Carolina Fans Acting Badly
Some female student at UNC embarrassed herself (one hopes) and her university (undoubtedly) when she yelled "Go back to the ghetto!" as the Maryland players left the Dean Dome Court Saturday afternoon. (Video here.)
I would like to say several things, one of which I've already said: The unidentified female should be publicly excoriated. She should suffer tremendous social probation and outrage. She should be embarrassed by and regretful of her actions.
The university, which is a governmental body, should not punish the female in spite of her outrageous speech. Outrageous speech is protected every bit as much by the First Amendment as normal conversations. In fact, for the First Amendment to mean anything, outrageous speech must be protected against the intrusion of governmental forces.
Finally, the assumption of the Sporting News blog writer that the offender is a "rich girl" is insulting. Carolina's students are not overwhelmingly rich. So the assumption that this offensive female is rich tells me more about the bias of the blog writer than about the target of his criticism. The blog writer should be chastised, I believe, for his offensive assumption about the Carolina student body.
"But," you might ask, "why is being called rich offensive."
The answer is that in context the author of the blog post is flippantly conflating the issues of ignorant actions, race and wealth. This sort of mixing of issues obscures the real issues which I mentioned above. Second, it allows the casual observer or commenter to cast too wide a net over the student body at UNC, which is unwarranted. Finally, matters of race and wealth do not show a strong correlation. Poor men are as prone to the failures of human kind in no greater measure, it seems to me, than are rich men.
There is nothing inherently wrong with richness. There is something, I believe, inherently wrong with the opinion the female in the video expressed. Therefore, the conflation of the two issues by the blog writer is wrongheaded and unnecessary. We do not have to turn to name calling no matter the issue. The idea that name calling is a decent substitute for well-crafted argumentation simply does not hold.
The Sporting News writer should be embarrassed, to a lesser degree than the female in the video, for taking a cheap shot at the UNC student body through the female proxy.
I would like to say several things, one of which I've already said: The unidentified female should be publicly excoriated. She should suffer tremendous social probation and outrage. She should be embarrassed by and regretful of her actions.
The university, which is a governmental body, should not punish the female in spite of her outrageous speech. Outrageous speech is protected every bit as much by the First Amendment as normal conversations. In fact, for the First Amendment to mean anything, outrageous speech must be protected against the intrusion of governmental forces.
Finally, the assumption of the Sporting News blog writer that the offender is a "rich girl" is insulting. Carolina's students are not overwhelmingly rich. So the assumption that this offensive female is rich tells me more about the bias of the blog writer than about the target of his criticism. The blog writer should be chastised, I believe, for his offensive assumption about the Carolina student body.
"But," you might ask, "why is being called rich offensive."
The answer is that in context the author of the blog post is flippantly conflating the issues of ignorant actions, race and wealth. This sort of mixing of issues obscures the real issues which I mentioned above. Second, it allows the casual observer or commenter to cast too wide a net over the student body at UNC, which is unwarranted. Finally, matters of race and wealth do not show a strong correlation. Poor men are as prone to the failures of human kind in no greater measure, it seems to me, than are rich men.
There is nothing inherently wrong with richness. There is something, I believe, inherently wrong with the opinion the female in the video expressed. Therefore, the conflation of the two issues by the blog writer is wrongheaded and unnecessary. We do not have to turn to name calling no matter the issue. The idea that name calling is a decent substitute for well-crafted argumentation simply does not hold.
The Sporting News writer should be embarrassed, to a lesser degree than the female in the video, for taking a cheap shot at the UNC student body through the female proxy.
posted by Birkel at Tuesday, January 22, 2008
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