Hair Trigger Racism

Because I am a coward, I find myself avoiding making comments on matters remotely racial. For instance, I remained silent when a teacher who was refused entry to a public meeting with her dog was suspended for stating that the pooch was cleaner than her students. It was said that because she was white, and her students were black, her comments were racist.

This is why I avoid racially charged topics. The worst is immediately thought of you. I think this teacher is much more likely a garden variety idiot. I have met plenty of people who have more love for their Fifi than for a fellow human. Further, there is no shortage of teachers who are there to suckle at the public udder, to have an indoor job with no heavy lifting rather than any great love of education. The contempt for child expressed in her statement may very well have had nothing to do with race, and everything to do with a systemic lack of empathy for her charges.

Unfortunately in this town, at least in this instance, contempt of child is not enough to get you booted from the classroom. If you just disdain elementary students because you are a thoughtless pinhead, that's not enough to lose your government job with summers off. No, to lose your job you have to disdain children because they are black. Then you can get your silly self suspended.

There are at least two problems revealed in this little incident. First is that a teacher would be stupid enough to bring a dog to a school board meeting (In my mind's eye I see a pampered yap dog with a bow on it). In any case, a teacher who would wander in to see people who could conceivably fire her with a dog is probably not all that swift to begin with. Just how near the top of classroom performers she is would be an interesting thing to know.

That said, I think a deeper problem is that when white person disparages a black person, it is automatically assumed that the motive is racism. I find plenty of black people beneath contempt, but it has nothing to do with the color of their skin.

The inverse is true as well. I love Langston Hugh's poetry for it's thoughtfulness and as a window into his era. Tuskeegee airman saved hundreds of lives escorting bombers against Germany. Other squadrons chased after kills leaving their bombers unescorted, but the Tuskeegee tactic was to repel and return, and no bombers were lost to enemy fighters. My fawning admiration for these people has to do with their achievement, not their skin color.

Incidents like the aforementioned make me unwilling to take the risk of pitching in. The demonstrated hair trigger on the "racist" weapon has had the dual effect of making normal people like me unwilling to take such claims seriously, and far worse, scare us away from getting involved in the hard work in our community.

Tim McNabb