Towards True Constructive Discourse

The following is a copy of a letter that I sent to members of the Tufts administration. Certain names have been omitted for the purpose of privacy.

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Dear all,

Earlier today, my friend sent you a letter in which she detailed how because of her speech and her history of activism at Tufts, she has received verbal personal attacks from anonymous members of the Tufts community. I will not reproduce those comments here because I trust that you at least read letters coming from your students, and you have seen them already. Even though the comments come from a few sources who have not been named, they have caused her and her friends great distress. Do you know what it's like to meet new people and have to think about whether this person already hates who you are?

When I read her letter today, it woke me to how real the harmful environment on campus is. I had tried to be thick-skinned. I took all the comments of "whiny", "bitchy", "crybaby minority", as well as the ones telling me and my friends to "shut the fuck up" about racism and bigotry as signals that yes, indeed, there were people at Tufts who were ignorant and who I had to reach out harder to. I took their attacks as attacks on the principles that I stood for, not as attacks on my person. However when she bravely attached her name to the words she wrote, she became the one target of attacks that named her as someone to be derided, ignored, demeaned, and not taken seriously. I had previously changed my name entry on facebook in anticipation of the backlash that could get personal. But seeing how personal it has gotten for her has, yes, made me fearful of coming out with my name to speak out on racism and bigotry and support my classmates. But I intend to anyway because despite my fear of retaliation upon my person, I want people to know that these harmful acts and this harmful environment are things that I, Anthony Cruz, do not approve of, and if they disagree I want them to tell it to my face.

As an administration, it is one thing to foster freedom of speech on a campus, but it smacks of irresponsibility to encourage speech among students and completely disavow ownership of the discourse that ensues. Of course you tell us all that racist, hateful, and violent speech are bad and that you care about the intellectual, physical, and emotional well-being of students on this campus. But these are all truisms that you have to tell us. I don't need to hear that you care about me or that you decry racial slurs. I need you to acknowledge that this is a problem that we students cannot fix by ourselves because in an important way, racism is a problem with all students, with the university, and even with you, members of the administration.

Which brings me to my next point. My parents have been extremely supportive of my efforts, and yet every time I show them a piece I wrote for my blog, the rally campaign or the Tufts Daily, they wonder about the toll it is taking on my schoolwork and the time I should spend studying. And you know what? It does take time that I would have spent studying. But as a person I cannot spend my time studying when I know that I can and should be doing the right thing. I should not have to be telling my classmates that racism still exists, that it is much more than a problem of individual racists and that we should all actively stand together against it. Believe it or not, despite Tufts' rigorous standards for admission, there are still people I have to explain these things to. But I shouldn't have to explain it to them. That is YOUR job. If you tell me and students like me that my views are important and that you completely support them, why is it I that has to defend them over and over and over again before people that you have conceded are misinformed and misguided about the problem of racism? I want to believe that you are not likewise misguided, and that you truly support the cause that me and my friends are fighting for, but we really need much more help than we're currently getting. I should not have to be taking time to write this letter, but I do anyway. I really have no choice because, unfortunately, unlike many other Asian Americans, my parents never taught me to "know my place."

This campus is not as divided as you may think. It is not black and white, or asian and white, or rich and poor or administration and students. When someone shouts death threats and racial slurs at my friends or derides my friend's character for speaking what she believes is right, it is a problem with all of us. These things happen because people think that they're the okay things to do, that no one will speak out in disapproval or that the consequences will not harm them. I tell you that this is exactly what people have in their minds when they do these things.

In a way, this letter comes from me alone and it is a mere drop in the bucket, and it will certainly not end racism by itself. But it is small for a very important reason. That is because in order to end or at least lessen the harmful power of bigotry and oppresion, it requires efforts from all of us, not just those of us who feel oppressed, but those of us who belong to the groups that hold power and privilege in this social system.

Truth be told, I'm new to this whole activism thing. Some of the people who have called me whiny are right about a few things - I'm still full of a lot of noise and anger. One thing you can count on is that I will continue to be noisy and angry until you and the administration finally take ownership of the harmful environment on this campus and take steps towards fixing it. In fact, I am adding all these email addresses to a mailing list of mine now, just so I can send emails to all of you with ease in the future. If you mark me as spam, I will find some other way to reach you.

I'm told by my more cynical classmates that I'm going to have to learn to not get responses from people in positions of power. I frankly don't care whether you write me back personally or not. You are all busy people and there are many things that require your attention. I just hope that the well-being of your students becomes one of those things someday.

Best,
Anthony