Letter to the Editor

APRIL FOOL’S: This article was published as part of The News-Letter’s annual April Fool’s edition, an attempt at adding some humor to a newspaper that is normally very serious about its reporting.

In response to this year’s weekly Opinions column “I’m Asian and Fuck White Privilege”:

Dear Editors, 

My name is Cole O’Neal, and I’m the founder and president of the White Student Union (WSU), a new and unofficial advocacy group on campus. There is a lot that I admire about the John Hopkin New-Letter. 

First, you have a lot of hardworking Asian lady editors in your paper. I won’t name names, because I have great difficulty telling these women apart. But I just want them to know that I’m so impressed by their English, and that it’s so fascinating to read about the perspectives of people who come from all of these exotic places.

You also make an effort to give minorities a voice. As a person of both Irish and Scottish descent, I know how discrimination feels, and I think visibility is important. I know that there are other people of my race that write for your paper and even have leadership roles. It’s great to see my increasingly invisible brethren represented in your paper.

That being said, I’ve noticed a lot of insensitive reporting and writing in this paper over the past couple of years. Or rather, a disappointing double standard.

For example, you do a good job for making people-first language a standard. You say “people of color” instead of “colored people,” and “people with disabilities instead of “disabled people.” For some minorities, you even avoid using color descriptors altogether. But nothing has changed for the way you describe us as “white people.” 

“White,” like “yellow,” is an outdated term. We attempted to reclaim this label when we named our organization the White Student Union, the way our friends from Africa often reclaim another such unspeakable word in rap music.

But we’re tired of being defined by our whiteness by others. We are not just “white.” We are people, just like everyone else. Yet “white people” litters the pages of your newspaper and conditions my people to see it as marker of shame. Maybe it’s time to apply your people-first language to white people too. Why not use the increasingly popular term “people of light?”

I didn’t realize how much stigma there was around being a “white” person, especially a white heterosexual cisgender man, until I came to Hopkins. Here, people joke about “white” people not being able to dance and being racist. To them it may be funny, but I personally find it troubling, bordering on racism. How can we have equality if we just turn the tide of hate against innocent people like myself, simply because of our race? It might seem harmless, but it’s in jokes like these that the rot starts. Soon all of us “whites” will be fearing for our lives.

There’s more. While you fuss over blackface, you do not look into the history of something that should earn equal — if not more — censure: whiteface. Here and across the nation, no one even blinks an eye when they see people appropriate our whiteness and our unique struggle. On Halloween I saw a student of color dress as Donald Trump, painting his face orange and wearing a fluffy yellow wig and tiny hand gloves. You are free to dislike Trump, but he is not a costume. He is an individual. And of course, K-Pop is really just an appropriation of white culture: all these people dye their hair blonde to look like us. I have an Asian classmate who has golden curls like Taylor Swift.

You talk about the progress we’ve made for people of color. You’ve written stories on the history of black people at Hopkins, but the history of white people at Hopkins is much longer. We’ve been here since 1876, but does anyone care? You’ve celebrated Indigenous Peoples Day, Black History Month and even Asian/Pacific Heritage Month. But where is our White Peoples Day? Our White History Month? When will our stories be heard?

You’re not the only ones to have fallen short in this regard. Another one that comes to mind is the Student Government Association, which has recently launched a Pink/Rainbow Wave for minorities and LGBTQ students and has even established a black caucus. I commend them for these initiatives, but it’s not very inclusive of them to not consider creating a White Wave or a white caucus. We have our own unique concerns and in a truly equal society we deserve the same treatment.

We want you to know that we respect you and we want your support and that of other student groups. So far only the College Republicans seem to pay us any attention. But if we want to create a color-blind society, a society where being white or black isn’t an obstacle, we have to stand together. We are all minorities here and all lives matter. 

Sincerely, 

Cole O’Neal, Founder of the White Student Union