(The(Greensboro Utecoro
Robert D. Benson, President and Publisher
Ben Bowers, Executive Editor Ned Cline, Managing Editor
Giles Lambertson, Editorial Page Editor
i A10 Friday, August 19
Editorials
The Carolina Peacemaker editorial
reprinted on this page is a welcome
contribution to community dialogue
on race relations. It is marked by
candor and common sense in lieu of
the trash-can rhetoric that makes
communication between racial groups
impossible sometimes.
The genesis of the editorial was a
Record editorial on the proposed holiday for the Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr., which we stated may be the right
idea at the wrong time. In the course
of the editorial, we remarked upon a
statement by Dr. King's son, wherein
he said that the U.S. is a "very racist
nation."
Our comment was not, it seems to
us, as "strong" as the Peacemaker
editorial suggests. But we did question how objective the slain civil
rights leader's son is about such
things, and observed that going
around the country calling America
racist is just a little self-fulfilling.
We agree with the Peacemaker
editorialist when he says that racist
conditions and attitudes "cause racial
inequity and inequality and injustice.
They compel our behavior and thinking, even when conscious prejudice is
not present. They infest and overwhelm the lives of blacks and whites
(and others)."
We agree that racism is "grotesquely durable" and a front-burner
problem for American society. We
' agree with most of what the editorial
1 contains, in fact. But in two fundamental ways we look at race relations
differently than perhaps does the
Peacemaker.
First, we do not assume the worst
about people. We consider it no sin
for a person to pick up on differences
and likenesses between himself and
another person. Such intellectual and
emotional discrimination is a natural
human reaction, partly born of self-
defense, partly of curiosity.
Racial dialogue
It is plainly prejudicial, on the other hand, for a person to conclude that
whole categories of human, beings —
elderly, whites, men, Democrats, and
so on — are inferior to other categories. Such irrational discrimination is
learned more than it is intuitive. It
damages the psyche first, then the
society. It should be repudiated by
every thinking person.
The point is, discriminating and
being discriminating too often are
considered one and the same. It is a
tragic error thus to gloss over human
differences. For our part, we are not
willing to ascribe every societal ill to
racism, preferring to believe that
soured romances and career ambition
and upset stomachs and any number
of other influences are at least as
much to blame.
Second, we see nothing to be
gained from hypocrisy in race relations. A preachy front sometimes disguises a rotten rearend. Sometimes
the preachier, the rottener. We were
impressed with what Newsweek columnist Meg Greenfield had to say
about this some months ago.
She noted that white people are beginning to speak "a kind of dissembling, hypocritical, ghastly Goody
Two-shoes language of condescen-
~~Sl5lr; specially created by your tonier
white people over the past couple of
decades for discussions of— and with
— blacks."
She went on to describe a luncheon
table discussion where the
was spoken. It was, she said,
dreary foundation-academic event
where a black participant, put forward a screwy idea and got pretty
abusive in propounding it, and none
of us — all white — around that particular table said so. We just sat
there and smiled ever so tightly and
kept on saying, well, that was of
course very interesting, but we wer-
en't sure we could buy it completely
and so forth. I wanted to say: 'What
are you...crazy or something?1
"Why didn't I? If there was white
racism (mine) at work here, I am certain that it lay in my patronizing forbearance, not in my inclination to
take the guy on. But I am also certain
that my white tablemates would have
regarded any challenge I made to him
as evidence of a dreadful want of racial sensitivity on my part."
The writer concluded by saying
that race relations could be improved
"by getting rid of that sickly, fixed
smile we wear for interracial occasions."
In a second column on the subject,
she hit again at the special hypocrites
who publicly espouse interracial harmony but who become ugly about it
in private conversation. "These tend
to be people — at least in my world
— who spend a rather considerable
amount of time charging other whites
with being racists. That may even be
one of the things they do for a living
in politics or journalism: call other|
people racists. Yet they are them
selves infected with a variation of thel
If a veneer of racial acceptance and
equality is all that fair-minded people
of this nation want, then America has|
arrived. If, on the other hand;
honest, respectful relationship amongl
races is the goal, then the journey is!
incomplete. It will not end until susr
picion, and grudges, and anger yield
in part to trust, and forgiveness, and
reason.
We would like to join forces — on
the editorial page and elsewhere —
with the Carolina Peacemaker in
addressing the issue of racism. But a
warning: We don't speak a dissembling, hypocritical, ghastly Goody-
Two shoes language of condescension
here.
