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Our kids are at a racial crossroads By Michael C. Guilmette Jr. Originally published on July 23, 2009, in the Connersville News-Examiner. I was in college when I fell into journalism. It happened quite by accident — the editor of the student newspaper took an offer to help clean her office as an application to join the staff.
After college, I took a job as a reporter at a small tribal newspaper near my hometown, but I kept a close eye on how the college newspaper progressed under new editors. One of the editors, a friend of mine, would occasionally consult with me and let me know what was happening at the newspaper and the school. One week, she told me about an incident that started out as laughable but ended up being quite sad. The newspaper covered an event held in the engineering department and ran a photo of one of the engineering professors wearing an afro wig. Predictably, the college’s most outspoken liberal professor chimed in with a letter to the editor essentially accusing the engineering professor of wearing blackface and chastising his fellow educator for not displaying proper cultural sensitivity to other races. After all, an afro wig obviously signifies African Americans, and the engineering professor must have worn it mockingly. It was a boilerplate response and the newspaper ran the letter. It turned out, however, the engineering professor wore the wig to mock himself because, back in the day, that was his hairstyle. Half a dozen letters to the editor flooded into the newspaper the following week pointing out the liberal professor’s error and generally making a joke out of the whole thing. Now, most times the incident would stop there with the mistaken professor suffering his embarrassment in silence, but this was not the case. The professor responded with another letter, launching into a tirade about how the school was racist and saying he had been fired from there before because of his views. While many dismissed his response as an attempt to fend off ridicule when he was clearly in the wrong, he made it clear on other occasions that he believed what he was saying, going so far as to publicly accuse students of being racist. One such student was another friend of mine who criticized one of her political science professors because she believed he was not a very good professor. Students criticizing professors is nothing new, but the political science professor was from Africa, and this prompted the liberal professor to call my friend a racist. What was unclear was whether he was accusing her of not liking the African professor because she was racist or if she had no business criticizing him because of his race. At the time, I may have assumed he was accusing her of the former, because to openly admit the latter would be to say that certain people deserve a pass simply because of where they are from or how they look, and that kind of attitude is inexcusable. Jump forward to the present and we see the same attitudes not only being excused and defended, but also supported. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, currently being considered by the U.S. Senate for the nation’s highest court, made a statement in 2001 that has become iconic of the race debate: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” During her confirmation hearings, Senate Democrats opened the door for her to back away from the statement, and she quickly took the opportunity. Republicans, lacking the ability to stop her ascendancy, at least made the point that her words illustrate a double standard. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., pointed out that even though she may not have meant her words as reported, he would have been treated differently had he said something similar. “If Lindsey Graham said, I will make a better senator than ‘X’ because of my experience as a Caucasian male, makes me better able to represent the people of South Carolina, and my opponent was a minority, it would make national news, and it should,” Graham said last week. Sotomayor agreed with him and said she regretted offending some people, but others have backed the race-qualifier sentiment. Last week, liberal radio host Alan Colmes, speaking on Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News, defended the race-laden headline “White man’s last stand” in the New York Times, saying a reverse statement is not appropriate because “there is a double standard,” and that is OK because “there has always been a white power structure.” What kind of message does this send to our children? Are we to teach the next generation that it is permissible for one group to demean another for alleged past injustices? Are we to tell them that present day ‘white males’ are deserving of scorn because of the inequities of previous generations? Are they to learn they must look at another person differently because the color of their skin doesn’t match? Are we to doom them to a repeating cycle of victim and victimizer? Our children will grow in a time with an unprecedented level of connectivity, allowing them to easily speak with people in other lands, an ability that will hopefully bring greater understanding and closeness with other children throughout the world. With that advantage in their future, I will not saddle my children with tired, outdated racial precepts of the past. I will not teach them they are better because of arbitrary racial guidelines. I will, however, teach them they are better than those who do believe that. • Guilmette is managing editor of the News-Examiner. He may be contacted at mguilmette@newsexaminer.com. |
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Copyright © 2009, Michael C. Guilmette Jr. |
That fortunate accident led me to realize what I wanted for a career — journalism. The hours were long and the work was often thankless, but I loved it. I spent three years as part of the staff, becoming editor myself and taking part in as many of the aspects of the industry that I could.
