Permissible Discrimination: The View From Congress

It’s okay to discriminate. So long as those you’re discriminating against are generally poor (that is, can’t afford to lose a job), native Spanish speakers, Mexican, and have the extreme gumption to speak anything but the king’s English when they are at work.

This is essentially what the U.S. Congress said this past week, as it continues to hold hostage the annual appropriation for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) until it capitulates on the issue of litigating cases of employment discrimination based on national origin.

How is it, you might ask, that Congress can reasonably demand that the agency charged with being the legal watchdogs of workplace discrimination simply not do its job? Congress did, after all, write and pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII of which prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of, among other things, one’s national origin.

The EEOC has long held the position that language issues are closely related to issues of national origin, whether the case in point is a matter of accent, language fluency, or an English-Only requirement. It is a position echoed by the Court in 1989 when a 9th circuit ruling declared that accent and national origin are “obviously inextricably intertwined," and require a "very searching look" in regard to employment decisions – in this case, on the linguistic basis of accent in particular (see Fragante v. City & County of Honolulu). We’ll return to the policy issue and distinctions surrounding English-Only litigation in a moment.

For the time being, however, let’s focus on the general and specific answers to this question about Congressional audacity in dictating what forms of workplace discrimination the EEOC can and cannot litigate. The general answer is that our current discourse surrounding immigration has become a myopic debate not about immigration per se, in either principle or practice, but about illegal immigration. This would not be as much a problem were it not for the fact that our discussion about illegal immigration is largely a racialized discourse, fueled by opinion leaders in the media whose “news reporting” has been channeling our entire surplus of racial intolerance, bigotry and fear among the American public into a misguided attack on Mexican immigrants living and working in the U.S.

In the year preceding the attacks, there were roughly 500 or so newspaper stories where the issue of illegal immigration as it relates to Mexico appears. That number fell to just under 300 in the year following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. In 2003 the number is 283, 329 the year following, and 539 the year after that. This number exploded to a whopping 1,535 in 2006.

At this height in 2006, a random search of newspaper reporting shows that the actual terms “illegal” and “immigration” are used in close proximity almost 50% of the time that the issue of immigration is discussed (surely the tenor of many of the others where the actual terms are not used is also focused on the issue of illegal immigration). Again, in 1996 (in a separate search), when the terms “illegal” and “immigration” are used together in the same paragraph in a news story, in 44 instances the story referred primarily to the Middle East. In 92 instances the subject was primarily Europe, about the same as the 94 instances where Canada was the focus of the discussion about illegal immigration. How many of the stories during the same time period focused on Mexico? 1, 744.

This is far from scientific evidence, but it suggests that the fear, paranoia, prejudice and hatred of people who are not “us” following the September 11 attacks was used to resurrect an old enemy, while at the same time beginning the fight against a new one. When it came to foreign policy, we took the opportunity to take the fight to the Muslim world; when it came to domestic policy, we took the opportunity to focus on a different “threat” – Mexicans – who ostensibly come to this country for the sole purpose of stealing our jobs, taking advantage of our liberal welfare benefits, perpetrating violent crimes, and, last but not least, corrupting our national identity by corrupting our language.

This is the general answer to why Congress seems hell bent on curbing English-Only litigation. The more specific answer is simpler. It comes down to a particular case of alleged national origin discrimination perpetrated by the Salvation Army, and a political pundit dressed in a newsman’s clothing – Lou Dobbs. When the EEOC announced back in April of this year that it filed suit against the charitable organization, no one was more incensed than CNN’s Lou Dobbs, who has become a veritable one-trick pony when it comes to news coverage/opinion-spewing on the issue of illegal immigration.

Upon hearing the news, Dobbs immediately responded in characteristic fashion. He “reported” the news with more than an air of sarcasm, misrepresented the facts of the case, blew the case out of proportion, challenged EEOC officials to a debate, and then claimed a moral victory when those officials did what is presumably common procedure – refuse to debate the details of a case that is currently in litigation.

First, Dobbs insinuated that the EEOC views any and every form of English-Only rule as discriminatory on the basis of national origin, therefore making it illegal under Title VII. The EEOC however has been quite clear that such policies are appropriate and legal, under certain circumstances, namely when there is a legitimate business reason for the policy – for example, in certain circumstances when an employee in a service industry is required as a function of their job to interact with English-speaking clientele.

