"Safetyism"

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The pursuit of safetyism now extends well beyond de-platforming controversial speakers or canceling inappropriately woke faculty members; even symbols that are deemed threatening by a few individuals are now fair game for cancellation.

In Pelham, N.Y., the New York Times recently reported, the superintendent of a public school district prohibited employees from wearing any symbols that might be construed as supportive of law enforcement. The offending item was a sweatshirt that featured a small “thin blue line” flag, a longtime symbol of support for law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty. The shirt also featured the name of New York Transit police detective George Caccavale, a resident of Pelham who was killed on the job in 1976. As the Rockland/Westchester Journal News reported, the sweatshirt “was designed and sold by Caccavale’s family to raise money for police spouses and families of slain officers. Four of his grandchildren are currently students in the district.”

No matter. The school superintendent declared that the thin blue line flag was “threatening in nature” and claimed that banning it was the only way “to protect students.” Meanwhile, the school district allowed employees to wear T-shirts with the names of black people who had been killed by cops, and other symbols linked to the Black Lives Matter movement, until an uproar prompted her to rescind that policy as well. Thus, the school was forced to declare all symbolic clothing off-limits to employees (students are still allowed to wear political items as long as they aren’t “disruptive.”)

When some parents and local law enforcement officials offered to bring police officers into the schools to discuss students’ concerns and fears about the symbol, minority students rejected the idea outright. That just goes to show that the objectors’ interest isn’t in fostering understanding or cooperation but banning speech and symbols with which they disagree.

College students, too, have claimed the flag is a direct threat to their safety. At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, student activists have demanded that the university’s police department (which they also want to abolish) should not be allowed to display the flag in their own office.

Like the people protesting in Pelham, UW-M students argue that if even one person is offended by the symbol, or chooses to interpret it as a symbol of white supremacy, it shouldn’t be displayed at all.

This is a dangerous line of argument for those on the left to make. If the thin blue line flag can be said to be endorsing white supremacy, then the many symbols and slogans associated with the BLM movement can be said to be equally supportive of violence.

This extreme safetyism principle would also apply to other triggering symbols, such as imagery that glorifies communism or socialism, as those could be said to make people who know the history of Venezuela, the USSR, or China feel threatened by what they are seeing. Do progressive really want to relinquish their hipster Che T-shirts and ironical Mao posters?

“X makes me feel unsafe,” whether said by suburban high schoolers or elite reporters at places like the New York Times, has become a catchall justification for some disturbingly authoritarian behavior.

Safety can be both objectively measured (a stranger’s T-shirt is not, in fact, a deadly threat) and subjectively experienced (what seems fine to one person may appear aggressive to another, e.g.). That’s why we have robust free speech rights: not so that people will be protected from others’ views, but to protect others’ right to express them, regardless of how they make anyone else feel. There are limits to this principle, of course, but the starting point should always be an assumption of freedom.

Speech policies that take extreme safetyism as their starting point assume that feelings matter more than those freedoms, and as a result often end up functioning as window dressing for ideological power grabs rather than protecting students.

From what I remember my social studies teachers sometimes expressed their political views.

When the Vietnam Moratorium day and Kent State happened teachers carried signs for and against (mostly against)

And we had to say the pledge of allegiance which certainly is a political statement and was controversial. Some anti war students wanted the right to not say it. It was not a matter of feeling threatened it was a matter of freedom of speech. It was the conservatives trying to censor them and impose their political correctness(a phrase not invented yet).

Anyhow what was banned was not a political statement but memorial to a local person which is common.

This superintendent seems to be giving in to everything. Students will pick up on that and demand all manner of things. I would not blame them.

In a social studies class, politics is directly relevant to the subject matter, so it may be difficult to avoid expressing some political views. This is a sticky issue, about which see this 2019 article. However, in most other contexts, teachers and other school employees are not allowed to express their political views in the presence of students on school grounds. See this 2008 article.


Did they carry these signs in the classroom, or on their own time, outside of school grounds? The latter has always been allowed. It's only the expression of political views within the classroom or other school-related setting that can be restricted.


Problem: What happens when the memorial involves a politically controversial symbol? In the article you quoted, the banned symbol was a “thin blue line” flag emblem worn by a school employee. That symbol, alas, has come to signify more than just mourning for police officers killed in the line of duty. Likewise, BLM symbols signify more than just mourning for Black people killed by police officers. BLM advocates specific reforms, some of which are controversial.


Perhaps so, but there is plenty of precedent for prohibiting the wearing of these particular kinds of things by school employees in the presence of students.

The reason why blue flags are seen as Swastikas is because White Supremists use them. It's a countermovemwnt against black lives.

You would have to be naive to think blue flags are just to support police and for sacrificing their lives and they get killed by criminals. Not realizing the movement behind the flag.

The offending item was a sweatshirt that featured a small “thin blue line” flag, a longtime symbol of support for law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty. The shirt also featured the name of New York Transit police detective George Caccavale, a resident of Pelham who was killed on the job in 1976. As the Rockland/Westchester Journal News reported, the sweatshirt “was designed and sold by Caccavale’s family to raise money for police spouses and families of slain officers. Four of his grandchildren are currently students in the district.”

The reason why blue flags are seen as Swastikas is because White Supremists use them. It's a countermovemwnt against black lives.

You would have to be naive to think blue flags are just to support police and for sacrificing their lives and they get killed by criminals. Not realizing the movement behind the flag.