I am writing to take issue with Professor Azoulay’s guest column “Kerry Assumes Ignorance.” I was so struck by the flawed and deceptive nature of her arguments, that I felt compelled to write my first letter to the editor. In an attempt to paint Kerry as prejudiced and condescending, Azoulay first attacked the prefatory and parenthetical comment he made before answering a question on Africa that his wife was from Mozambique and had been forced to leave. Azoulay dove into a lengthy yet utterly hazy description of the Mozambique revolution and then blasted Kerry for supposedly assuming that nobody in the room would know as much about the situation as Azoulay apparently did.
The problem with her argument was that 1) it was not an argument; it was a history lesson. 2) The history lesson was constructed in such a way as to highlight insignificant points (i.e. the fact that a Mozambique liberation leader married Nelson Mandela) over far more important points (such as Kerry’s wife’s fantastic inherited wealth and status among the Portuguese colonial elites). 3) The argument/ history lesson addressed only the preamble to a response and not the response itself—thus making no attempt to connect this apparent incongruity on Kerry’s behalf to a logical doubt voters might consequently have in Kerry’s ability to adequately serve Africa’s needs. And 4) the argument/ history lesson missed the point that even if Kerry’s wife was in fact an evil oppressor of black Africans, the simple fact that she originates from Africa means that for Kerry, Africa is more than just a place on a map that he can ignore. It is a place he can ignore only if he wants to get in a fight with his wife.
Azoulay then attacked Kerry for his response to her question concerning Charlie Rangel’s (D-NY) proposal for a national draft. After spending a paragraph characterizing Rangel as a right-minded war veteran concerned only with the class issues at play in the armed services, she blasted Kerry for racializing the issue through his comments on the unfairness of forcing a higher proportion of people from “South Central, Detroit and Harlem” into war through the draft as opposed to Americans from other areas who were able to get deferments. In doing so, she hinted that Kerry’s points were elitist and racist.
The problem with Azoulay’s breakdown of Kerry’s response is twofold. 1) She described Rangel’s proposal of a national draft only in socio-economic terms. She failed to acknowledge that because Rangel is a black man who represents Harlem, his calls for socio-economic justice must at least in part be viewed in racial terms. 2) She described Kerry’s response only in racial terms. She neglected to acknowledge that when he references South Central, Detroit and Harlem he is citing places that are both predominantly black and predominantly poor. Thus, he did not as she claimed try to “evade” the economic issue at hand in an elitist fashion. Clearly, poor Americans everywhere have gotten the shaft in all editions of our nation’s draft, but to hint that Kerry’s response on this issue was elitist and vaguely racist is consciously deceptive and in any case wrong.
Lastly, the tone of the column was unnecessarily vituperative and ultimately unintentionally self-satirizing.
Azoulay repeatedly made note of her distaste for people who assume their audience is uninformed, but devoted more than a third of her column to lengthy explanations of recent historical events and the background of a prominent American politician. Either she believes that we Grinnellians understand the issues at hand or she believes we don’t. Regardless, by hollering her barely supported arguments at us, she made it clear that she believes that we are unable to differentiate between what is logical and what is just loud.
—Nicholas Lloyd ‘04
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