The case against the Salvation Army, however, involved native Spanish speakers who worked as clothes sorters. They labored just fine with the Salvation Army for years, until the organization decided to enforce an old English-Only policy. In effect, the allegation by the EEOC is that national origin – expressed in the prohibition against speaking Spanish – has nothing to do with legitimate business reasons and everything to do with the negative sentiments of the employer about the employee’s country of origin.

Second, from Dobbs’s reporting of the story, one would think that this is the only form of discrimination the EEOC spends its time litigating. However, of the cases where the agency found a “reasonable cause” of discrimination, only 13% were cases of national origin discrimination, and it’s likely that of these, even fewer were claims of language or English-Only policy discrimination.

What Dobbs was equally incensed about was the fact that the alleged discrimination was being done by the Salvation Army – a “Christian” charity. For Dobbs, nothing better personifies the bigotry and fear he spews on a daily basis about godless and immoral illegal immigrants who threaten the moral sanctity and Christian values inherent in our national identity than the government going after a Christian charity for insisting its employees speak English.

It was this nationalistic and moralistic fervor that took hold of Republican members of congress (beginning with Lamar Alexander) eager to reassert the party’s position as the standard-bearer of traditional American (Christian) values, as well as some Democratic members of Congress fearful not so much of Mexican immigrants as they are of losing the next election.

This continuing fight in the Congress about prohibiting the pursuit of discrimination claims based on national origin is but one of the prominent expressions of how the contemporary discourse about immigration policy has gone awry. Framing the general discourse about immigration policy around a racialized threat to American national identity will certainly hamstring our representatives from upholding one of the supposed principles of this identity – equal opportunity and equal protection under the law.

Stories You Might Have Missed Last Week

New York Times
Blacks See Growing Values Gap Between Poor and Middle Class: Optimism about Black Progress Declines


Sacramento Bee
In Iowa, N.H., race, gender issues appear to fade


Jackson, Mississippi Sun-Herald
Attorney: Officials to take 5th in voting irregularities case [that involves claims of voting irregularities, intimidation and racial overtones]


South Carolina, Herald/AP
Rare robbery case brings cries of racism


Omaha World-Herald/AP
Racial Bias Seen in Foster Care


Desert News (Utah)/AP
More than 35 million went hungry in '06, report says

Tears of a Hound

After a very emotionally taxing week following the goings-on at the University of Delaware, we didn’t have much energy left to spend on Duane “Dog” Chapman’s rant against his son’s black girlfriend where he continually used the n-word. Still, Sean Hannity’s best attempts to rehabilitate him this past week are worth some consideration. Here’s our two cents on this.

(BTW: We’re still watching the U of D situation, but not much has changed; the “free speech” white folks at FIRE have succeeded in getting diversity language off campus. Three cheers for free speech!)

Dog is human, and he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He’s racist like all of us, and he’s clearly a bigot to boot. But he says he’s not, so it’s worth examining his hour-long interview on Fox News’s Hannity and Colmes program this past week (click on the links below to watch the interview in its entirety).

Here’s some of what Dog had to say:

“[O]f course, I knew that that was a word that I should not be saying. As far as believing in what that word means, I did not — I do not believe that that word is — means what a lot of America is thinking. . . .I've used the word for a long time not to mean what it does to a lot of black people that are offended.”

Ok, so what we are to understand here is that, as we’ve noted previously, intent is all that matters. Dog didn’t mean the n-word as a racial slur, so despite its history and the fact that its denotative and connotative meaning are widely understood and accepted, it’s not what he meant.

He continued:

“I thought that I was cool enough in the black world to be able to use that word as a brother to a brother. I'm not. I didn't really know until three or four days ago what that meant to black people. . . .Of course, I know the story, and I know America's story. But I never realized that that's like stabbing a black person in the heart. I would never do that to any kind of person. I've always taken pride to be the white guy that can talk to the black people, that can refer to them truly as a brother from a different mother. But this is America and this is entertainment, and that doesn't fly there.”

