This month, Durden appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight. At issue was a Memorial Day event, co-sponsored by Black Lives Matter NYC, and promoted as “a space for black people.” One commenter, listed as an event co-host, went a little further and said that people who “do not identify as black” should “respect the space” and “not come.” In the Facebook universe, to this very day, all of nine people have “loved” that comment, and seven have “liked it.” Nonetheless, Carlson was on the case.
Carlson sets traps. He’s very good at it. I’m glad Marks is writing about it.
This year we conservatives dutifully stood up when Charles Murray was shut down at Middlebury College because he co-wrote The Bell Curve. We even stood up for a man of the left, Bret Weinstein, also undone by an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight, when his colleagues at Evergreen State College called for him to be disciplined. We like to say that we stood up for Weinstein in the name of free speech, but a reasonable person might suspect that we really stood up for him because he was bashing his more radical colleagues.
Perhaps we conservatives are prepared to overlook our principles and reputations because it is a pleasure to see the language of safe spaces come back to bite the left.
If we do not stand up for Lisa Durden, who has not merely been denied a forum or threatened with discipline but actually fired for airing her views publicly, then that reasonable person’s suspicions will be confirmed.