Who Is 'Racist'?
by Thomas Sowell
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Whatever the
ultimate outcome of the case against George Zimmerman for his shooting
of Trayvon Martin, what has happened already is enough to turn the
stomach of anyone who believes in either truth or justice.
An amazing
proportion of the media has given us a painful demonstration of
the thinking – and lack of thinking – that prevailed back in the
days of the old Jim Crow South, where complexion counted more than
facts in determining how people were treated.
One of the
first things presented in the media was a transcript of a conversation
between George Zimmerman and a police dispatcher. The last line
in most of the transcripts shown on TV was that of the police dispatcher
telling Zimmerman not to continue following Trayvon Martin.
That became
the basis of many media criticisms of Zimmerman for continuing to
follow him. Only later did I see a transcript of that conversation
on the Sean Hannity program that included Zimmerman's reply to the
police dispatcher: "O.K."
That reply
removed the only basis for assuming that Zimmerman did in fact continue
to follow Trayvon Martin. At this point, neither I nor the people
who assumed that he continued to follow the teenager have any basis
in fact for believing that he did or didn't.
Why was that
reply edited out by so many in the media? Because too many people
in the media see their role as filtering and slanting the news to
fit their own vision of the world. The issue is not one of being
"fair" to "both sides" but, more fundamentally, of being honest
with their audience.
NBC News carried
the editing even further, removing one of the police dispatcher's
questions, to which Zimmerman was responding, in order to feed the
vision of Zimmerman as a racist.
In the same
vein were the repeated references to Zimmerman as a "white Hispanic."
Zimmerman is half-white. So is Barack Obama. But does anyone refer
to Obama as a "white African"?
All these verbal
games grow out of the notion that complexion tells you who is to
be blamed and who is not. It is a dangerous game because race is
no game. If the tragic history of the old Jim Crow South in this
country is not enough to show that, the history of racial and ethnic
tragedies is written in blood in countries around the world. Millions
have lost their lives because they looked different, talked differently
or belonged to a different religion.
In the midst
of the Florida tragedy, there was a book published with the unwieldy
title, No
Matter What ... They'll Call This Book Racist. Obviously
it was written well before the shooting in Florida, but its message
– that there is rampant hypocrisy and irrationality in public discussions
of race – could not have been better timed.
Author Harry
Stein, a self-described "reformed white liberal," raised by parents
who were even further left, exposes the illogic and outright fraudulence
that lies behind so much of what is said about race in the media,
in politics and in our educational institutions.
He asks a very
fundamental question: "Why, even after the Duke University rape
fiasco, does the media continue to give credence to every charge
of racism?"
Harry
Stein credits Shelby Steele's book White
Guilt with opening his eyes to one of the sources of many
counterproductive things said and done about race today – namely,
guilt about what was done to blacks and other minorities in the
past.
Let us talk
sense, like adults. Nothing that is done to George Zimmerman – justly
or unjustly – will unlynch a single black man who was tortured and
killed in the Jim Crow South for a crime he didn't commit.
Letting hoodlums
get away with hoodlumism today does not undo a single injustice
of the past. It is not even a favor to the hoodlums, for many of
whom hoodlumism is just the first step on a path that leads to the
penitentiary, and maybe to the execution chamber.
Winston Churchill
said, "If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will
be lost." He wasn't talking about racial issues, but what he said
applies especially where race is involved.
April
24, 2012
Thomas
Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford
University. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.
To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other
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