When you publicly claim that white women wearing hoop earrings is an oppressive and exploitative act against women of color, people might pay attention to you.
Now the young women who told “white girl” to “take off your hoops” on the free speech wall at California’s Pitzer College – and then emailed the entire student body to talk about it – are accusing a conservative campus newspaper of endangering them by reporting what they did.
Alegria Martinez, Jacquelyn Aguilera and Estefania Gallo-Gonzalez told Latino Rebels, using their own names, they are “facing harassment from ultra right-wing groups and individuals, including a death threat through Facebook messenger,” because of coverage by Claremont Independent.
The newspaper “takes the situation out of context, sensationalizes the mural and puts young women of color in danger,” they claim:
It seems that their writer has released students’ emails and identities to the larger community, violating their rights to privacy as students. Also, the publishing of students’ names and affiliations has endangered the students outside of the institution.
Except there’s no evidence the Independent did any of that. It named Martinez and Aguilera because they named themselves in the campuswide email, but did not publish their email addresses; Gallo-Gonzalez is not mentioned at all.
Kat Timpf at National Review, who knows a thing or two about getting death threats for speaking in public, calls BS on this:
If the author did [publish their emails], I don’t support that decision, but I also don’t think that it’s something we can confidently accuse him of, especially considering that students’ .edu e-mail addresses are not all that difficult to figure out. …
Think about it: If you are going to e-mail the entire campus about an issue, why would you then turn around and slam the campus newspaper for covering it? … Sending an e-mail to an entire institution with your name on it, and then suggesting that you intended for that e-mail to stay private is a completely absurd line of thinking.
If you want to keep your opinions personal, then fine. Do that. The best way to keep them not private? Spray painting them all over a public wall and sending them out to thousands of people. That’s not discouraging publicity; it’s demanding it.
Pitzer President Melvin Oliver sent an earlier campuswide message denouncing the Independent for having “ignited a cycle of violent hate speech that threatens the safety and well-being of every member of our community.”
It was covered in the Independent – as it should be.
Read the Latino Rebels post (which goes into the weeds about the appropriation of hoop earrings), Timpf’s post and Independent‘s post on Oliver’s message.
MORE: White girls wearing hoop earrings oppress and exploit Latina, Black women
Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter
Please join the conversation about our stories on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, MeWe, Rumble, Gab, Minds and Gettr.