Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Friday, March 23, 2018

What does it mean to support free speech?

ANNA HORTON | OP-ED

T

he slang use of the word 
“basic” emerged during my 
high 
school 

years and was marked 
by the appreciation of 
Starbucks, UGG boots 
and yoga pants. These 
three 
preferences 

were enough to make 
someone 
“basic.” 

According 
to 
an 

article by Buzzfeed, 
basic came into usage 
around 2011. However, 
according to the piece 
“that original usage had nothing to 
do with middle-class white girls. 
Instead, ‘basic bitch,’ like so many 
things that become commonplace 
within mainstream (white) culture, 
was 
appropriated 
from 
black 

culture.”

By 2014, the term basic as it 

is now understood was widely 
recognizable. 
CollegeHumor 

shared a video titled, “How To 
Tell If You’re a Basic Bitch.” This 
is where the slang version of basic 
derived from: the designation 
of a woman as a basic bitch. 
However, as the Buzzfeed article 
points out, “basic bitch” was the 
slang primarily used by the Black 
community. “Basic bitch” also had 
different connotations before it was 
co-opted by white culture when it 
was also shortened to basic.

Basic, in its mainstream slang 

form, is used to indicate a woman 
(almost always white in this 
iteration of the word) who likes 
things that are popular. The sin of 
a basic is consuming what other 
white women consume. The basic 
woman’s habits are boring. Of 
course, she likes the popular thing. 
She likes it because it’s popular.

The wrongdoing of someone 

who is basic goes beyond that. The 
basic woman is wrong because her 
personality is hinged on her taste. 
Her taste is unoriginal. Therefore 
her whole being is unoriginal. 
Therefore she is basic. Because 
the regular thing to do is decide 
that someone’s whole essence is 
encapsulated by their pumpkin 
spice 
latte 
order 
and 
thusly 

condemn them. Basic is, or was at 
one point, strictly negative.

Since then, basic has grown 

and changed. Now, partaking in 
any number of activities can make 
a person basic. Basic activities 

include (but are not limited to) 
buying scented candles, wearing 

Timberland shoes and 
ordering white wine. 
My most distinct basic 
characteristics are as 
follows: I like brunch, 
Warby Parker glasses 
and 
the 
musical, 

“Hamilton.” 
I 
can’t 

even track what’s basic 
anymore. As far as I 
can tell, you’re basic 
for liking anything that 
people like.

I do think that basic has lost 

some of the power it once had. I 
think we’ve collectively leaned 
into it. While it may still tend to be 
negative at times, women use basic 
familiarly now, with affection. And 
while it was never a particularly 
impressive or barbed insult, it has 
found an even more casual place in 
the vernacular and serves just to call 
white girls out for doing anything 
that at least one other white girl 
might like doing. It has even turned 
to a term that can be used for 
men, though basic dudes are more 
commonly known as “bros,” as can 
be seen in a CollegeHumor video 
published the year after the basic 
bitch video came out.

Even though basic isn’t the 

insult it used to be, I think it’s 
interesting that it existed at all. 
If we deconstruct the motivation 
behind calling someone basic, it 
might shed interesting light on the 
expectations we have for women.

When women call other women 

basic in a judgmental way, we play 
into a patriarchal assumption that 
women have to prove their power 
by belittling other women. In 
media, we frequently see women 
in competition. Female characters 
are “frenemies” or straight up 
challengers after the same man. 
The purpose of female friendships 
as they are often represented 
is to exhibit rivalry — to 
demonstrate that women are too 
dramatic/petty/emotional (take 
your pick of adjectives) to simply 
be friends with another woman 
or a group of women.

Think 
about 
how 
it’s 

supposedly a compliment to tell a 
girl that she’s “not like other girls.” 
That she’s better because she has 
differentiated herself from other 
women; other women typically 

possess some shared, negative trait 
but this one woman does not have 
it. Using the designation of basic 
convinced women to do this for 
themselves, to boost their position 
in the hierarchy by demeaning 
the tastes of a different group. 
Noreen Malone, in an article for 
The Cut, writes that basic, as an 
insult “derives its power from 
the knowledge that if you can 
recognize someone or something 
as basic, you probably, yourself, 
aren’t it.”

