General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: How is it NOT a display of white privilege to mock the idea of "Safe Spaces"? [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)That was an "authority figure loses it in the heat of the moment" issue. And that was a campus surrounded by a community of hard-line segregationists(a term that describes probably 70% of white Missouri voters), so it's not totally incomprehensible that they might feel a bit touchy and defensive. They are trapped behind enemy lines.
I assume you are a straight white male, like me. One thing that is different with us than the majority of the human race is that nobody is ever going to be debating us from a standpoint of trying to discredit our very presence on campus. You and I can't know what it's like to have people acting like we are only in college because of affirmative action, or that we should be home bearing and raising children rather than learning, or that we should stop loving the people we love and live a lie by marrying people we can't sustain a relationship with(and also make damn sure that we never hold hands in public with the person we DO love on that campus).
The romanticized notion of "ideas being challenged" that you talk about is a notion born of race and class privilege. When a white cis straight man expresses an idea and somebody challenges, that person is almost never going to face the threat of violent repression simply for expressing that idea. There is nothing a straight white man can say that can ever get him treated like Martin Luther King or Harvey Milk or Angela Davis or the early 20th century suffrage activists were treated. White male antiwar or labor or antipoverty activists are never going to be treated as harshly as women, people of color, or LGBTQ people fighting for those causes will be treated. With straight white men, ONLY the ideas are challenged. With everyone else, the PERSON is challenged and subjected to total delegitimization.
It is that imbalance that led to the "safe space" concept.