Clicking on banner ads enables JWR to constantly improve
Jewish World Review August 18, 2000/ 17 Menachem-Av, 5760

Marianne M. Jennings

Marianne M. Jennings
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
James Glassman
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Debbie Schlussel
Sam Schulman
Roger Simon
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports


Resenting the accusations of racial prejudice


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- DURING one of those sensitivity training sessions led by a woman in flowing clothes, dangling earrings and comfortable shoes, the following question was hurled at us, "You have just entered a reception. There are people of color (trainers use "people of color" because they don't believe in race except for affirmative action purposes). You don't see anyone you know. Which person would you speak to first?"

The clear implication was that we backward white folk would stick with other white folk. However, I volunteered to the trainer, who I am certain still has Care Bears on her bed, that I would talk to the hired help first, even if they were Kryptonites, because I am always more comfortable with them than I am with the dweebs who frequent obligatory receptions. The trainer told me my answer was wrong. She couldn't fathom that we monolithic oafs of prejudice don't use race as a screening tool.

The trainer knows the great perpetuators of the racial divide: build guilt, accentuate differences, and demonize some groups while elevating others. The sensitive sleuths of the media, trainers and other profiteers from the racial divide toss labels and data about so easily that they have tied everything from cancer rates to debt defaults to racial inequality. I would not be taken aback if Frank Rich wrote a column linking Halley's Comet's infrequency to prejudice inherent in the solar system.

I am weary of the accusations of prejudice and the media fixation with race. The New York Times just completed a series called "How Race is Lived in America." Fifteen stories running two full pages in the A section, not including the front-page teasers complete with photos of "persons of color" and a white guy (Anglo) from Houston, documented everything from whites not being good at hip-hop to the problems of being a white quarterback at a Black college. The series culminated with a Sunday magazine spread comparing a "Black kitchen" with a "White kitchen." Blacks buy fewer brand-name paper towels and less diet soda. Blacks buy Philadelphia brand cream cheese and whites buy the store brand. Both buy Star-Kist tuna and Campbell's soup. Whites prefer Prego spaghetti sauce and Blacks prefer Ragu. Whites use Mennen stick deodorant and Blacks prefer Degree.

Fortune magazine ran a story called, "What Minority Employees Really Want." They want higher pay and recognition for their work in the form of promotions. These findings are as opposed to white employees who enjoy pay cuts and demotions???

This past week a reader in Mesa, Arizona complained that as he watched the firefighters training at a local athletic field he was dismayed that they were "White, tall and buff," with no women or "people of color" in this monolithic crowd.

There is a common thread in these racial revelations- an alternative explanation. Perhaps Black and White employees are not so different. Perhaps firefighters are chosen on the basis of physical skills, not race. The ideal firefighter in my book is someone who can get me out of a burning building. Mini Me suffices so long as he does the job.

Racial tension continues because of these stories alleging separatism, attaching labels and handing down group indictments. Truth suffers to perpetuate the racial divide. Even compassionate George W. was wrong in his confession to the NAACP of the Republican party's shortcomings as the party of Lincoln. The facts appeared in National Review. Demon Republicans outnumbered the Democrats on votes in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: 82% of Senate Republicans voted for it vs. 69% of Senate Democrats; 80% of House Republicans voted for the Act vs. 63% of House Democrats.

I have racial fatigue because I see what we have in common in our rugged individualism Ragu might be better than Prego. "Persons of color" and even Republicans have their views on garden style vs. meatless. The Times looks at the kitchen along racial lines and worries that Blacks buy generic paper towels. I look at the kitchens and see that, unfortunately, tuna and Cream of Mushroom soup plague us all.

The now-Pavlovian responses of guilt and separatism create feelings of hopelessness over the great racial divide. I had a former student complain that recruiting Black executives to Phoenix was difficult because they had to assure candidates or candidates' wives that there were hairdressers good with "Black hair" here. There are few businesswomen or wives of executives who wouldn't fret about hairdresser loss in moving to a new city. Hairdresser concerns know no racial bounds.

Hairdressers, bartenders at receptions, sauce and deodorants are the ties that bind. We are one in our shyness and sweaty bad hair days. Common ground might replace the racial divide if the media could stop their facile labels. Their obsession clouds their perception, distorts their facts, and unfairly assumes that prejudice abounds. The prejudice lies in their refusal to see beyond race.


JWR contributor Marianne M. Jennings is a professor of legal and ethical studies at Arizona State University. Send your comments by clicking here.

Up

08/04/00: Women: Their own worst enemy
07/21/00: Hillary: Our longshoreman First Lady
07/21/00: SUVs: The root of all evil
07/14/00: The basketball gene and white men not jumping so well
07/07/00: I wanna be around
06/23/00: The liberal conversion
06/14/00: Sex and the City: The shallow but vulgar female
06/08/00: No excuses schools
06/02/00: Oh, Canada: Our Nutty Neighbors to the North
05/23/00: The new mollycoddling coach
05/16/00: On adultery and leadership
05/12/00: Taking your lumps
05/02/00: Elian: There's never a liberal around when you need one
04/25/00: Life's circle and tenderness
04/18/00: Womyn who want it both ways
04/11/00: The monsters we're raising with the ergo proposition
04/05/00: Endowing the Hooters Chair for Literature Appreciation
03/28/00: Dr. Laura: The passive/aggressive kid's mom
03/21/00: Dough and campaigns
03/14/00: The volunteerism of conscription and pomp
03/07/00: Hope and pray that religion remains a force in politics
02/29/00: Ditzes in TV Land
02/22/00: Cranky nitpickers make writing a [sic] experience
02/15/00: Those chameleon 60s activists
02/08/00: McCandidate McCain: Flirting with principles
02/01/00: The demise of marriage
01/25/00: Stroke of the pen, law of the land: Clinton's Camelot
01/18/00: Off the Rocker Rorschach Test
01/11/00: Oprah's lemmings
01/04/00: Struggling mightily amidst the comfort
12/23/99: Confused fathers
12/14/99: Drop-kicking the homeless
12/07/99: Turtles and teamsters, side-by-side in Seattle
11/29/99: When conservatives behave badly
11/22/99: Compassionate conservative: Timing and targets
11/18/99: The elusive human spirit and accountability
11/11/99: Succumbing to the intellectual child within with the help of crackpots and screwballs
10/28/99: Live by litigation, die by litigation
10/22/99: Jesse, Warren, Cybill, Donald and Oprah
10/14/99: Inequality and injustice: It's the big one
10/05/99: Dan Quayle, morals and schoolyard bullies
09/30/99: The monsters of epidermal parenting
09/21/99: The Diversity Hoax
09/15/99: Waco Wackos
09/09/99: Selective censorship
09/01/99: The village, the children, judicial imperialism and abortion
08/24/99: Naughty Newt?
08/17/99: In defense of Boy Scouts and judgment
08/10/99: Ruining the finest health care system in the world
08/03/99: Nihilism and politics: ethics on the lam
07/26/99: Of women, soccer and removed jerseys
07/23/99: Not in despair, a mere mortal doing just fine
07/20/99: "Why me?" How about "Why us?"
07/13/99: Bunk, junk & juries
07/06/99: An Amish woman in a Victoria's Secret store
06/30/99: That intellectually embarrassing Second Amendment
06/24/99: Patricia Ireland eat your heart out --- but check out the recipe in 'women's mags' first
06/22/99: Dems and the Creator coup
06/17/99: True courage is more than just admitting troubles

© 2000, Marianne M. Jennings