Safe spaces are not classrooms

Last week, during the Safe Spaces Forum, it became clear that those opposed to safe spaces on Columbia’s campus assumed that these spaces are exclusive and, thereby, unjustly exclusionary. In fact, the safe spaces created at the behest of black and LGBTQ students and the coveted, mysterious inner-community discussions hosted therein are open to any member of the Columbia student body. However, if the Malcolm X and Donaldson lounges were indeed exclusive spaces, as these Republican students imagine, would this exclusivity necessarily be legitimate cause for outrage within the white hetero-community?

Toward the beginning of the forum, one of the Republican panelists asserted that safe spaces reside outside the bounds of “society.” This assertion that a room populated only by black or LGBTQ individuals represents a peripheral, socially irrelevant space, reflects a racist, homophobic attitude that equates social relevance with whiteness and heterosexuality. It is such an attitude that underlies the criminalization of inner-community discussions festering beneath dismissive questions such as, “What good is a discussion about racism if no white person is there to learn from it? How is that productive?”

Should the value of a black person’s voice depend on the number of white ears that receive it? In “The Souls of Black Folk,” W.E.B. DuBois describes the American world as one “which yields him [the Negro] no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world.” He continues, “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” Indeed, for any students in either the colored or queer community, any students used to understanding themselves only via a hetero or white lens, the liberation from the white hetero-gaze that an exclusive space offers provides the opportunity for a self-affirmation/discovery that “society” precludes. In other words, this barring of the white ear, which, for the Republican panelist, makes these spaces irrelevant, is precisely what makes them valuable.

Yet, the question I’m attempting to ask here is not why exclusive spaces would, in theory, be valuable on Columbia’s campus, but, rather, why not? Why does a perceived lack of access to inner-community discussion so violently perturb this group of predominately white and heterosexual students?

During the forum, two students, both from “extraordinarily small towns outside Houston, Texas,” shared their reasons for attending Columbia. One of them explained that Columbia’s appeal lay in “the diversity of perspective it would bring, whether that be race, sexuality, location, anything.” She felt that “safe spaces does [sic] kind of break that discourse up.” Similarly, one of the Republican panelists accused the panelists representing the LGBTQ and black student populations of “detracting from my university experience” by excluding him from conversations he believed were reserved for members of the black and LGBTQ communities. In the simplest of terms, the claim here is that the (imagined) existence of inner-community dialogue prevents the emotional growth of white and heterosexual students, particularly those from ethnically homogenous, conservative environments.

This, then, begs the question: why must the personal experiences of marginalized students be put on public display so that white and heterosexual students might derive from them some emotional growth? When did my life become this week’s reading? The young woman who came to Columbia to learn about “diversity” is, apparently, under the mistaken impression that all students of color came to teach her.

The belief that LGBTQ and/or students of color ought to educate their white and heterosexual peers only reinforces the power dynamic between these two groups by placing the former at the service of the latter. Indeed, perhaps some students are comfortable with such an arrangement. Is there something particularly askew, however, if some of us aren’t?

In an email I recently received from a Columbia administrator, I was encouraged to appeal to “those who may currently disagree or even hate you.” Frankly, I have no interest in assisting those who hate me in their life’s journey—it is not my responsibility to humanize or civilize myself in the eyes of those who demean me.

It is important to note that the existence of inner-community discussion does not preclude the existence of inter-community discussion. In a lot of ways, the former can serve as a jumping board for the latter. But this is not where inner-community dialogue derives its value—it has inherent worth that, unfortunately, has been overlooked by many in the debate over safe spaces.

Yasmeen Ar-Rayani is a junior in Columbia College majoring in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies. She has organized with Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, and Turath, The Arab Students Organization at Columbia. Color in Colonial College runs alternate Mondays.