Basic also depends on the 

oft-internalized idea that women 
exist to be seen. It relies on the 
assumption that women’s tastes 
are 
performative. 
Basic 
only 

works because we expect that the 
whole motivation behind women’s 
preferences is to tell others (like 
men) something about her, that 
everything she does has the express 
purpose of making people think 
she fits into some specific group. 
But when she picks the wrong 
things, or wants people to feel a 
specific, 
arbitrarily-determined 

wrong way about her, we deem her 
basic. Women are not allowed to 
just like things. Every single thing 
they choose to consume is picked 
with the purpose of crafting 
a persona. Essentially, calling 
someone basic assumes that what 
a woman prefers — from clothing 
to coffee order — was chosen for 
the purpose of telling you who 
she is, and that your judgment is 
something that matters to her. It 
probably doesn’t.

As writer Dana Schwartz 

once tweeted, “Let’s stop calling 
girls basic for liking things that 
are objectively likable...” Insults, 
especially gendered ones, lose their 
power when women refuse to bow 
to the pressure of undermining 
other women to secure their own 
status. 

With all of that being said, basic 

has already started its descent into 
so-last-year insults. It was weak at 
best, and as the sheer inanity of it 
becomes apparent, it just grows 
weaker. It loses its power if you 
lean into it, if you reclaim it, if you 
decide that being basic just means 
that you like things that are likable. 
Good for you.

A 

recently-published Vox 
article claims a radical 
counter-narrative 
to 

one of the most contentious 
subjects on college campuses 
across the U.S. According to 
the news outlet’s co-founder, 
Matthew Yglesias, “support 
for free speech” is actually 
on the rise among liberal 
college students.

In 
his 
article, 
Yglesias 

calls out reporters at The New 
York Times and Reason for 
“bombastically” 
exaggerating 

university 
“politically 

correct” culture. The recent 
protest 
of 
Christina 
Hoff 

Sommers’s lecture at Lewis 
& Clark College, along with 
the controversy over NYT’s 
Bari 
Weiss’s 
op-ed 
“We’re 

All Fascists Now,” aren’t only 
unrepresentative of free speech 
decline — they’re distracting 
from larger trends. In fact, 
according to nearly five decades 
of questionnaires by the U.S. 
General 
Social 
Survey, 
the 

US is increasingly supportive 
of 
communist, 
militarist, 

anti-theist 
and 
homosexual 

speakers. This acceptance of 
“controversial” 
viewpoints, 

Yglesias argues, suggests free 
speech is less of a contentious 
issue than conservatives would 
have us believe.

Yet several problems prevail 

with 
Yglesias’s 
argument, 

the most obvious being the 
categories themselves. After 
all, when was the last time you 
went to hear a “communist” or 
“militarist” speak, whether on 
campus or otherwise? What 
about an “anti-theist?” Not 
only are these labels outdated, 
but 
equating 
the 
social 

environment of 1972 (when 
the study began) with today 
ignores the dramatic historical 
changes that have normalized 
such views (the fall of the Soviet 
Union, for one). What’s more, 
the Foundation for Individual 
Rights in Education has logged 
371 speakers as “disinvited” 
from 
public, 
private, 
and 

religious universities between 
2000 and 2018, the majority 
of whom were identified as 
“conservative.” 

Yet another inconsistency 

in Yglesias’s argument lies in 
the assumption that supporting 
the 
expression 
of 
certain 

ideological paradigms is the 
same as supporting free speech. 
Imagine 
you 
were 
asked 

whether you’d be willing to 
listen to a well-known feminist 
speaker. Then imagine that 
someone asked you whether 
you’d be willing to listen to 
someone dispute the gender pay 
gap. Do you see the problem? 
The reason self-dubbed “factual 
feminist” 
Christina 
Hoff 

Sommers is controversial isn’t 
her label, but her unwillingness 
to toe an ideological line. 
As she argues in a video for 
Prager University, “(feminist) 
activists make claims … to 
support their views” that don’t 
stand up to scrutiny. Yet rather 
than subjecting her and other 
“controversial” 
speakers 
to 

similar 
treatment, 
students 

reject their ideas as acceptable 
or 
unacceptable, 
good 
or 

bad. 
Rather 
than 
objective 

information, facts have become 
political territories waiting to 
be staked by whichever party 
they are interpreted to support.