He knows the story about the n-word (presumably that means that he understands that it had been used to enslave, control, dehumanize, ostracize, and persecute African Americans based on their skin color), but didn’t realize how much it might hurt them to hear it used. He’s not “cool enough” to use it? We guess if Fonzie were around today, his trademark “Aaaay” would be replaced by the n-word. When did we walk into a Fellini film?

But Dog does have an interesting take with respect to his history with the word. He claims that he has used it with his black friends for some time, so he didn’t know that it was wrong for him to use it:

“[I] wouldn't turn around and say, ‘Hi,’ and use it out loud, because I'm going to get beat up, but I used it as a — when I meet a brother, and we shake, and we say, ‘How's it,’ that's how it is. It's not a degrading thing at all.”

Even if this is so (and we’re suspicious as to how widespread such use might have been), in the covertly-obtained tape in question, he is clearly using the word in a hostile way toward his son’s black girlfriend. But in a culture where the word is used as a form of fraternity between African Americans (mostly males), it makes sense that a white guy (part Native American) who thinks he’s black should be able to use it. “What?” you ask? Check this out:

“And I used to say, ‘I'm black, too.’ In other words, I — my whole life I've been called a half-breed, a convict, king of the trailer trash, this and that. I take that and stand. . . .So when I stood there and said, ‘I kind of know what you feel like, because I've been there, too,’ I felt that I could embrace and like, as brothers or, even as a black woman, say the word.”

Seriously. And then:

“You can't — I now learned I'm not black at all. And I never did it out of hate. This sounds so stupid. I always did it out of love. Other white guys would be like, ‘Boy, who does Dog think he is? Dog can say that.’ And black guys would be with me and walk with me and respect me.”

Well, now that his African American status is cleared up, we shouldn’t have any more trouble with this issue. If it weren’t for this episode, Dog might still be running around not knowing that he’s not black!

And even though he apologized in writing, Sean Hannity wanted to make sure he had a chance to apologize directly:

“[A]ll black people in America I owe an apology to. Whether how dark I think I am, I cannot say that word.”

We could not make this up if we wanted to.

“I owe the rest of the people, whether they're black or not in America, an apology, because people looked up to me. I've learned a lesson. All my lessons I've learned in my life have been the hard way, or I guess I wouldn't learn them. This is one of the hardest lessons I've ever learned in my life, even facing death. . . .If I could kill myself and people would forgive me, I would do that. I said on the way here, ‘I hope no one died thinking I meant that word before I got here. I must come out.’”

We’re clearly having some fun at Dog’s expense, but it is hard not to feel a little bit bad for the guy. None of us wants to be remembered for our worst moment, and again, by his own admission, he’s not real bright and he’s had a hard life. That’s not to excuse him, of course. Again, by his own admission, this wasn’t something he got caught saying the one time in his life he said it. He knew what the history of the word was, he knew that he shouldn’t use it, and he knew that if he was heard using it his career would be ruined (which, ironically, is what the argument was about). In another part of the interview, he even noted that his black friends warned him about using it. As easy as it is to make fun of his mullet and his television show, he is clearly a pathetic character, which means, in part, he is deserving of pity.

He cried in various places throughout the interview, including when he saw a picture of the target of his bigotry and realized that she was “cute.” We suppose if she were a “nappy headed ho,” he wouldn’t have felt so bad.

Another of Dog’s sons, Chris, had this to say about his father on TMZ:

“My dad is not a racist man. If he was he would have no hair. He'd have swastikas on his body and he would go around talking about Hitler. That's what a racist is to me.”

As we type this, we’re looking around the room for Allen Funt.

But while we can dismiss Dog as simply another bigot caught in the act, Sean Hannity’s behavior is condemnable, not pathetic. Here’s what we mean:

One of the black spiritual advisors consulted by Dog, Rev. Tim Storey, also argued that Dog is not “racist” (he clearly meant “bigoted”):

“He's not a racist. What you have with Duane — I met him before he was the big Dog the Bounty Hunter, before he had the A&E show. And he's rough around the edges. And, you know, God uses shaky people to do sturdy projects.”

(We should note that another of Dog’s black advisors is Roy Innis from the Congress on Racial Equality who, interestingly enough, is on the “advisory board” of FIRE).

