Reader Responses to In This Together

Caroline Malin-Mayaor’s letter (“Woke Paradise,” What Do You Think?, April-May ’21) is very well-intentioned. However, it reeks of precisely the kind of erasure practices that it claims to abhor—the tendency of one community to speak for another. Those of us of Middle Eastern heritage have been arguably left out of the “woke” conversation at Brown for far longer than any other community (I distinctly recall never receiving an invitation to the Third World Transition Program before my freshman year in 1992, and I still search in vain for an appropriate box to tick on race surveys). So perhaps we can be permitted some say in this? Quite frankly, I think there is now a good argument for considering the capitalization of “Brown,” given the collective, shared experience of marginalization endured by Latinx, South Asian, Middle Eastern and other communities. Though that does raise some interesting questions. Are we Brown alumni of Brown? Brown brown alumni? My head is starting to hurt. Maybe the “real world” wasn’t so bad after all.

…“Black” in the U.S. is a culture, like Native American or Latinx, and should be capitalized; “white” and “brown” are generally umbrella terms covering multiple cultures, and don’t merit capitalization. Whether you agree or not, calling this decision “semantic racism” reeks of a color-blind ideology that ignores historical and social context and maintains the (racist) status quo.

In response to a previous reader who wrote in about the decision to capitalize Black but not white, I searched “capitalizing black” on the internet and immediately found articles from multiple prominent news outlets (the New York Times, The AP, NBC News, The Wall Street Journal) clearly articulating their reasoning for capitalizing Black but not white in their publications (“Woke Joke,” What Do You Think?, January-March ’21). To summarize the common arguments, Black in the United States is a culture, like Native American or Latinx (more on that later), and should be capitalized. On the other hand, “white” and “brown” are generally used as umbrella terms covering multiple cultures, and therefore don’t merit capitalization. Whether you agree with this view or not, an inability to imagine the thought process that led to BAM capitalizing Black but not white is a failure of imagination or research, not a reflection of how radical the idea is. Calling this decision by BAM “semantic racism” reeks of a color blind ideology that ignores historical and social context, and maintains the (racist) status quo. Back to Latinx vs Latino, please don’t speak about what “Latinos or Latinas favor” based solely on personal speculation. Keep in mind that no group is monolithic, and people within a community can have varying opinions on a term. I could not agree more with the proposal to call people by the names that they prefer. Unless you are a member of a marginalized group, keep your opinion on what that group should be called to yourself. Finally, in regards to the idea that Brunonians must function in the “real world,” students and alumni from marginalized groups have lived in that world their whole lives. They have faced and will continue to face discrimination, erasure, microagressions, and white men speaking over them and telling them how they should feel. All the more reason to try and make Brown and BAM a woke paradise where their experiences and identities are validated. Maybe one day the real world will evolve to follow suit.

The editorial decision to capitalize “Black,” but not “white” or “brown” (except as the name of the university) is a weird form of semantic racism (“In This Together,” From the Editor, September/October). It’s difficult to imagine the thought process that got BAM to this point. It is also annoying to see the term “Latinx” on your pages. I doubt many Latinos or Latinas favor this term to describe their ethnicity, and no other group has been subjected to such ambiguity. Surely you realize that your students and alumni must learn to function in the real world and not in some artificial “woke” paradise? As a social and political progressive who has been living in the belly of the beast since I graduated from Brown nearly 50 years ago, I hate to see my alma mater becoming a caricature. Here’s a radical proposal; why not call people by the names that they prefer? Abandon the pretentious language and adhere to common sense and the Golden Rule.