It’s easy to let the partisan 

brain take over at this point. 
After all, aren’t certain groups 
just twisting facts to support 
their 
political 
agendas? 

Christina 
Hoff 
Sommers, 

as one Salon article puts it, 
is nothing but a “bigot who 
makes a living propping up 
misogynist myths.” What’s the 
point of having such a speaker 
on campus anyway?

In yet another Vox article, 

ironically titled “Science is 
already political. So scientists 
might as well march.” David 
Roberts argues that science 
is made up of two aspects: 
scientific theory (“science-t”) 
and 
scientific 
practice 

(“science-p”). Science-t is pre-

interpretive fact — the raw 
data produced by replicable 
research. Roberts notes that 
since science informs rather 
than proves, it must rely on 
consistency before it can be 
considered a fact. Science-p, 
however, is science taken to 
its logical end in supporting, 
not supporting or complicating 
a hypothesis. Thus, while we 
need science-t to determine 
trends, we need science-p to 
decide what that those trends 
mean — a process Roberts 
labels as inherently political.

Humans 
need 

interpretation — it’s how we 
make sense of being bombarded 
daily with data. But we also 
need to constantly check our 
interpretations for bias. As 
Peter Boghossian, a philosophy 
professor at Portland State 
University, notes, “obfuscation 
is a litmus test of an ideologue.” 
If we, as college students, 
truly want to support free 
speech, our allegiance must 
lie with facts, not ideologies, 
and reasoned belief rather 
than 
acceptable 
dogma. 

Likewise, if we truly hold to 
certain 
political 
opinions, 

welcoming alternative views 
should be part of maintaining 
our credibility.

Regardless of whether you 

find someone like Christina 
Hoff Sommers convincing, at 
least consider this: Her message 
begs a counter-narrative, not a 
walkout. Judging people on a 
categorical basis ignores the 
nuance of individual belief, and 
listening to speakers who’ve 
refused to align with neat 
politically-correct paradigms 
may be about challenging our 
views, not bashing theirs. If 
we can agree that the only 
message poisoned by facts is a 
poisonous message, we should 
also agree on this: Current 
trends in campus free speech 
are hardly antidotal.

In defense of “basic”

DANIELLE COLBURN | COLUMN

Emma Chang
Joel Danilewitz

Samantha Goldstein

Elena Hubbell
Emily Huhman
Tara Jayaram

Jeremy Kaplan

Sarah Khan

Lucas Maiman

Magdalena Mihaylova

Ellery Rosenzweig

Jason Rowland

Anu Roy-Chaudhury

Alex Satola
Ali Safawi

 Ashley Zhang
Sam Weinberger

DAYTON HARE

Managing Editor

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

ALEXA ST. JOHN

Editor in Chief
 ANU ROY-CHAUDHURY AND 

ASHLEY ZHANG
Editorial Page Editors

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board. 

All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

Danielle Colburn can be reached at 

decol@umich.edu.

Anna Horton is an LSA senior.

O

n Sunday night, a woman 
riding a bicycle in Tempe, 
Ariz., was killed by a 

self-driving Uber SUV in what has 
been reported as the 
first 
death 
caused 

by 
autonomous 

technology 
in 
the 

United States.

It is fair to say 

that we are entering an 
era of unprecedented 
technological progress 
and 
productivity 
— 

over the past 40 years, 
we have witnessed 
exponential growth 
in areas like computing efficiency, 
computer 
memory 
and 
non-

commercial flight distance.