A bit later, this exchange occurs:

D. CHAPMAN: “If I'm a racist, yes. I'm done.”

HANNITY: “But you just said tonight you're not.”

D. CHAPMAN: “I'm not a racist, so I'm not done.”

And then:

HANNITY [to Pastor Storey]: “Let me ask you. Is the ‘N’ word in Dog's life, in your estimation as a close friend and his pastor, is that the same as just any other curse?”

STOREY: “I will say that I've never heard him say it, but I was shocked when he said it and it did bother me. But I know that, down deep in his heart, that he doesn't mean it that way. But it's still an alarming bad word that he said.”

HANNITY: “Do you believe that he's capable of now saying he's going to change his life and not curse anymore?”

Two things are worthy of note here. First, even though Pastor Storey did not agree that, for Dog, the n-word is just another curse word (what rational person COULD agree with such nonsense), Hannity continues as if he had, thus leaving the impression that the black pastor agrees. Second, Hannity is a self-proclaimed conservative; conservatives are generally very opposed to hearing any “excuses” about how poverty leads to crime, racism leads to poverty, or even that mental retardation does not warrant an exception to death sentences for murder (see Justices Thomas, Scalia and Rehnquist’s dissents in Tennard v. Dretke). Why so much compassion for a white guy accused (and caught in the act) of being a bigot? Continued Hannity (back in the studio, without Chapman):

HANNITY: “All right, Alan, we actually taped about 25 minutes more. He was beaten as a kid. He was in the Devil's Disciples motorcycle gang. How he became a bounty hunter, was found guilty of murder one and changed his life. There's a lot of spiritual, religious side to all this. And — but he was very remorseful, as you could see, about this whole incident.”

COLMES: “I thought it was very interesting he thought he was a brother and he was talking — he would talk brother to brother, which is why people like Sharpton and Jackson will say even African-Americans should not use that word. Regardless of whether you're white or black it's not a word to be used. But he thought of himself as one of them.”

HANNITY: “He swore he would — and he swore he would never use it again, and you have to decide for yourself. I believe he's sincere.”

Well, okay then. That’s that. Hannity absolves Dog. His show should be back on promptly. We’re certain that if Sean Hannity were on Fox News in 1984 he would have similarly helped Rev. Jesse Jackson rehabilitate himself after Jackson’s “Hymietown” comment, which U. of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato included in a Washington Post special about “feeding frenzies of our time” in 1998. This summary, was helpful to commenter #17 of a November 28, 2006 TV Squad blog about the Michael Richards episode. In short, while conservatives may be quick to excuse away comments from whites about people of color, black Americans do not get similar consideration for equally despicable comments.

We’re sure the difference in treatment has nothing to do with race, though, since, according to the folks at FIRE and a lone undergraduate dissenter at the U of D (who apparently has a lot of time on his hands to post misinformed and hateful comments on the ResLife Facebook group page), “racism” is an ideology, as is the belief that there is racial inequality in America.

So Dog blames his son for surreptitiously taping the call and selling it to a tabloid (allegedly for drug money), and FIRE blames “liberals” in academia for drumming up racism where it doesn’t exist. Dog used the word, whether he got caught on tape or not, and racism exists, whether colleges responsibly point it out or not.

***

Afterthought: We couldn’t figure out how to work this naturally into the text above, but it’s too good to leave alone. We’re not sure if Dog was making a nifty Sidney Poitier reference of not, but if so, our hat’s go off to him for his wit. You be the judge:

Talking about introducing his cellmate to his first wife, Chapman said to Hannity:

“[M]y cellie, Edward Whittaker didn't have anywhere to live so I got married in Denver and told [my wife] one day, ‘Guess who's coming to dinner? This is my cellie. He's black. His name is Edward Whittaker.”

Woof.

Remember: If you use Facebook, please join the RaceProject.org Facebook group to get updates on the Project.

