I want to preface this monsoon of raw emotion by saying I know the hateful person who defaced the closest thing U.Va. has to Hotel California is probably not going to read this. That’s not what this is for. This is so I can make jokes about something awful because, in a year that defies satire, it’s the only reaction I have left that isn’t just me breaking down in tears. Enjoy.
Hey. Idiot.
I know you’re out there. The person who’s been doing all these horrible racist things. Cut it out.
Notice the fact that “idiot” was singular, not plural. Just the one idiot. That’s because I’m going to address you, the aforementioned idiot, as an individual moron for the entirety of this article. The idea that there are multiple perpetrators makes me want to vomit like a toddler, on a damn tilt-a-whirl, cranked up to its paint-mixer setting. The possibility that a group of people thought through these actions, reflected and decided, “Yup, this terrible idea is representative of the best my brain has to offer” makes me more depressed than anything I have ever, ever experienced, and I’ve been closely following the 2016 presidential election. That’s how bad this is.
But let’s set aside the sadness for a moment, because the world won’t be ending until January. Let’s just focus on the rage, cause my therapist is out of town this week and I have some stuff to take out on you.
I’m generally a believer in nuance. But you’re emulating Hitler? Really? You picked one of the few universally agreed upon bad guys in the entire world to emulate. He’s the only person whose name everyone on the Internet uses as an insult, and that’s a community with a nuanced, conflicted view on whether sex trafficking is bad.
First off, what is wrong with you? It’s 2016! You go to a school surrounded by people of other ethnicities, people who frequently attend the same classes and parties you do. Even if you feel culturally or socially separated from them that gives you no right to make them feel actively unsafe! I don’t particularly identify with the culture of Portugal, but you don’t see me devising new racial slurs and defacing their buildings!
How could you think this is okay? I know you live in a country where a bigot is in every news cycle and attend a school built by slaves and funded by fraternities that begrudgingly desegregated, but what sort of childish logic is it to assume that behaving in the same way would be justified. That would be as ridiculous as hearing something about reducing immigration from Mexico and then proposing that we build a wall. But that probably sounds like a great idea to you, because that’s where this hellscape of a year has left us.
Secondly, even if for some reason you got past the cognitive dissonance required to think that anyone is lesser for looking different, what made you think this was a smart move? College Republicans endorsed a racist and everyone with a pulse and a tongue metaphorically ripped them to shreds and fed them to a wolf like we were on the cover of a damn death metal album. You, were you discovered by the public at large, would suffer a critique so vicious and thorough that there wouldn’t even be enough left to give the wolf.
Third, and this is the part that I’m most confused about: What did you think this would accomplish? Did you think, “Ah yes, and when I spray paint this, on an apartment complex, everyone will seize the call to action. They’ll know their friendly neighborhood anti-Semite is back in business”? When your mom said put yourself out there at college, this is not what she meant.
You literally pulled a Sauron (this is going to get nerdy; deal with it). You gave a very real, very scary face to something that had previously been only ethereal and, in doing so, motivated every apathetic college kid. It takes a literal bribe and first born child to get someone to go to an a capella concert, much less take a stand against bigotry, but writing a slur on the side of a building will do it.
Bottom line: Quit being racist. Seriously. Stop it. Freaking cut it out.
Love in a year where everything is awful,
Connor
Connor McLean is a Humor writer.
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