“I don’t agree with the uncles, but we need to be able to engage with their views and deconstruct them — not tell them to shut the fuck up. That’s not free speech.”
Lindsey Shepherd, Laurier’s most newsworthy Master’s student, will be moderating a panel discussion which involves everybody’s racist, drunk uncles as part of a speaker series with her student group, the Laurier Society for Open Inquiry (LSOI).
Students, faculty, and other groups at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont. have expressed outrage at the planned talk set for this Saturday, April 14. The uncles have all been described as drunk, racist, and bumbling white supremacist sympathizers.
The discussion is titled: “I’m Not a Racist But… Multiculturalism and Racist, Drunk Uncle Identity,” and is part of Shepherd’s “Unpopular Opinion Speaker Series.” Shepherd says she took care to ensure that the panel reflected the diversity of opinions in the racist uncle community. She notes that some uncles vehemently hate the queer community, others the black community, and others the Asian community.
Shepherd made headlines last year after she was punished for showing her classroom a video of controversial University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson, who has been criticized for his refusal to use gender-neutral pronouns.
“These uncles are out there, no matter how despicable your family finds them. Actually, the best thing to do is to air them out, let people publicly challenge them,” Shepherd told The Contrarion while wearing a grey beanie. “When you don’t, your family ignores them, and that becomes more dangerous because they could have a racist outburst in a Montana’s or something.” “No one is being forced to go and there’s a counterprotest, so if they feel strongly about it, they can join that,” Shepherd continued, now wearing a purple beanie on top of the grey beanie.
In an open letter, Laurier’s president, Deborah MacLatchy, wrote that she “personally and absolutely rejects the ideas and values attributed to the uncles,” but that Laurier does not “censor or limit the lawful free expression of ideas, including racist, drunk rants when you just want him to pass the potatoes.”
Associate professor Steve Wilcox called MacLatchy’s response “wholly inadequate and ridiculous.”
“Look, I have a racist, drunk uncle. He’s a dick, but there’s a bunch of pics of him holding me as a baby. I haven’t got baby pictures with any of these other uncles, so why should I have to listen to them?” Wilcox told The Contrarion.
Photo by Alora Griffiths/The Ontarion