Tukola, Carasci and Araya Are the Victims of a Racial Attack on ASU

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Crow: ASU received more than 1,500 email messages about the incident within the first week. Crow: Almost all of those criticized Tukola and Carasci; one alumna called them terrorists in her email. A group of 20 Arizona state legislators signed an open letter threatening funding cuts against ASU for using taxpayer dollars to institutionalize racism," she says.

In September 2021, a group of female minority students at Arizona State University confronted two white male students who were studying in the library’s multicultural center.

The women were upset with what they saw as blatant antagonism: One of the men sported a “Didn’t Vote for Biden” shirt, the other had a “Police Lives Matter” laptop sticker. The women felt they had chosen the multicultural center in order to rile them. A heated row between both parties erupted, a video of which quickly went viral, threatening to upend the lives of all involved.

For The New York Times, Sarah Viren, a journalist and essayist, explored the incident in the context of “the widening gyre of the culture wars.” The row at Arizona State was, she explained, “a symbolic fight,” one that raised questions of “wokeism” and “free speech,” the perils of viral videos, and the purpose of “safe spaces.”

“It was a brief drama that was also a metaphor,” Ms. Viren wrote. “But watching and rewatching that drama unfold from my computer, I kept asking myself: a metaphor for what?”

This story was written by Sarah Viren and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.