nearly elected to the US Senate a man who thinks the US was better under slavery and that the constitutional amendments granting women and blacks the right to vote should be revoked. If that's not enough to convince you that racism is a serious problem I don't know what would be.
It varies from university to university. Most universities don't experience anything like the authoritarian-left chaos at Evergreen [1], but you can find student organizations at universities all over America who hold these far-left beliefs. We had no scandals like this at my east coast university, but I'd estimate at least 10-20% of the student population holds extreme beliefs of this nature. You could see inklings of it on campus in the form of posters and group demonstrations and events. I have no statistics about the political leanings of universities in general, but if even 10 big universities have these issues (and it's definitely more than 10), then it's worth discussing.
At my university, even though it didn't seem to lean that much to the left, holding conservative views was definitely a stigma. Conservative students were routinely mocked and ostracized. And this isn't some self-pity, as I consider myself to have been and to be pretty left-wing on most social and economic issues. I just saw what people on the opposite side had to deal with.
>Consider, among many other facts, the fact that Alabama just very nearly elected to the US Senate a man who thinks the US was better under slavery and that the constitutional amendments granting women and blacks the right to vote should be revoked. If that's not enough to convince you that racism is a serious problem I don't know what would be.
Pointing to proof of a problem isn't proof that all opponents of that problem are justified. The position of many university campus students, and some professors, is not merely that racism is still a serious problem in the US but that non-minority groups have effectively been born with some innate sin which they must seek constant penance for due to historical power dynamics. Connected to this is a set of very tribalistic and insular beliefs not unlike what you see in alt-right communities. It's anti-intellectual and it's encouraging college students to view the world in a very narrow way. Oppression of minority groups was and is a dire issue, but it's important not to overcorrect.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/when-the-left-tur...
There's extremist in both groups that fight for overcorrection but lets not confuse that with an actual overcorrection of any kind.
ANNND how does that have anything to do with "northern eropean" culture being inherently, automatically oppressive?
> If that's not enough to convince you that racism is a serious problem
Yes, racism is a serious problem. And how does that have anything to do with what the person you are responding to just said?
My god. I really wish more people would point this out. The hysteria about University politics is such a bore now.
When that's the definition of "racist", then racism is indeed "nearly meaningless" - it's become such a broad term that it no longer means anything. To paraphrase The Incredibles: "When everything fits the definition... then nothing does."