The Hoya’s April Fool’s issue controversy: Only empathy will prevent future crises

I frequently overlook Georgetown’s diversity-related issues. As the graduate of a small, mostly white high school that makes Georgetown look like a cornucopia of diversity, it’s easy for me to miss the tension between mainstream Georgetown and various minority groups, since I’m part of the majority. The ongoing discourse about The Hoya’s April Fools’ edition, however, illuminates a darker side of Georgetown that a naïve freshman like myself had failed to fully recognize.
I won’t belabor the already fleshed-out discussion we’ve had about the racist nature of the articles. I’ll proceed on the premise that many of the articles were absolutely atrocious. That a school like Georgetown would feature such garbage in its newspaper of record is an embarrassment to our community. Although The Hoya’s decision to print articles that reduce bi-racial students to a “few drops of Georgetown’s milk [poured] into some dark chocolate Cocoa Puffs” is troubling in and of itself, the real concern that’s developed from this controversy is the number of people in our community who found absolutely nothing wrong with the articles.
For evidence of such people, look no further than Facebook or The Hoya’s website. In the comments for Editor-in-Chief Andrew Dwulet’s apologetic Letter From the Editor, “Foolish Decisions Demand Reflection and Dialogue,” a commenter identified as “Mac” declared that the articles amounted to innocuous satire because they targeted a wide array of the Georgetown community equally. I think this sentiment accurately captures the underlying attitude on campus—that the articles themselves were inflammatory, but that it was acceptable because the writers at The Hoya were equal-opportunity offenders. After all, the article directly above the infamous piece on interracial relationships by “Ryan Westen” featured a similarly styled rant targeting a white male GUSA Senator.
However, the notion that distasteful humor targeting people of color is no different from that which targets white people is troubling for a number of reasons. As Brian Kesten, Brian Cook, and the rest of the students in the Student Commission for Unity proved this year, Georgetown is far from a multi-cultural paradise. In such an environment, it’s difficult to consider the articles satirical, regardless of the writer’s intent. In this type of environment, the all-too-common notion among young white people that our society is “post-racial” gives rise to an inability to understand the offensive nature of articles like the one about “Ryan Westen”.
The reality is that, unlike the ancestors of my black peers, my ancestors came to this country willingly as free human beings. I have to recognize that my ability to empathize—as opposed to sympathize—with the black community, or with any other minority group that the April Fools’ issue targeted, is severely limited.
Perhaps I’m just a guilty white liberal who can’t get beyond the racial dynamics of this controversy. In the comments section of Andrew Dwulet’s letter, “Malcom X” suggested that the April Fools’ uproar is nothing more than “white guilt” run amok in concert with “an ethnic group comprising 12% of the American population that makes so much damn noise.” Even if we assume that people like “Malcom X” are right, the idea that the outrage against The Hoya is simply a concert of hopelessly guilty white people and overly sensitive racial minorities shows a lack of understanding of why the articles offended a diverse spectrum of people. Put simply, by accepting this idea, we fail to struggle towards developing our capacity to empathize with people who are different from ourselves.
I don’t want to sound like a moralizing buffoon and I certainly don’t think each article was quite as offensive as the “Ryan Westen” article. Nonetheless, I strongly feel that the reaction by the majority of Georgetown’s white community to the April Fools’ issue is a microcosm of how racism manifests itself today. If The Hoya ever published a serious article entitled something like “The case against inter-racial dating,” I’m sure Georgetown students would be unanimously enraged. But “We Need More Interracial Loving at Georgetown” appeared beside lampoons of every conceivable group within our community. Instead of recognizing the need to struggle towards empathizing with the offended communities, however, much of Georgetown’s white community has declared that the responsibility actually falls on racial minorities to become less sensitive.
If the state of Georgetown’s race relations is to improve, we must develop the capacity to empathize and recognize that no marginalized community should feel that they must feign complacency with anything that signals racism. Until then, polarizing controversies such as this one will only continue to happen.