RUTH J. SIMMONS QUADRANGLE

CONFLICTING VIEWS

Featured in the July-August Issue of the Brown Alumni Magazine (BAM), the article "Northern Aggression" highlighted a symposium that explored the roles of both Rhode Island and Brown University in the slave trade.

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In the September-October issue of the Magazine, the Editors printed two  responses to article, one of which, by Brian Barbata (Class of 1967) titled "Get Over It" is shown here.

A number of alumni responded to Barbata's antiBlack and ahistorical remarks both online and on the Magazine’s website—one such response by Michele Benoit (Class of 1995, MD '99) is also shown here.

We share this exchange to highlight the continued divisions within the larger Brown Community with respect to addressing slavery and its legacies in the present.

You can read more responses to Barbata's post as well responses directed at the BAM's defense of its decision to publish both Barbata's and Ryck's (Class of 1966) racist responses to the original article here.

GET OVER IT

"'Northern Aggression' represents another in a long string of mea culpa diversity pieces and self flagellation by Brown over the history of slavery. What’s the point of all this effort at Brown? The article moans that slavery was contrary to 'our founding values.' But our founders were all slavers, one way or the other. If you were successful, you participated. I dare say, if the Brown Family had turned their backs on anything to do with slavery, the University would not exist. Only a fool in the 18th century would have done that. 

In the context of the day (over a couple of thousand years), slavery is totally understandable and clearly necessary. You weren’t going to hire 100,000 men to build pyramids at a 'living wage' with health care. Since forever, if a society could enslave other people, it did it. No major society was left out. In America, we’re sorry but it was what it was. Everyone should get over it." 

-Brian Barbata, Brown Class of 1967 

IN RESPONSE

"I was saddened to read the recently published and racist letter to the editor penned by Brian Barbata ‘67, written in response to the article 'Northern Aggression.' In his letter,  Barbata describes slavery as a 'totally understandable and clearly necessary' institution that 'everyone should just get over.'

I am even more disappointed that in choosing to publish what amounts to ignorant and hateful rhetoric, BAM defended this decision by stating our Brown community is 'best served when such viewpoints are not kept safely hidden, but rather brought into an open space where alumni may debate, interrogate, and assert what the community values.' This myopic view begs the question, who exactly is served by this erroneous 'good people on both sides' argument?  When someone presents an opinion that is not based in fact but in racist ideology, what is the discourse that needs to happen and deserves a platform? Will BAM next be publishing letters that deny the occurrence of the Holocaust, that claim that the massacre at Sandy Hook was a hoax, that support conspiracy theories about 911? We all know that the BAM would never dare give a platform to such vitriol yet the BAM editorial staff wants us to believe that there is an actual discussion to be had about whether slavery was a justifiable evil. 

I support calls for BAM to issue a public apology and reevaluate their editorial policy.

Honoring our alma mater requires that we be willing to critique it in love and stand up to it in truth. I do agree with Barbata when he says 'if the Brown family had turned their backs on anything to do with slavery, the University would not exist' but that is not a laudable outcome. Brown has long acknowledged the history of the University built by slaves who were by definition denied their humanity. BAM owes our community at large the respect of honoring a legacy of suffering by not further traumatizing the descendants of those without whom it would not exist."

-Michele Benoit-Wilson Brown Class of 1995, MD'99