When I was 14 years of age I witnessed the consequences of a prank that I have yet to forget.
I was in high school in Ghana in West Africa. On that fateful day one of our revered Latin teachers came to class to teach Ovid, Sallust and Cicero. The content has faded away, but that sense of horror that showed on his otherwise benign and iconic face when he looked at the board still gazes back at me. Just before the class and while we were at recess, one of my classmates had sketched a swastika on the board. Our Latin teacher was Peter Denton. He was a white South African expatriate teacher and of Jewish origin. Quite provoked, he did not even ask who drew the sign. He did not have to. He made us all stand for the entire 40 minute session while he taught. We got the message: “What you intend is not necessarily how it is received.” He appeared indubitably wounded beyond repair. We felt a sense of compathy with him. Word buzzed around the entire school. We were all filled with regret. No one repeated such a prank ever again in the multiple years that I attended.
Peter Denton was no ordinary teacher. His students went on to the Sorbonne to study English, to read theology at Aberdeen or Edinburgh, Scotland, to specialize in Civil Law at St. John’s College, Oxford, to become psychoanalysts as I am, among other student achievements. Most importantly, and for a 14-year-old and his peers, he was the cricket coach that took us to successful national championships. Those were our World Series.
Why am I telling our readers all this? A very simple answer! If a 14-year-old can understand his lesson, young adult students at the University can and must. College students must bury such facile notions as “It was just a prank,” or, “We are all racists.” No, we are not all racists. For we do not all have the power to subordinate or subjugate others. We do not all have the desire to humiliate, lacerate, psychologically or physically injure our peers, superiors or mentees. And, please, let us not hide behind “free speech.”
What is “free” about depicting a person of African origin as a monkey wearing braids? What is “free” about inscribing the N-word on the door of a schoolmate? What is “free” about hurling racial epithets at others? Let us not even go there. Just try human decency, or respect for self if respecting others is too much to ask. Even if free speech is exculpatory in some court of law, let us aim at a higher standard of conduct in our community.
Let us cut to the chase: racism, sexism and other forms of intolerance cannot be normalized at the University, not even in the days of Donald Trump.
In the interactive and global world in which we now live we, all have to be ready to deploy diversity as an academic and social capital. Students have to study abroad and visit mass graves in St. Petersburg Russia, death camps at Salaspils and Kaunas in Latvia and feel the grounds tremble with the crying dead. Students have to travel to slave castles in West Africa and hear from the windowless and deep caverns of slave castles in Cape Coast and Elmina the mournful and sorrowful cries of slaves whose kinsmen and ancestors still feel the residual and transgenerational traumata of the ages. For transgressed people, there is no such thing as post-traumatic stress disorder. It is a daily and quotidian experience. That is why we do not have the luxury of “racial pranks” in our vocabulary. Let us make use of conversations about difference and identity in our classrooms. Let us look at the ethical dimensions of our creations and their environmental consequences. Most importantly, let us ask questions that can both potentially create a new world and reconfigure how we situate ourselves in it so that we can all prosper. Difficult and painful conversations they may be, but without that kind of meaningful discourse, we cannot expect to see enduring change happen in our lifetime.
In two months we have had three pranks. Let us take time out to establish some sense of order.
Maurice Apprey is a professor of psychiatry and dean of African-American affairs.
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