Full Fox Interview

Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2S85DVq6Kw

Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT0vTdKuAwk

Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbbx6hKf4mg

Part 4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqfHegcgM7M

Part 5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G_YMGc7eq8

This Week’s Non-Racists: A Dog and Bunch of Angry White Guys

It’s almost too easy to point out that bounty hunter Duane “Dog” Chapman is a bigot. After his rant to his son in a telephone conversation was leaked to the media this week, there’s no doubt about his attitude toward African Americans. If you’ve not heard it, you can listen here or here. The irony is palpable: Chapman argued that his son must break up with his black girlfriend because the n-word is used around their house, and he was afraid that the woman in question would tape him using the word and sell it to a tabloid, thus ruining his career. If someone had proposed an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm on this premise, even Larry David would have found it ridiculous. So Chapman joins Michael Richards, John Gibson, Dom Imus and Joe Biden on the list of famous people getting caught recently saying racist things, even though they’re “not racist.”

In his apology, Chapman explained that he was angry (which, as we’ve learned with others who have “slipped” with language, apparently means that it’s not really who he is), and that it wasn’t about race at all: "I was disappointed in his choice of a friend, not due to her race, but her character," he said. "However, I should have never used that term." This is consistent with what he says on the telephone recording. At one point, he notes that “it’s not that they’re black,” but rather that he would be misinterpreted if people heard him using the term. Perfectly understandable. We’ve all heard that the n-word isn’t about race: “There are niggers, and there are blacks.” Who couldn’t understand the embarrassment of someone being misunderstood as racist when heard using the n-word the way Chapman used it. Poor fella.

But even as this was happening, the non-racist white men were out in full force this week, attacking (and ultimately killing) a diversity awareness program at the University of Delaware and TWIR’s own Stephen Maynard Caliendo. The level of hostility is curious: if race isn’t something we need to be worried about, why are these folks so upset?

There are several things at work here, so we want to try to break them down in an organized way. This is complicated, so we won’t be able to come up with a cute sound bite to make our point. If there is an interest in understanding our perspective, the reader will have to go through each point, absorb its message, and avoid the urge to call us names, tell us about his or her black friend, and remind us that slavery has been over for 150 years. If that’s not possible, we respectfully request that such readers stop at this point, because there is no value in exposing oneself to the following.

1) All Americans are racist; all Americans are not bigots. This is an important conceptual (not merely semantic) distinction. Until folks can understand this, there is no point in going further. Conflation of these terms very much relegates the discussion to heated claims about individual persons’ “hearts” and the fact that the only people who are racist are those who routinely use the n-word (and not even them, right, Dog?!). The diversity program at the University of Delaware attempted to make this point, but did so somewhat poorly. In the “Diversity Facilitation Training” manual (note: the “training” refers to teaching the resident assistants to lead the facilitation – not “training people how to think”), as prepared by Dr. Shakti Butler, nicely explains racism as “race prejudice plus power.” In this case, since whites are the racial group with access to the power structure, racism is a term that can only refer to that which perpetuates white supremacy. So it is improper to refer to African Americans, for instance, as “racist” against whites. Where Dr. Butler erred, however, is by stating that “people of color cannot be racist” in the definition of “a racist” in the manual. This is only partly correct, and neglecting the other part leads to confusion.

People of color cannot be racist against whites, but, as noted in the definition of “internalized racism,” which appears on the same page, racism very much affects the way people of color see themselves. African Americans, for instance, are socialized to believe the negative stereotypes about themselves and other minorities, just like white folks are. So the claim that the term “a racist” “applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent)” is misleading and incomplete. First, “racist” should never be used as a noun (i.e., “a racist”). It is an adjective that appropriately describes all persons socialized in racist systems such as that of the U.S. The preferred noun, we argue, is “bigot,” which describes someone who dislikes persons of a specific race. This can be applied to folks of any race. If a Latino person hates whites, he is a bigot. He’s racist, too, but not against whites. This needs to be clear and remain clear or we’re doomed to another fifty years of spinning our wheels with respect to making more progress toward racial equality.

2) College is designed to challenge existing beliefs so that students are prepared to think critically and exist meaningfully and productively in a democratic culture. This is absolutely threatening to those who are comfortable with the status quo. The University of Delaware put together a program to help students – many of whom come from homogeneous high schools – to learn about issues of diversity that they likely did not encounter to that point in their lives. Far from telling them what to think, the program clearly is intended to introduce them to concepts that would likely be unique to them. With the number of hate incidents that occur weekly on college campuses, such a program is not just warranted, but a failure to have such a program is irresponsible.

