Op-Ed: The fallacy of labels

We live in a world characterized by political polarity so extreme that we can barely get people to acknowledge there is global warming, much less provide healthcare or recognize humanity in a stranger. Last week’s feature piece, “Where do I belong,” in an attempt to gain a few chuckles from the new “Midd Kid” rap following, reflected the same polar paralysis that I continue to cringe at beyond the snowy borders of my self-imposed Middbubble.

The article failed to realize that a college newspaper does not a music video make. The stereotypes in the “Midd Kid” rap (while not necessarily compelling or profound) are comedic because they have some aspect of truth to them (rather than the cheap style “Where do I belong” haplessly pirated from “Mean Girls”). The song plays to its own medium, a parody of pop-rap music and a genre that often boxes people into narrowly defined stereotypes. A newspaper (ideally) is not notable for such reductionist and gross stereotypes. Therefore there exists no parody, just a limp joke that takes up the entire centerfold.

I look to a newspaper, and particularly the one which represents my college, my colleagues and my home, to aim for some higher understanding. The article was vaguely addressed to new Febs, instructing readers to “sort yourselves accordingly” to the “eight types of students at Middlebury.”

I must confess that contrary to whatever reaction this article might have incurred if taken seriously, I do believe in the diverse experiences of college. I believe in a place where I have a slight chance to surmount the confines of my upbringing, where I have a better chance than anywhere else to shrug off the associations I’ve grown up with: socioeconomic class, geographic location, religion, embarrassing childhood memories and familial descent. I believe in a remote campus and concentrated assemblage intent on challenging assumptions, stimulating each other within and beyond the classroom, as well as the mutual exploration of how best to justify each waking breath. So what does it mean when one of the few regular outlets of dialogue and debate at Middlebury publishes a piece that completely negates this?

Now, I could write this one off as oversensitive, but I will not permit an external idea to corner me into retracting my own sentiments. A close friend of mine says “struggle is struggle. It’s incomparable.” Well, emotion is emotion, and right now I’m running on enraged endorphins. We box people into these blanket statements and associations out of a perpetual fear that we might wake up one day and understand the implications of what it means not to belong to something. I am a Democrat so that I am not ambivalent. I am a “WRMC Mafioso” so that I’m not a friendless loser in Proctor. I am X so that I don’t have to be terrified that I am nameless. Formless. Floating.

I am not advocating an abolishment of identities all together. I do believe that groups cultivate the individuals within and outside their associations, that’s how we evolved as a race. But I’m absolutely against reductionist grouping. You wear pearls, therefore you are a laxtitute. There is more to me than the dining hall I eat in. There was more to that article than a “self-deprecating” feature on Midd-kids. It’s starting to resemble a terrifying indifference on a global scale to the definition of oneself exclusively by definition of the other. Rather than “I think, therefore I am,” it becomes “I am not you, therefore I am.” It allows people a way to refrain from active thinking, to identify accordingly, to ignore the discomfort and growth that springs from a very real anxiety that we may just not belong at all.

I’m done with the conscious boxing-in of others, finding meaning only through the disassociation of oneself from the rest of the world. We strive to belong to a minority because we are terrified of aimlessly floating in a bigger pool. Well, we no longer live within a ’90s teen movie; this is not the floor of a partisan senate; we do not live on the border of Israel and Palestine. We live in a place where it is unacceptable to close oneself off from a community; we live in a place where we must force our environment to challenge us and wake us up, where we cannot submit to a society suspended in the comfort of a sedated womb, where we shuffle from X to Z desperately hoping we’ll never have to open our eyes in between.