But this technological boom 

has not come without its fair share 
of problems, and the recent Uber-
related death may just represent the 
tip of the iceberg as it relates to the 
dangers of autonomous technologies 
becoming increasingly public. If 
anything, this should serve as a 
warning to our computer-crazed 
society that we should take a step 
back and see if the upward trend of 
technological progress is really the 
safest direction to be traveling in.

Earlier this month, I attended 

a talk in Chicago by Thomas 
Friedman, a columnist for The New 
York Times. Friedman, who writes 
as the newspaper’s foreign affairs 
columnist, was speaking about 
his newest book, “Thank You For 
Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to 
Thriving in the Age of Acceleration.”

Friedman’s book describes the 

ways in which the current era of 
technological revolution is reshaping 
various elements of our society, 
ranging from the climate to politics 
to the workplace. The name of the 
book came from a personal anecdote: 
One time, when a colleague ran 

15 minutes late to a meeting and 
frantically apologized upon arrival, 
Friedman responded by thanking 
him for being late. The extra 15 

minutes 
had 
allowed 

Friedman to collect his 
thoughts on a topic that 
was escaping him.

His book boiled down 

to the idea that technology 
is increasing at a rate 
humans cannot keep up 
with, and in the process 
of trying to keep up, 
we often forget to slow 
down — even when it 
might be beneficial.

The events that transpired Sunday 

in Tempe present an additional piece 
of evidence that both supports and 
complicates Friedman’s narrative.

Insofar 
as 
Friedman 
talks 

about the dangers of technology 
— the exponential increase in 
global warming and the straining 
of geopolitical tensions due to 
globalization — the death of the 
Tempe woman fits in this narrative.

And while this was the first death 

caused by autonomous technology, it 
is not the first time a similar incident 
has occurred. In 2016, the National 
Transportation 
Safety 
Board 

partially faulted Tesla for a deadly 
crash involving its autopilot system 
in Florida, and earlier this year a self-
driving Uber car ran a red light in 
California, prompting the removal 
of all such cars by the California 
Department of Motor Vehicles.

Similarly, in the wake of this 

recent tragedy, Uber announced 
that they would halt the testing of all 
autonomous vehicles in the United 
States and Canada.

In his book, Friedman attests 

to the exponential development 
of 
technologies 
over 
time, 

demonstrated by Moore’s Law, a 1965 
theory created by Intel Co-Founder 

George Moore that argues for 
the doubling of computer power 
every two years at the same cost. 
However, the shutdown of Uber’s 
self-driving car program represents a 
technology giant slowing down their 
own trajectory for fear of negative 
consequences — a clear departure 
from Friedman’s narrative.

This is all to say that while 

Friedman gives us guidance on how 
to keep up with technology, we may 
be better off staying in place.

Friedman’s end goal is to prove 

that there are ways for humans to 
catch up to the rate of technological 
progress, such as inventing new 
algorithms that make educating and 
governing more widely applicable 
and efficient. He claims that when 
humans do catch up, it will make 
technology all the more powerful and 
helpful for countries across the world.

While the benefits of this type of 

growth are high, the risks are even 
higher. As firms continue to compete 
for the fastest computing power, 
replacing humans day by day, it 
comes at a cost that may even equate 
to a human life.

So what does this mean for the 

average college student?

It 
means 
confronting 
the 

technology obsessions that resonate 
through each of our daily lives, 
from food delivery applications to 
cash transfer services. It means 
taking a moment, or two, to slow 
down and realize that the dangers 
of technology may not be present 
immediately, but have wide-ranging, 
tangible consequences.

It might even mean taking 

your foot off the gas when you’re 
running late to a meeting or lecture 
— trust me, your classmates won’t 
go anywhere.

Hit the breaks

BEN CHARLSON | COLUMN

Demystifying peer review

PEGGY RANDON | OP-ED

T

he idea of peer tutoring 
has always seemed to be 
a misnomer. In order for 

someone to tutor, certainly his or her 
abilities in the subject surpass the 
abilities of the person being taught. 
For writing — even in the humanities 
and social sciences — I generally 
understood knowledge to be black 
or white. Therefore, the cultivation 
of these skills could only come from 
a very controlled source.