The Delaware attack was driven by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), who issued a letter to the University’s president demanding that the diversity program be put to a halt. The University’s Vice-president for Student Life wrote back, and FIRE responded by a point-by-point rebuttal on its website, followed by a “victory” statement on Friday when the University apparently bowed to the demands of the powerful.

The FIRE rebuttal provides an interesting look into how misunderstood higher education is. College professors, on the whole, go to school for twice as long as lawyers and the same amount of time as physicians, only to earn a fraction of what most lawyers and doctors earn. We don’t understand why the motives are always in question. Further, professors are, by definition, the most educated people in their substantive areas. That’s what it means to have a terminal degree in one’s field. That doesn’t mean they don’t disagree with one another or are always right, but it’s interesting to note that non-academics attack professors’ work in a way that they never would attack a physician’s. FIRE’s president, Greg Lukianoff, appears to think he knows more than college professors about how to educate America’s youth. Colleges are in the business of helping students to think critically about the indoctrination that they have received for the first eighteen years of their lives, which Lukianoff clearly does not want to happen. Students cannot reject what they do not see, so keeping the hegemonic order off students’ radar is in FIRE’s best interests.

(To put the organization into context, while one of FIRE’s white male founders is a college educator, none of its senior staff have Ph.D.s; all are white, and only one is female. Every member of the Board of Directors is white. The “Board of Advisors” is more demographically and ideologically diverse: at least one member is of color [Roy Innis of the Congress of Racial Equality is African American]; there are three females, three college educators and three former educators on this list of seventeen.)

There is a psychological concept known as “projection,” where people unknowingly attribute their own thoughts and behaviors to others. It is out of the realm of possibility to someone who wishes to indoctrinate that a university offering such a program would be attempting to do anything but indoctrinate. Lukianoff seems to not understand that there are motives for providing information that do not involve changing someone’s mind. Students are capable of making up their own minds, but they deserve to have all the information. For years, they’ve been fed myths about American meritocracy, color-blindness, and the infallibility of relying on “personal responsibility” with no attention to context. Delaware’s program is not designed to change students’ minds, but rather to expand them.

How do we know? If we examine the intended learning outcomes of the program, here’s what we see:

“Students will recognize that systemic oppression exists in our society.” The acting verb is “recognize.” They don’t have to believe that it needs to be reversed, that affirmative action is the way to solve it, or anything else. They merely will recognize that it exists. That is not pushing “an ideological viewpoint,” as FIRE claims. Are FIRE’s spokespersons arguing that systemic oppression does NOT exist? If so, they should say so clearly and explain why they believe people of color are still disproportionately denied access to the power system. Another outcome is “Students will recognize the benefits of dismantling systems of oppression.” Again, they must recognize the benefits, not subscribe to them. They are perfectly free to argue that there are drawbacks that offset these benefits, for instance. A third outcome, not squarely related to race, is “Students will be able to utilize their knowledge of sustainability to change their daily habits and consumer mentality.” Students will be able to do this; they are not forced to, or even forced to think that they should. After the program, they will see the complexities of consumerism and be in a better position to make an informed choice. But to persons who wish to keep things as they are, we can see how such knowledge would be threatening. The University wishes to “leave a mental footprint on [students’] consciousness,” a claim that FIRE highlights as an indictment of the school’s attempt to indoctrinate. Raising consciousness is a fundamental element of higher education and does not even slightly resemble indoctrination. Quite the opposite: consciousness raising has to do with students recognizing how they have been indoctrinated throughout their lives. In the response letter, FIRE claims, “some students are successfully resisting indoctrination.” Not so. Those students are simply less willing to allow their indoctrination to be challenged. They’re not getting their money’s worth from their college education.

But we know that some students come to college to receive a degree so that they can earn a better living. That’s not surprising given that they’ve been indoctrinated to believe that all that matters is getting wealthy and having more material possessions than their neighbors. Perhaps the folks at FIRE think that college shouldn’t be expanding young minds, but rather teaching them what they need to make money. Again, if this is accurate, we encourage them to say so directly. In that case, students will be best served to keep their heads down for four years and get that piece of paper. In a society where intellectual growth is seen as weakness (ask any candidate who has changed his or her position on a salient issue over the course of a lifetime), it’s not surprising that stubbornly “defending” one’s beliefs is more highly valued than inviting them to be challenged.

