Otterblog

Is the phrase “football players” a loaded term? What about “Palestinian students?” As the coverage of the fight at Guilford College draws more attention and investigations, there’s a need to be wary of loaded words and shorthand descriptions.

Since the Duke lacrosse incident, there’s been a great deal of evaluation and introspection about labeling athletes through their sports. Lacrosse players at Duke were quickly dismissed as swaggering children of privilege. Football players are often seen as big, dumb brutes. That’s not always or necessarily even usually the case. At Guilford, a Division III school, there aren’t athletic scholarships, so its football team is arguably different than that found at a Division I school.

Similarly, the phrase “Palestinian students” conjures up all sorts of images, of students far from home, strangers in a strange land, unsure of local customs and mores, perhaps even folks with anti-American sentiments. Again, it’s not always or possibly even largely the case.

So, depending on your view of football players and Palestinian students, you can view this fight in a lot of different ways, some that might meet the definition of hate crime, others that clearly don’t. What’s clear after all that has happened at Duke is the need to have restraint and to not jump to conclusions based on what is the best storyline.