Looking back, it makes sense 

that my transition to college was 
more difficult with this mindset. The 
standards of writing that I had grown 
up with were now completely turned 
around. In high school, though the 
abstract tool of peer review was highly 
marketed to students, the idea only 
might have extended to a quick check-
in of page length and grammar and 
perhaps the remodeling of a sentence 
or two. In college, help is primarily 
given by tutoring programs staffed 
with undergraduate and graduate 
students. The expectation is that 
knowledge is generated between 
knowledgeable 
students 
and 

that truth is as actively created 
as it is shared.

Nevertheless, 
whenever 
I 

extended my learning beyond the 
classroom, it was always away from 
student critique and toward office 
hours and professors. Admittedly, 
I rarely learned much more than 
I did in the classroom. As much 
as the professors would try to 
relate to and inspire me, nothing 
clicked. Of course, this is not the 
same for everyone. Many students 
are enriched by individual time 
with teachers. Still, a vast majority 
can sympathize with a student 
that experiences a devastatingly 

unhelpful session of office hours. 
Personally, the belief was always that 
people are only as good off paper as 
they are on paper. Maybe, instead, I 
should have switched the order.

Collaborative work — specifically, 

verbalizing ideas with like-minded 
individuals in a form of peer 
review — can be very beneficial to 
improve one’s writing. Recently, 
more research has been conducted 
assessing trends in open dialogue 
between peers with an increase in 
students’ overall problem-solving 
skills at the post-secondary level. 
In fact, 2017 research by Chad Loes 
and Ernest Pascarella asserts that 
the act of engaging with others on 
academic work improves “openness 
to diversity … a greater ability to 
transfer 
information 
from 
one 

setting to another … and the ability to 
generate new ideas and solutions,” all 
of which can be applied to and used 
to benefit writing.

Essentially, where traditional 

learning 
practices 
(relying 
on 

office hours and professors) may 
be unsuccessful, students should 
consider 
complimenting 
those 

efforts with peer review. In both 
roles, tutor and student, the learning 
is as plentiful as the conversation 
is constant. Instead of thinking of 
it as encouraging confusion, “peer 
tutoring” can be more accurately 
understood as the pooling of 
information, ideas and experiences to 
enable deeper, reorganized thought 
and increased understanding.

Not to mention, the environment 

of peer review often breeds friendly, 
non-hostile 
conversation, 
which 

could be helpful to those who might 
feel anxious talking with their 
professors. In fact, the process of 

sharing ideas is most successful 
when it is between students, because 
the insecurities and drawbacks of 
divulging your thoughts to an adult, 
much less the one allocating grades 
for your writing, are eliminated.

In short, many will form their 

own habits to study and get support, 
but few will turn to peer review as a 
sustainable option, not recognizing 
its core benefits to college learning. 
The wonderful thing about writing 
is that it is not necessarily about 
assigning a right and wrong; it is the 
provocation of thought that might 
critique what is right or wrong, and 
the continuous improvement of 
one’s abilities.

Evidently, great writing forms 

by a never-ending conversation with 
oneself, and foremost, with others 
in social settings. In fact, I might go 
as far as to agree with K.A. Bruffee 
that writing is “a social artifact,” if 
by that he means it demands to be 
reshaped and impacted by continued 
conversation and human interaction.

It might also relate to the 

idea that fully grasping a concept 
requires the ability to concisely 
explain it to others. As understood 
by Peter Smagorinsky, “the process 
of speaking itself often serves as a 
vehicle through which new thoughts 
emerge,” it allows people to organize 
ideas and build off of them. With 
that said, while I will continue to 
go to my teachers for guidance and 
use other resources for reference in 
writing, I will no longer devalue the 
insight potential share of knowledge 
achieved by simply talking with my 
peers.

DANIELLE 
COLBURN

Peggy Randon is an LSA freshman.

Ben Charlson can be reached at 

bencharl@umich.edu.

BEN 

CHARLSON