Posted on 03/19/2013 6:07:21 AM PDT by Kaslin
The Philadelphia Human Relations Commission has launched an investigation at the request of the mayor after a well-known magazine published an essay that explored perspectives of white citizens on the issue of race relations.
Mayor Michael Nutter called on the commission to consider rebuking both Philadelphia Magazine and writer Bob Huber noting that “the First Amendment, like other constitutional rights, is not an unfettered right.”
Nutter’s fury was directed at a cover story titled, “Being White in Philly.” The story included conversations with mostly anonymous white residents who detailed race relations in the City of Brotherly Love.
“In a city that is largely poor and segregated, white people have become afraid to say anything at all about race,” Huber wrote on the cover of the magazine. “Here’s what’s not being said.”
But Mayor Nutter believes it should have remained unsaid.
“This month Philadelphia Magazine has sunk to a new low even for a publication that has long pretended that its suburban readers were the only citizens civically engaged and socially active in the Philadelphia area,” Nutter wrote in a lengthy tirade to the city’s human relations commission.
He called the story “disgusting” and an “uninformed, ill-advised, ill-considered, uninspired, and thoroughly unimaginative.”
And the mayor also had some choice words for the anonymous individuals who were interviewed – some of whom had been victims of crimes perpetrated by blacks. He said they were “too cowardly” to provide their names.
Rue Landau, the Human Relations Committee’s executive director, agreed with the mayor’s concerns regarding what she called, “the racial insensitivity and perpetuation of harmful stereotypes portrayed in the Philadelphia Magazine piece.”
The commission will also conduct an inquiry into racial issues across the city at the request of the mayor.
“We will take up the mayor’s charge,” Landau said in a statement.
Tom McGrath, the magazine’s editor, told me he is very concerned that the government is investigating his publication.
“I find it chilling that he now wants to use the government to censor a news outlet,” he said. “As a journalist – as someone who thinks free speech is really important – I find that really, really troubling.”
McGrath said he stands by the story and the author – and acknowledged it set off a firestorm.
“Any time you write about race you have to be prepared that it’s going to be controversial,” he said. “The point of the story was to get a conversation going about race. Certainly there are some ugly quotes in the story but those quotes in no way reflect the intentions of the author or the magazine.”
McGrath said the mayor “seriously overreacted to the story” and “mischaracterized the piece and what it’s trying to do.”
“White people do not always feel comfortable talking about race,” he said. “There are some white folks who don’t feel their views on certain issues are welcome in the conversation.”
And critics believe – ironically – that the mayor’s reaction to the story validates that point.
“In some places to simply talk about race is to be accused of being a racist and some of the reaction has sort of borne that out,” he said.
Nutter wants the commission to consider whether the magazine’s essay was the “reckless equivalent of shouting ‘fire!’ in a crowded theater.”
“Only by debunking myth with fact, and by holding accountable those who seek to confuse the two, can we insure that the prejudices reflected in the essay are accorded the weight they deserve: none at all,” the mayor wrote.
Ken Paulson, president of the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, called that comparison unfair.
“It is totally unsubstantiated,” Paulson told me. “This story may provoke ideas, but it doesn’t create panic.”
Paulson said he was especially disturbed by the government investigating a publication.
“That is a dangerous path,” he said. “The idea that government can somehow punish journalists with which it disagrees is contrary to everything the First Amendment stands for.”
McGrath did say he welcomed the mayor’s call for a city-wide discussion about race – but noted the announcement was rich with irony.
“I find it pretty bizarre,” he said. “At the same time he wants us rebuked, he’s saying we need to have a conversation about race in Philadelphia – which was our point in the first place.”
“His point seems to be that he’s allowed to talk about some of this stuff but that other people aren’t,” McGrath added.
But Eric Holder said we would be discussing race if we weren’t such cowards
The article longish, but well worth the read for those who want to see want the fuss is all about. It's entitled, Being White in Philly. I think some of the hysteria is caused by thoughts expressed in the comment section (which the mag has not shut down and which includes over 4000 comments at this time). One commenter whose mother sent him to a mostly black school narrated what total Hell life was there, and boy, the conversation got, ahem, "lively"!! It's worth reading now, because they will likely close the comments section at some point. It's there that you get "the rest of the story."
My “favorite” part of the article was the squishy leftist, yuppie white mother who insisted she would put her kid into the local school, as if she needed to prove how “open minded” she was.
Philadelphia was a great city, then the sixties happened.
If the article is renamed “being black in Philly” and the same type of
experiences related from the black perspective , it will be fine.
Then do it twit. Put your kids in an inner city school. and you be sure to drive them back and forth every day. Hope you enjoy the experience.
Isn’t the cretin mayor calling people “white folks” racist? Why doesn’t the anti-First-Amendment racist mayor pinhead STFU?
And so what if it was? The magazine should tell the mayor to pound sand!
white kid in black gradeschool • 15 days ago −"Jen" BTW is the white woman whose model of "reaching out" we're supposed to follow.
As I white kid whose well-meaning parents enrolled him in a majority black school for the same noble reasons as "Jen", I just have to say that that decision is really negligent. I love how she makes it about herself. I love my parents dearly and have never told them about how lonely and terrifying it was to be one of the only white kids in my grade school. I love them too much to put that kind of guilt on them. I was constantly teased, picked on, and bullied by a few kids... and even the nicer kids never seemed to display any sort of empathy. Given the state of race relations in this country, and the overt disdain black people have for whites, I don't suppose I see how that would be surprising. Whites only think racism goes one way... they have no idea what its like for those of us in the trenches. Especially kids. 2054 15 •Reply•Share ›
Couldn’t the Schuykill and Delaware simultaneously flood?
Just sayin' ...
Didn’t Eric Holder say we are all cowards? Wonder why.
Graft and corruption are ubiquitous as well.
It seems almost an entitlement for [rrbpcp] politicians.
Frightening stuff, and the article was incredibly mild.
We are dealing with evil left wing racists.
Mayor Nutter should be in a jail cell right now for conspiracy to deny Costitutional rights of freedom of speech of freedom of the press.
He is certainly free to express opposing opinions, but for a public official to attmept to deny a publication the right to what is clearly 100% protected free speech is outrageous and if it is not criminal, it should be.
> Democrat tyrants would LOVE it if they could determine what
> you were allowed to read.
They already control what’s allowed to be read and said in the government schools and secular “universities”.
The good little commies have even “speech codes” in these institutions.
The Public School has become the bus ministry of the state church of secular humanism.
If you are White, you have no right to free speech about race. If you are Christian or Jewish you have no right to free speech about bearded savages. If you are normal, you have no right to free speech about fang-toothed feminazis.
I live 20 miles from Philly and will not visit that city.
If Nutter want to investigate something why doesent he investigate why he cannot control black against black crime! Or any crime for that matter! The best place in Philly is the Airport to get the flock outta there!
The place is a piss pot of criminals!
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