The folks at Emory may have ruled that Carol Worthman's use of the phrase "n---r in the woodpile" is racist, and may have put various sanctions and disciplinary procedures in motion to punish her and her colleagues for it. But that doesn't mean they had any idea what the phrase actually means, or what the context was for Worthman's usage. Today's Emory Wheel details the Emory community's continuing struggle to figure out what Worthman's wording actually meant. In the process, it conveys the unspoken but powerful truth about the administration of supposedly racist speech on campus: it's not necessary to comprehend a comment in order to call it racist. Racism, in the logic of enforced communal sensitivity, is created by the accusation of racism; it is whatever the accuser wants it to be.

The controversy at Emory is not about what Carol Worthman meant, or even, in a way, about what she said. It's about what people thought she must have meant, and what that led people to assume she must be like deep down inside. The Emory case is about more than academic freedom, and what is at stake here is more than just a person's freedom of speech. In events at Emory, we can watch an entire university community in the act of violating a person's private conscience. Carol Worthman has been punished, and continues to be punished, for what, in all bad faith, it is possible to believe her word choice says about who she is.

Thanks to Maurice Black for the link.