Bernice Afriyie | Arts Editor
In today’s schools, especially at a university like York that prides itself for diversity, everyone is concerned with not seeming offensive. It’s important to make sure that we are conscious of how we address others. It goes beyond name calling to recognizing the hurtful and oppressive history of racist, sexist and ignorant words used to identify groups of people.
However, removing such problematic words from our conversations does not mean that we should stop having conversations about how these words affect communities and continue to loudly function in society.
A new podcast on Never Sleeps Network, or NSN, called This is NOT a Safe Space, challenges notions of political correctness and what people do and do not feel comfortable with talking about or listening to. NSN, created by Alex Ross, is an independently funded artist commune that is trying to reshape Canadian media in Toronto.
This is NOT a Safe Space is the brainchild of Nick Beaton, host and former Yuk Yuk’s comedian. Beaton explains that he first got the idea for the podcast from the culture surrounding political correctness. People either fear offending others and say nothing, or are sourcefed information from the news and perpetuate ideas without thinking about them.
“[I feature] guests who disagree with me in order to have important discourse,” says Beaton, “I’m not necessarily expecting to change the world but I want these ideas to be discussed and I’m a proponent of civil, reasoned discourse.”
The first episode of the podcast aired on September 12 and featured a discussion between Beaton and Canadian icon in comedy and the African-Canadian community, Kenny Robinson. Beaton and Robinson discussed the Black Lives Matter movement, carding and gun violence, among other topics. The pair were not afraid to ask questions and probe topics that most listeners are probably curious about themselves.
“If we had to watch every word we said there would be no such thing as This is NOT a Safe Space,” says Ross.
Likewise, if we were to completely censor our words and actions in society, would there be such a thing as safe spaces? Important topics don’t get discussed because they are too touchy and nobody wants to get their feelings hurt. Instead of constructive conversations, stagnation is in its place. Nothing changes and the same problems are left undisturbed, like the dusty film on your unopened weather and climate textbook that you meant to get around to.
Who are we kidding? We are missing out on the multitude of insights that discourse has to offer, and maybe the world of meteorology as well. This isn’t to say that we should throw caution to the occluded winds when interacting with people—if your diction and social sensitivity mirrors that of Donald Trump, that’s a problem—but we should not let the fear of diverging opinions detract from discourse.
