I was very disappointed by recent Free Press coverage of the Undoing Racism workshop (“The New School’s Experience With Undoing Racism”, Feb 21) at The New School. I believe it displayed a lack of journalistic integrity to the facts and a desire to probe the root causes of an issue. My comments are as a former newspaper editor, a participant in the Undoing Racism workshop, and as someone who teaches, works and cares deeply about issues of justice and power. I want to challenge the Free Press to reflect seriously on how it covers issues of race and privilege at this institute, and to hold the paper to a higher stand of political and journalistic accountability.
Journalistic integrity lives in two places in every newspaper, the reporter and the editor. This story had multiple factual errors, including identifying students as part of the University Student Senate (USS) who are not. While I’m sure the USS doesn’t mind the credit, such errors speak to a lack of attention to basic fact checking. Surely the Free Press can do a better job in the future of paying attention to such details, big or small.
But more problematic was the overall tone of the article and the accompanying editorial comments by the editors (“High Cost, Low Impact”), which focused on the price tag of the workshop. The editors wrote that, “In a time of financial austerity at The New School, especially when a hiring freeze remains in force, the program’s price-tag [$15,000] bears examination.” My response to such an arguments is this—what is the “right price” to pay for social justice? If we could have reached 400 students for $150,000, or 1,000 students for $375,000 or 3,000 students for $1.1 million, would it be worth it then? When does social justice stop becoming an exercise in cost-benefit analysis and instead become a passion that drives our mission?
The New School is a predominately white, middle class and ostensibly “progressive” institution of elite learning, where we talk about the value of equality and justice, but often fall short when we are asked to put those values into practice. Balbi’s editorial, and the response from some at this school to critiques of institutional racism and white supremacy that workshops like Undoing Racism give voice to, reminds me of the white Alabama ministers telling the civil rights movement to “wait.” MLK Jr’s response to these arguments, which was also addressed to so-called white liberal allies, was that ‘”Wait” has almost always meant “Never.”‘ As long as the white majority—myself included—keep saying “wait” to deal with issues of racism at The New School, we will continue to be the problem, not the price tag of a workshop for social change.’
Chris Crews
NSSR, Politics
Thank you Chris and Peta,
This letter and your comment bring to the fore some of the most pressing issues about the misrepresentation of the work of Students for Social Justice, the Social Justice Initiative, and the value of the Undoing Racism Workshop.
I wonder, “What’s the price tag at Lang for the New School Free Press?” If we want to talk about cost-benefit… I spent several hours coordinating with one of the journalists on this piece and I wasn’t even given the decency of being identified appropriately. If the organization can’t even get those FACTS right, then maybe the Free Press’ value to our community “bears examination.”
Our university can not afford to claim social justice as a driving value in its mission statement and not pursue, with the most prudent of nature, the principles of both social justice and higher learning. There’s a lot of work to be done within our community, and frankly, there’s no dollar amount that is “too much” for the progress that motivated organizers, activists, educators, and creatives are prepared to make after engaging with experiences like the Undoing Racism Workshop.
My call to the University is to recognize that a legacy and nostalgia for the progressive, liberal past of TNS is not a signal to get hunkered down and comfy in our daily routines. This legacy, these laurels, came at the cost of comfort and normativity in the past – what makes our privileged student body, board of trustees, and other community members think that these debts are no longer inherited? It is western culture that conceptualized this model of inherited debt after all. Systems of oppression have feedback loops, and regardless of the cost – be it $5-$10 per student or $500-$1000 per student – our Learning Organization must support the radical re-education of Individual Learners.
While it’s true that a workshop is not a symbol of transformation – I would argue that it is a step, a catalyst. This event has begun a process that, with accurate representation, has the potential to drastically reduce the impact of institutional racism and the micro-aggressions that students of color (both domestic and international) seem to experience almost without fail in this institution.
Thank you Chris for putting words to what I also felt. Let’s break down the actual cost in terms of what the USS, the elect body of student representatives from all Divisions, used from each student for this workshop. With $10,000 put in over the course of both the Spring and Fall semester of 2012 the cost per student is anywhere between $5-10. Most people spend that much on lunch.
It’s an extremely small investment towards addressing a problem that impacts nearly 50% of the student population.