Three Views of the Torrent

Heidi Kitrosser points to three editorials which have deal with the Michael Richards controversy in a particularly intriguing or erudite fashion. From the Baltimore Sun, Leonard Pitts Jr.; from The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson; and from Blackprof, Spencer Overton. Mr. Pitts, in particular, raises a good point when he questions why people are so quick to assume the best case scenario in Mr. Richards' outburst?

If so many of my white countrymen refuse to recognize racism when it is this blatant and unmistakable, what expectation can we have that they will do so when it is subtle and covert? In other words, when it is what it usually is.

After all, modern bigotry usually isn't some nitwit screaming the N-word. It is jobs you don't get and loans you don't get and apartments you don't get and health care you don't get and justice you don't get - for reasons you get all too clearly, though no one ever quite speaks them. It is smiles in your face and knives in your back. And it is, yes, a sitcom - like Seinfeld - that presents New York City, of all places, as a black-free zone.

These are complaints blacks have sought for years to drive home to their fellow Americans, only to be met largely by indifference, the defensive apathy of those who are free to ignore or diminish any claim on conscience that makes them uncomfortable. At the risk of metaphor abuse, the response to this debacle makes clear that you can't explain Advanced Racism to those who haven't passed Racism 101.

And, with all due respect to my correspondent, that need to make excuses gets old. The man spent 2 1/2 minutes screaming racial insults. You say that's not racism?

Then, pray tell, what is?

In most cases today, racism appears in cases of ambivalency rather than in easily demarcated explicit violations. It comes pre-equipped with plausible deniability. Often it is operating unconsciously. Richards is the anomaly here, in that it presents an "easy" case. And while Pitts is right that too many of us are failing even this elementary exam, even those who are not still have only reached stage one. Stopping here, only seeing (and condemning) racism in the "easy cases" means most racism slip through the cracks. So with all due respect to Richard Cohen, it's still just a bit too early to celebrate.