I have been watching the disturbing attacks from American anti-racists on Asra Nomani, an Indian American Muslim, on Twitter. One person — Pamela — in particular, appears to have taken this up with great fervor. (Note: The locus of the conversation is Affirmative Action at US universities, but the discussion has gone far beyond that.)
Here is where a lot of the action is happening;
Please note, I am not encouraging anyone to go and attack these folks. I am actively discouraging people from doing that. I am using this as a teachable moment.
There are many baked-in narratives that undergird these attacks, ones that render assumptions as facts. When people speak from narrative spaces, their language is coded by the assumptions beneath the narrative. They are speaking axiomatically from those assumptions. As a result, people end up speaking across each other even if it seems like they are having the same conversation.
This is where I think it is helpful to disrupt and unpack the assumptions. When mononational Americans engage in these discussions with…
