It is hard to describe racism to someone who has never known its touch or experienced its dehumanization. One can never understand the effect of a word or a joke when they themselves have never experienced it. The word that was used, typo or not, is in fact a known racial slur toward Asians, and was used in the worst ways during the internment camps during WWII and that era.

To further compound those remarks, they came one day after Austin Langfeldt’s letter attacking international students, focused mostly on those from China, referring to that group as a “they” (the “they” suggest a thought patterns of “us vs. them” in where the “they” are inherently bad or evil) suggesting a plan of technological sabotage and larceny. Pinning a group as an enemy or an unwelcomed intruder, as well as suggesting that Iowa State should not welcome Chinese students, simply creates an atmosphere of intolerance and mistrust.

While I understand the role the Daily tries to accomplish by publishing these hateful and hurtful letters (sometimes opinon editorials), it has a responsibility not to encourage these sorts of attacks. The Daily wishes to be a launching ground for discussion, challenging the ISU community to talk about subjects that make us uncomfortable so we all can expand our boundaries. Publishing hate is not the way to do it, and the Daily needs to take the responsibility seriously.

The Daily has failed me time and time again since I joined Iowa State as a student in the fall of 2000 and later as an employee in 2007, consistently reminding me I am an outsider as a Hispanic and as someone who was not raised in Iowa. With that said, the err in judgment in publishing that word last Tuesday is, in my mind, forgivable.

Mistakes happen, it’s how we grow and learn as a community and as individuals. What makes me sad and ashamed to be part of Iowa State today is the lack of tolerance and understanding the community has out there. The letters published from Alexander Maxwell, Andrew Faust and Colin Coulter are prime examples of why I feel like I don’t belong and am unwanted in Iowa and Iowa State.

No one expects “them” to understand racism, no one expects “them” to get the pain and dejection felt when you have been targeted or hurt by a slur, “they” couldn’t understand. What is expected is for “them” to understand people were hurt and to think beyond “themselves” and try not to defend the actions, “these” people, and many more, obviously do not get it and haven’t even tried to understand it.

And for those people that are defending it as a slang term for a chipmunks, the term is squinny, not the other word. Being from the Northeast and never hearing squinny before, it stands out, but I have never heard chipmunks being referred to as the other word, I have only heard the other word used in racial slurs. My wife, a lifelong central Iowan, has never heard squinny before, so its not a widely used, completely known local word.

Please just stop defending what you know nothing about. The Daily was correct in its apology and to blast people attacked for being alienated, for being mistreated, to call them sensitive, to say they are making a mountain out of a mole hill is to ignore an existing problem at Iowa State, and if we, as a higher learning institution, go on as if things are OK, then the problem of racism in Iowa will never go away. Understanding that there is a problem is the first step to slowing it. Unfortunately, today it seems as if the ISU community, at large, is very far from this step.