Posted on 11/25/2006 12:35:32 AM PST by JohnHuang2
Let's take a closer look at so-called comedian Michael Richards' racist outburst that is capturing so much press and airtime. The incident, and what has ensued, tells me more about the overall pathetic moral state of our country than it does about racism.
Richards claims he's not a racist, despite attacking a black heckler at a comedy club where he was performing with a string of the most inflammatory, demeaning, and vulgar racial slurs.
Is it possible that he's not? Maybe. It's possible that he's just a moron.
But check out the deep soul searching that this inane incident has provoked across the nation.
The general sentiment is pretty much captured in a column by The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson who sees in what happened here sad proof that "racism is not dead" in America.
I am in complete agreement with Mr. Robinson that racial animosity lives. But I certainly didn't need Michael Richards' imbecility as proof of this.
If we should be thinking about anything, it should be to try and understand why, after all these years, racial consciousness persists.
As satisfying as it might be for some to watch, Mr. Richards groveling around on television apologizing isn't going to help much. Nor are any sums that left wing legal entrepreneur Gloria Allred might extract from him. Nor are apologies to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (the knee-jerk assumption that these two black ministers speak for 40 million black Americans I think is equally racist).
Allow me to suggest that racism and racial consciousness persist and loom large because we choose it to be this way.
Eugene Robinson says that Michael Richards did not see a heckler. Instead, says Robinson, he saw a black heckler. But we live in a country that insists on placing all its citizens in racial categories and using measures of how these categories stack up as measures of national decency.
Every major institution _ business, government, educational _ one way or another keeps track of how many blacks it has on board. Every major corporation has a diversity officer to make sure the colors of the beans are in order. Every corporation gets surveys from the NAACP asking them how many blacks they've got.
When I get a loan from the bank, the loan officer sheepishly asks if it's OK to report that I'm black.
We have institutionalized race consciousness to the very core of our society, so it should be evident why it persists. It's the law.
These laws, by transforming human beings into racial categories, dehumanize blacks and whites. Blacks feel less personally responsible for their own lives and whites are forced to relate to blacks as beans to count rather than human beings. One result is animosity of blacks toward whites and whites toward blacks.
Which leads to the second, and related, point. Racism is no longer understood as a moral problem. It is a political problem.
The success of the civil rights movement of the 1960's was its moral power. The few prevailed over the many because they had moral conviction _ truth _ on their side.
Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech was not a speech. It was a sermon. He talked about character and exhorted Americans to strive for liberty because we are "God's children."
King was not an impractical man. He knew that laws needed to be passed to deal with segregation and the absence of equality under the law. But he also knew that law "cannot change the heart" and that for us to become a greater nation, we needed to be a more moral nation.
This said, consider the circumstances of the Richards incident. It took place in a comedy club in Los Angeles. These places are cesspools of profanity and degrading sexual and scatological humor, delivered in a haze of alcohol.
The black heckler yelled out, "It's not funny. That's why you're a reject. Never had no shows, never had no movies. 'Seinfeld' _ that's it."
This tastelessness doesn't justify Richards' racist diatribe. But on the other side of the coin, blacks who want a better world ought to get out of the gutter.
For me it is commentary on our overall sorry moral state that as news shows obsessed over this mindless incident, they totally ignored an Associated Press story this same week reporting that out-of-wedlock births in the U.S. reached 37.5 percent in 2005, a record high. The figure for blacks is almost double this.
Perhaps this holiday season it is worth considering that racism will be with us as long as evil remains within us. The answer will not come from politicians and lawyers.
It will come only when we raise ourselves up. Only then, in the words of Dr. King, will we be able to say "thank God Almighty, we are free at last."
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Jim Crow died two generations ago. It does our society no good to attempt to right the wrongs of the past by perpetuating affirmative action, racial quotas, and the racial double standard.
Many may harbor bigotry in their hearts. But that's a matter of morality, not law. So to attempt to purge it by using the force of government is wrong and counterproductive. "Equality under the law" was the goal of the civil rights movement achieved by Dr. King and others, black and white, who struggled by his side. It would be a shame to see that lost in our attempt to right the wrongs of the past, by resorting to state sanctioned discrimination--just like the Jim Crow laws of the South.
It sounds to me like you've got a good dose of white guilt. In my opinion, black bitterness plus white guilt equals a dysfunctional multiracial society--with only escalating resentment as a result. "Equality under the law" is the law of the land. So at this point in American history, if one lacks the talent or the drive to succeed--they should have no one to blame but themselves.
"Why does "some low level" racism exist today?"
I lay that at the feet of the Poverty Pimps who have found that you can make a good living from stirring the pot and racial extortion.
ok that too... but that includes Jackson.
"BUT THAT"S DIFFERENT" is the motto of the Demmedia - the publicity arm of the Democrat party.
When the motto cannot be used with a straight face, then the item is buried on page A20 or not reported at all.
I would also say there is a lack of identity here in the US for Caucasians but the same thing is happening in Europe. We are telling kids you are part of the evil white genocidal imperialist, sexist, racist -- Republican voting evil doers.
Every program must have its share of blacks, Chinese,
This is an antidote of what you are talking about -- I was in a citizens police training class. They announced that we were going to be visited by a local TV station who was going to feature us on the Sunday community show.
There were no Blacks in the class but 1/3 were Asian, a Black alumni showed up for the filming of the show though. It appears that things on TV appear racist if you don't have the proper minority representation.
A loser?
Granted, he may have been a philanderer, a plagiarist, a treasonous communist sympathizer, and a race hustler ... but loser? That's a bit strong.
I agree. And the "hecklers" telling him he isn't funny, insulting his act, and calling him a "MF" was meant to do the same thing.
There are no innocent parties in this altercation, and neither's actions were justified. But only one has been called out for publich humiliation, and that is the double standard that has become so tiresome.
Your experiences not withstanding, Richards is not from the south, so don't blame the south for this.
This is the best column on race that I have ever read.
i think the schools promote it, too, by having their silly "clubs." how can these clubs not promote racism?
exactly, leave it alone... and the issue is dead.
one extremely liberal nephew even said that he thought George Allen was treated unfairly because of the macaca thing... i think they really do see the double-standard... and they kept bringing up the double-standard... i hope this is the beginning of Americans waking up to the double-standard...
i'm sorry... what issue? racism?
I don't see calling someone not funny equivalent to using a racial slur. One only applies to that particular person, one is an insult to everyone in that particular race. One is criticism of his choice of jokes, the latter an attack over something that no one has any control over.
I have seen very few Chinese, Asian or Hispanic on TV or in the movies except as background noise in crowd shots.
Both comments (all comments, actually) were hurled merely to hurt and publicly humiliate the other person. In that sense, they are the same.
Someone publicly telling me I am incompetent at my job is more hurtful than someone disparaging the fact that I have brown hair (or am of some national origin or live in the south or whatever). No, they wanted to hurt him and he in turn wanted to hurt them back. It seems that both were successful. If they had sat back and waited for the show to end, this episode would not have happened.
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