I was particularly upset that all the responses to Mr. Tatum’s letter about the Omega Psi Phi fraternity completely missed the point of his original complaint.

It is clear from Mr. Tatum’s letter that he does not absolve the fraternity members from guilt for what happened. Obviously, if there were “illegal escapades,” (in the words of poetic Eric Krol) those involved must be penalized.

Mr. Tatum tried not to excuse anyone’s actions but to point out that the language used to describe the events was clearly prejudicial.

Just in case Mr. Tatum’s critics are still a little foggy about what he meant to say, I’d like to help them see better by citing some language from their letters.

Curtis Howell, for instance, refers to Mr. Tatum not as an individual with his own “strategies” and opinions but as a type—one of the “members of the black community,” who work as a unit “to avoid or mitigate their personal responsibility.”

According to Mr. Howell, to be black is to be without individuality or personal characteristics, yet he accuses the faceless mass that he has described of seeking to avoid individuality. Interesting logic.

Eric Krol, on the other hand, does see Mr. Tatum as an individual person—as “a little boy who cried wolf.”

I have met Mr. Tatum, and he is a responsible, rational adult. Krol’s statement simply echoes the offensive, time-honored characterization of African Americans as irresponsible, unreliable children who whine about self-invented problems.

Finally, Alan Ducato promises Mr. Tatum that “the faster you realize (the truth)…the faster you can join the civilized world.”

To Mr. Ducato, Alfred Tatum is clearly not yet part of civilization and will only become part of it when he stops “relying on racism as a crutch.”

No sensitive human being could possibly miss the implications of this wording: that racism is a trivial, trumped-up excuse and that Mr. Tatum, as an African-American, somehow needs to be civilized by accepting the facts of white, American life, as delivered by Alan Ducato, of course.

I’m not suggesting any of these writers has purposely written these statements with the intent of harming Mr. Tatum. Language, after all, is something we can’t utterly control.

But the fact is that the words we choose can damage and offend easily. Alfred Tatum’s letter was designed to make us more aware of this problem; the letters in response to his were designed simply to perpetuate it.

Jody Ollenquist

Post-doctoral Instructor

English