As a class on November 15, we went to the Who is Richard Spencer talk where we were given a brief overview of who he is and what he represents and then we had a discussion panel. I didn’t really know much about him so I had to look up who he is. Richard Spencer is a white supremacist who believes in a “peaceful ethnic cleansing” and created the term “alt-right”. Alt right is a loosely defined group of people with far-right ideologies who reject mainstream conservatism in favor of white nationalism.
This relates to class because he has started going to colleges and trying to force his way into them and hold talks. Where private colleges can reject him without any repercussion, public colleges are being sued if denying him because this breaks the 1″ amendment. Many people are conflicted with this argument because his beliefs are basic hate speech but since it is not deliberately saying “I hate x” there’s nothing we can do about it.
The reason behind going to colleges is because he feels we represent the exact opposite of what he stands for and we are the most vulnerable so he might be able to switch people to his way of thinking easily. This relates to class because unless you are white you can’t feel safe. He represents whites being superior and feels as if whites are under attack, so he’s here to try to have whites wipe out entire ethnic/cultural groups.
My Black friends don’t feel safe, my Jewish friends don’t feel safe, my Muslim friends don’t feel safe…I am not safe simply because I am not white. This isn’t even including the other parts that make up a person such as sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, gender, etc. He promotes white supremacy at all cost, not because white people shouldn’t have positions of power but because he feels white people should completely wipe out other races to keep their power.
The social justice issues covered were heterosexism, sexism, and the main one being racism. As far as racism Spencer supports legal access to abortion, because he believes it would reduce the number of black and Hispanic people, he believes this would be a great advantage for white people. This insinuates that he doesn’t consider the fact that whites have abortions too and that he doesn’t care about a women’s rights to her body but what would be best for whites. He supports single-payer healthcare because he believes it would benefit white people.
When it comes to sexism he doesn’t believe women should be allowed to make foreign policy because their need to get revenge if done wrong would distract them from what really matters. He believes in his vision of an ethnostate women will go back to their traditional roles as housewives and child bearers. Of course, he’s against same sex marriage thinking that it is unnatural and won’t be a satisfying life but this was never one of his main focuses when trying to white wash America.
On a micro level, we can have conversations within our families and friends about these issues, how people feel about them and why. The biggest reason why things don’t get done is because people don’t try to get educated because of how bad things are, we have this “if we pretend it doesn’t exist, maybe it will go away” mentality and that just isn’t cutting it.
On a mezzo level, we can have dialogue at schools and we can have neighborhood meetings monthly on what’s going on in our area and how it impacts us. We can talk about what we want fixed about it and who we need to talk to so we can have our voices heard. On a macro level, we would take our problems to council men and women, to newscasters to tell them about what we are trying to get done, anyone who will listen to our viewpoints and ideas.
The quickest way to get noticed and spread word is appear on the news so if we can respectfully state our case on the news we would at least be heard and that would be a start. One person can’t change the world, but it takes one idea and someone to start working on the idea to make it become a reality and start the real change we are looking to make.
