Nathan Smith: Offering a forum to go far beyond superficial conversation

We must attack in order to defend ourselves. We must suspend civil liberties in order to guarantee freedom. We must invade in order to liberate. Stated succinctly: War is peace.

Though 1984 has long passed and America is a different animal from the society depicted in Orwell's masterpiece, there can be no doubt that the Bush administration liberally employs newspeak. Such language is intended to oversimplify, conceal reality and, ultimately, narrow the horizons of human thought.

It's double plus ungood, let me tell you.

Newspeak has grown to a new level, one that many of us recognize as insulting and dangerous. One does not have to be "radical" to know that framing discourse in terms of good and evil is painfully oversimplified. To paraphrase Arundhati Roy, "ridding the world of evildoers" is no more likely than packing the world with saints.

Many of my friends, colleagues and students -- conservative, liberal and radical -- are willing to admit that the good/evil binary has little to do with reality. However, there are a litany of likewise undefined and misapplied terms used in describing and debating the war, terms as negative as dictatorship, terrorist, pre-emption, oppression; words as warm as democracy, freedom, justice and equality; words that few bother to define before using and abusing.

Though this war brings out the extremes of misleading language, it should not surprise us. After all, political discourse has long been employed to conceal truth, particularly in regard to diversity issues, such as race, gender, sexual orientation, class and culture.

If, for example, people talk about race, some complain about reverse racism, learned helplessness, affirmative action quotas and the culture of poverty. These terms hide the contemporary American racial stratification and the history that shaped it, all the while misrepresenting the programs intended to rectify contemporary injustices.

Then again, you may hear weepy condemnation of prejudice and proud boasting of racial colorblindness, neither of which brings about genuine equity. On one hand, you have many conservative individuals denying the relationship between race and socioeconomic success, and on the other, you have many sympathetic liberals arguing that race matters and the solution is simply to eradicate personal racist beliefs.

And so often, as in the preceding paragraph, you see liberal and conservative pitted against one another as if they defined the full range of thought about the matter. In fact, they do not; both positions work toward a similar end.

Neither argument presents truth, for in both instances, the language employed conceals the genuine fissures in our society. The conservative denies the importance of race, the liberal declares that prejudice is the problem -- neither offers hope for those who experience oppression firsthand. This is because neither position, if it were ultimately to prevail, would result in a tangible change in our social structure, an equitable distribution of wealth and power across all race lines.

Language and thought alone will not change reality. Nor will this column. Only education, undertaken carefully and methodically, can reveal the connection and disconnection between the material conditions of our lives and the ways in which those conditions are discussed. Only education can reveal the points at which one can engage in order to create tangible change.

It is for this reason that we have Programs for Awareness in Culture and Education (PACE). Our purpose has always been to challenge, to demystify, to clarify and to reveal, so that those who want justice can more effectively bring it about.

In Education 566, "Cross Cultural Awareness," the course that trains PACE facilitators, we put a premium on reality -- the facts which indicate in no uncertain terms the progress, and lack of progress, in the effort to end oppression. Then we explore how debates around diversity can serve to clarify or mystify that reality. Ultimately, in hopes of spreading this critical and reflective attitude toward the world, we train our facilitators to help others do the same.

If you seek understanding of these issues, an understanding that avoids PC pandering or conservative condemnation, one that refuses to frame the debate in terms of good versus evil, right versus wrong, black versus white -- if you want to understand these issues beyond the superficial and binary level of public debate, if you want to learn effective ways to then spread this understanding -- apply for the fall PACE class.

We provide a forum for reflection, a forum of genuine and balanced diversity, a forum mediated by well-versed experts, a forum for sophisticated and effective analysis of our society and the very real problems that exist within it.

Many take up the weak weapons of public discourse and make a futile attempt to cut to the heart of the matter. If, however, you want to cast aside the limitations of superficial conversation and, with peers and professors, excavate the truths buried beneath the tired rhetoric -- then please join us. Applications are due Friday, April 4, and forms are available at http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~paceprog/applicationbase.htm.

Nathan Smith is the coordinator of Programs for Awareness and Cultural Education at Penn.

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