In one of their recent syndicated columns, Cokie and Steve Roberts discussed the firing of Shirley Sherrod, the African-American political appointee who was forced by the Obama administration to leave the Agriculture Department. In their article they stated, ‘To equate black resentment against whites with white racism aimed at blacks dangerously ignores hundreds of years of American history’. They go on to bemoan the fact that affirmative action is over and that ‘with an African-American in the White House, too many people seem to think that we have overcome our history’. As Bernie Goldberg so aptly pointed out, ‘Liberals see just about everything through the prism of race’, and this is a classic example.
Perhaps one might excuse this kind of thinking from Cokie and Steve Roberts, both of whom could be suffering from that common malady of liberals, Elitist Guilt Disorder (EGD). Cokie, the daughter of Congressman Hale Boggs, attended private schools and Wellesley College before beginning her career as a journalist with state-controlled NPR news. Steve attended Harvard before beginning his career with the New York Times and US News and World Report. Both now work for ABC News.
It is wrong-headed thinking like this that wants to justify black racism against whites, while condemning white racism against blacks. Sorry, but in 2010 white racism and black ‘resentment’ are one and the same. Both are very wrong and equally wrong! Such thinking also attempts to justify and make legal the discriminatory practice known as affirmative action. Perhaps worst of all, it fails to recognize the harm that affirmative action does to those for whom it was designed to help. At the very least, it robs the many deserving African-Americans of one of the greatest rewards of success…self-satisfaction. Why should a successful black physician, for example, have to wonder for the rest of his career if every patient he tends to is wondering if he got into medical school only because the bar was lowered for him by affirmative action.
There’s no question we still have a ways to go in improving race relations in the United States, but let’s not minimize the tremendous progress that has been made over the years. What can we do to make things better? Perhaps we could start by not dwelling on it so much and by encouraging all sides to not be so sensitive. And how ‘bout we tone down the rhetoric a bit and say something nice about each other. OK, I’ll start. Don’t tell Cokie, but I always enjoy her on NPR. Gee, with this kind of attitude, who knows, Shirley Sherrod might have been able to keep her job.