Briggeman Responds on Racial Issues

We received a letter this morning from Jason Briggeman, in response to several comments we’ve made on his performance at the FMO/AAAB/Casa Hispana debates on Sunday night. Thank you, Jason, for clarifying your position—and for taking the time to express it to the campus through ASGossip.

The question (at least as I heard it) was simply for my opinions on race relations on this campus. I definitely made it clear that I see tension between the races—but I think it’s a result of the desires that often clash in demands for funding, speakers, etc. This tension is just not an open-and-shut case of ignorance and hatred of certain skin colors. (And if it is for some people…man, do they need to get with it.)

The reason I concentrated so hard on my platform during the debate was to try to make it clear to everyone there that I think my platform WILL help race relations. Superficially, it’s easy to glance at my ideas and say that they will hurt race relations because there will be less easy money for all the ethnically-based student groups. If the audience had been able to direct questions specifically to certain candidates, I expected and was ready for that question—and I thought it was important that the question be answered even though it wasn’t asked. Well, I tried to do that.

Neither I nor any white male could attend NU in the ‘90s and thrive while turning a “blind eye” to racial tension. Look, I know that I am not a racist. And despite my being 100% sure of that, I’m scared to death of being pegged as one, and I know many white guys here feel the same way. If somebody ever said anything like that about me, no matter how baseless the charge (and baseless it would be), there would be no possible response from me that would ever satisfactorily rectify the situation. If situations that make one feel helpless are to be feared, this one ranks close to the top.

But you know what? Despite all that, I just will not pander. I will not get up there and list twenty differently-colored friends of mine off the top of my head. I will not sign up for Bill Clinton’s latest Initiative on Loving Everybody. And I will not take the easy way out of dealing with racial issues, which is to just agree with everything and anything that is proposed to fix them, regardless of what my mind tells me that the actual result of implementing those proposals will be. I just do not believe that the answers to racism lie in requiring classes, or in building homes for every different ethnic group.

I think that dealing with people as individuals—or, if you prefer, as “minorities of one”—and cooperating with them to the fullest extent that we can possibly mutually agree upon, are the only actions that a real end to racism can be based on. Jerry Brown and I are both white males—but I don’t think two people could be much different. I know that there is no common goal for all white men, so I assume that there is no common goal for all Asian men, or all Hispanic women, or whatever. I believe that diversity holds down to the level of each individual mind, and that acting any differently violates basic principles of fairness and justice.

And if your man Ariel Friedler uses my money to help get one of those awful 4th-generation-imitation-of-Nirvana bands to play here—and thus, in his mind, sufficiently cover the “white-boy-rock” genre of music—my point will be proven.