theatlantic | “We ask for no media in the parameters so the place where people live,
fellowship, and sleep can be protected from twisted insincere
narratives,” a Twitter account associated with the activists later
declared, adding that “it’s typically white media who don’t understand
the importance of respecting black spaces.” Tim Tai is Asian American.
First Amendment protections for photographers are vital. And I agree with my colleague, James Fallows,
that Tai demonstrated impressive intellectual and emotional poise. But
video of his encounter with protestors is noteworthy for another reason.
In
the video of Tim Tai trying to carry out his ESPN assignment, I see the
most vivid example yet of activists twisting the concept of “safe
space” in a most confounding way. They have one lone student surrounded.
They’re forcibly preventing him from exercising a civil right. At
various points, they intimidate him. Ultimately, they physically push
him. But all the while, they are operating on the premise, or carrying
on the pretense, that he is making them unsafe.
It is as if they’ve weaponized the concept of “safe spaces.”
“I support people creating ‘safe spaces’ as a shield by exercising their freedom of association to organize themselves into mutually supporting communities,” Ken White wrote prior to this controversy.
“But not everyone imagines ‘safe spaces’ like that. Some use the
concept of ‘safe spaces’ as a sword, wielded to annex public spaces and
demand that people within those spaces conform to their private norms.”
Yesterday,
I wrote about Yale students who decided, in the name of creating a
“safe space” on compass, to spit on people as they left a talk with
which they disagreed. “In their muddled ideology,” I wrote, “the Yale activists had to destroy the safe space to save it.”