3) Those who advocate for racial equality are not interested in telling people what to think or how to think. Rather, we wish to help folks understand that the abbreviated version of the world that we’ve all been socialized to accept is full of myths, half-truths, and ideas that serve to perpetuate the status quo. For those who think the status quo is acceptable, there absolutely should be concern that our ideas are threatening. We are happy to engage in an honest dialogue about this, but it is disingenuous to argue that equality will evolve naturally within the existing system without external agitation. We would appreciate if those who like the system the way it would simply state that. They should be clear that they believe that racial minorities are disproportionately denied access as a result of their own individual choices, rather than any systemic bias in favor of whites. They should be clear that they believe that Brown v. Board of Education was a bad Supreme Court decision because it was improper judicial activism. They should be clear that they believe that tax money from wealthy neighborhoods should stay there rather than be distributed to poor areas because it’s poor folks’ fault that they can’t live in wealthy neighborhoods (and, thus, their children do not deserve the chances wealthy folks’ children have). These are all perfectly valid positions that should be part of the “marketplace of ideas.” What is unacceptable is the refusal to admit these aspects of keeping the status quo, reverting instead to name calling and projected accusations against those who are arguing for meaningful chance to bring about social justice.

We have no interest in telling folks how to think. On the contrary, we are arguing for a more truthful articulation of what everyone thinks. We are asking for the anger to be reduced (it’s not useful), for the name calling to stop, and for an honest dialogue about race. We’ve been requesting that for seven years as part of The Project on Race in Political Communication and for over a year in this space. Others have asked for it for many years before us.

This week, one of Chicago’s conservative talk radio hosts, Jerry Agar, was infuriated about the Delaware situation. And, in case you missed it, Stephen was taken to task in the comment’s section of last week’s blog. Unfortunately, the argument made no sense for two reasons. First, a “paradox” is an apparent contradiction, which means that what the commenter believes is hypocritical is actually not. He would be (unintentionally) correct, except that what he points out isn’t even an apparent contradiction. As a white male, Stephen argues that he cannot participate in the discussion about whether black folk can use the n-word. He has not participated in that discussion. Rather, he has argued that it is inappropriate for white folks to use it. Second, neither of us has told anyone what to think. We may both be silly, but not for that reason. And our mamas raised us not to be rude, so we do our best to avoid that.

So we’re asking for some civility to the discussion. It is apparent from the anger, though, that we need to be talking to one another. If it didn’t matter, these folks wouldn’t be so hostile toward us and the folks at the University of Delaware. So, in a backward way, we thank this week’s non-racists for reminding us how much work we still have left to do.

It is further evidence of the power of the hegemonic order that the University of Delaware has bowed to the wishes of FIRE and canceled the diversity program. FIRE declared “victory” over diversity awareness on its web page; it takes a special kind of person to believe that students learning less, not more, is victory (and it takes a special kind of arrogance to believe it while claiming that it’s in the name of free speech). It’s likely that Delaware state legislators threatened to cut funding if the program continued (isn’t it obvious where the real power resides?). Angry white guys win another victory over those who fight for equality.

As if the victory over heightened consciousness were not enough, FIRE continues to threaten to dismantle attempts to broaden students’ worldviews. In their “victory” release, they note the following: “FIRE would like to know if RAs are still required to immediately report ‘[a]ny instance that is perceived by those involved as being racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, or otherwise oppressive.’” Why would FIRE encourage covering up hateful activity on campus? Perhaps since awareness of such activity would remind us that inequality still exists. So bigots at the University of Delaware are now free to spew their hate around the residence halls, because if the folks at FIRE find out that the acts were reported, they will bring their wrath down on an administration who urges hate crimes to be reported.

If the University of Delaware does not re-implement this or a similar program (we would be happy to help with that, if they would like us to) its students will be poorer citizens as a result of this abuse of power by the folks at FIRE and the cowardice on the part of the University’s president. But angry white guys everywhere can breathe a sign of relief that their historic access to power remains and has succeeded in keeping people of color on the sidelines by allowing white folks to continue to believe the myth that there is no systemic racism.

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