Ian Saxine Columnist

Last week, the Moderate, Independent and Conservative Alliance (MICA) and The Imperialist discovered that free speech is a two way street. A certain person, hiding behind a pen name, expressed his or her opinions, and the vast majority of his or her readers exercised their right to speak back, and the answer was clear: you’re an idiot. Something else was made clear following The Imperialist scandal: Vassar is more American than it thinks.

No, I’m not talking about patriotism, religion, or even race here. I’m talking about victimization, one of the true pastimes of American politics.

To me, nothing describes the offending article better than dumb. Offensive, surely, but not hate speech and not threatening. As I listened, I was disappointed to see the banner of victimization being raised by Vassar students on both sides. To be honest, I have never been surprised by conservative claims of victimization on campus. It has historically been conservatives and reactionaries who have attempted to claim victimhood for themselves to avoid serious intellectual discussion.

The American South in particular comes to mind. White slave owners there whined when the rest of the country abolished slavery in the early 1800s. Southern states threatened to leave the Union to keep slavery, and then claimed they were unfairly persecuted by abolitionists when most of the country didn’t vote the way the southern slaveholders wanted them to. After losing a war they started in defense of slavery, white southerners claimed they were victims because of the effects of that defeat, and insisted that any attempts to assist former slaves were unfair to whites.

In the twentieth century, white segregationists felt “victimized” by the Civil Rights movement, and fought hard to be allowed to disenfranchise blacks. Today, whiny Evangelicals fill the airwaves about being persecuted by the separation of church and state, and complain that they feel “threatened” by homosexuals who are somehow going to destroy that cherished fictional idea of the perfect traditional American family. Whiny white men complain that they are victimized by affirmative action, gender equality, and people who make fun of their poor dancing abilities.

Of course, those groups aren’t really being threatened. They just think they are. Rational people know better, that just because someone claims to be a victim doesn’t necessarily make them one. Unfortunately, the victimization bonanza has spread to the other side of the political aisle. Being a victim is huge today. All you have to do is claim you have been wronged, and all rational debate can come to a screeching halt.

Don’t believe me? Several years ago a U.S. government official used the word “niggardly” in a public address, and began to receive complaints from hundreds of poorly informed people across the nation. Never mind that “niggardly” means “stingy” and has Scandinavian linguistic roots, and has nothing whatsoever to do with race. The official was made to apologize anyway, because some people felt victimized by his injudicious use of college-level vocabulary.

Then there are all of the super-sized victims in the National Association for Advancement of Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) who claim to be victims of a medical establishment that insists that being morbidly obese makes you more susceptible to diabetes and heart failure.

So, when I heard The Imperialist opponents using the language of victimhood, I was disappointed. Instead of answering the offensive writer who claimed that diversity on campus is only here to make white kids feel good, his opponents took the shortcut and called his article hate speech. Rather than answering that no, diversity and the ALANA are about providing equal opportunities for underrepresented and historically disadvantaged students, people went ahead and said the article was “threatening.”

Sorry, but threats and hate speech are about inciting others to violence or indicting entire groups of an offense, rather than attacking a certain institution—like the ALANA center or Blegen—or questioning its motives. There is a difference between thinking you are being threatened and actually being threatened.

Real progress is not made by claiming victim status. The liberal movement achieved some of its greatest successes during the Civil Rights era by courageously taking action and proving that southern white claims of victimhood were false, and even more, stupid. Why, then, the rush to claim victimhood now? Victims are helpless and disempowered. Hurricanes make victims. Bigotry makes people feel bad, but victimhood is a state of mind. To allow liberalism to fully slip into the habit of using victimization as a replacement for reasoned debate would be a true shame.

For Vassar to be the engine for social improvement that it wishes to be, its students had better leave the victimization game to the whiny reactionaries who they claim to oppose.