Maybe Someone Was Just Leaving the Doll As a Gift for a Black Co-worker?

This past Monday, a black doll bearing “a racial epithet directed at an unspecified black woman” was found hanging in an employee-only area in a Pittsburgh Port Authority garage. This is merely the most recent of a string of similar incidents, including last year’s most visible episode in Jena, Louisiana. Last week, a noose was found hanging in a police station in Hempstead, New York after the department posted a notice of their intention to participate “in a count-ywide effort to recruit minorities and women as police officers.”

Such incidents are intolerable and abhorrent to the overwhelming majority of Americans. There’s no question about that. We know that, you know that, and the perpetrators of these acts surely know that. Then why do it?

Those who wish to intimidate people of color almost always do so anonymously these days because of the understanding that such acts – indeed, such attitudes – are socially unacceptable. The easy answer is that these folks are 1) bigoted and 2) cowardly.

Both are true, but leaving it at that has consequences beyond condemning the acts and vilifying those who engage in them: It allows the rest of us off the hook for wondering why these blatant forms of hatred still occur some 50 years after nine scared but brave black students defied their state’s governor (and, in reality, a significant segment of the American public) by showing up for classes at Little Rock High Central High School. We can chalk it up to a handful of bigots whose parents simply didn’t raise them right. We can congratulate ourselves for not being racist since we would never do something like that, and for being outraged that anyone would.

The reasons that such acts are done, however, is that they can be effective despite public outrage. If you are African American and work in the Pittsburgh Port Authority system, live in Jena, Louisiana or work as a police officer in Hempsetead, New York, you have yet another powerful reminder that you live in a nation that: was founded on perceptions of your inhumanity; slowly and reluctantly accepted your status as human; continued to find creative ways to legally, socially and psychologically keep you in your place; skirt legislation ostensibly designed to level the playing field by “red lining” real estate, under-funding public schools in your neighborhoods, and incarcerating your children at rates highly disproportionate to your community’s population; and, most recently, have learned to hate you more quietly. Similar to the reasons that so-called “negative” (attack) ads are used in political campaigns, the risk of offending public sensibilities is offset by the likelihood that one’s substantive point will be made, and made clearly.

Both the Pittsburgh and Hempstead cases provide illustrations of how badly we all wish to believe that these cases are anomalies, rather than indications of deeply ingrained racism in our communities. Patrick McMahon, president and business agent of the union that represents some Port Authority workers, responded to the hanging doll incident as follows: "As far as it being racial, I haven't heard that. . . .This is upsetting, just a very upsetting thing. It's so unfortunate that, in today's world, we have people who are so ugly and small-minded. . . .To me, there is no room for that kind of nonsense."

He hasn’t “heard” whether it might be racial? Seriously? A black doll with a racial epithet was found hanging – lynching style – in a workplace. What, we wonder, would be a clear indication to Mr. MacMahon that something racial was going on?

John Nedd, president of a black police officers’ group in Hempsetad Village (we’re guessing he’s black) responded as follows: “It's astonishing to hear something like this is happening in Nassau County in 2007, especially in Hempstead Village.” This is the president of the black police officers’ association, we should remind you. If HE is surprised that this stuff still goes on (even in a two-week period where there were three incidents that made national news), we need little more evidence that most Americans have been convinced that racism is dead. Or, perhaps, Nedd understands that it’s there, but expects bigots to be smart enough to keep it hidden. Either way, we find little comfort in our continued collective self-imposed blindness with respect to racism.