The Brown Daily Herald has come under fire for posting racist columns. And, as the Associated Press reported, the editorial board has now issued an apology.
The apology was posted two days after the first column went up. The editorial board referred to the columns as “not only controversial but also deeply hurtful.”
Both opinion columns were by student M. Dzhali Maier, ’17. The first column, from Oct. 5, is titled “The white privilege of cows.” The piece is still up, though it’s preceded by an extensive editor’s note. In part it reads:
This column did not meet The Herald’s standards for writing and clarity, and, more importantly, contained several factual inaccuracies regarding biology and race that cannot be corrected without compromising the argument of the entire column. The column relied on the repeatedly disproven premise that race is a biological category.
The piece itself “invoked the notion of biological differences between races.” Its concluding point reads that:
Natural inequality — inequality of history — isn’t something that can be taken up or abandoned at will. Rather, it gives us history and makes us human.
The other column, “Columbian Exchange Day,” has been taken down. In its place is another editor’s note, which once more apologizes and says the column was published by mistake. In part it reads:
This column has been removed after it was unintentionally published due to an internal error. The column made a racist argument about how Native Americans should interpret the meaning of Columbus Day and its history. We apologize to our readers for the offensive claims made in the column and for the shortcomings of our editorial process. After initially deciding the column was suitable for publication, a couple of editors read the column late last night and decided not to publish it. We contacted our publisher but were unable to reach them, and they printed the issue with the column inside. The article was also online for about an hour before we took it down.
The student’s pieces seemed to have taken a bizarre take on white privilege. The apology issued in the editor’s note added to that though, with a sense of white guilt:
We as The Herald are part of a history of Brown that is founded on inequality and that is too often slow to change. Brown itself is built on land that belonged to the Narragansett and Wampanoag nations, and yet the University has no formal relationships with them. As the composition of our campus community becomes more inclusive and diverse, this shift calls existing practices into question, including those of The Herald. Newspapers have a sacred responsibility to promote the free exchange of ideas, but that responsibility is designed to protect both those with controversial opinions and those whose voices are frequently excluded. The Herald’s opinions section has too infrequently been a platform for the latter.
As the editor’s note also read, the paper has had issues with publishing racist content before. Thus, the board has decided to re-examine the editing process.
