By Stephanie Jones
Syndicated by the National Newspaper Publishers Association
As a newly-minted (and only Black) lawyer at my law firm years ago, I was assigned to write an appellate brief with a fellow associate. Because I was the better writer, I drafted the brief and we turned it in to the assigning partner for review. The partner called in the other associate, a White male, to praise him for his excellent analysis and writing. My colleague told him that I had drafted the brief singlehandedly, but the partner refused to believe him, asking repeatedly whether he was “really sure” that I had actually written it.
Most African Americans in any profession likely have similar stories to tell, stories that demonstrate how regularly, effortlessly and confidently some Whites assume that we cannot measure up to our White co-workers. And when we unassailably prove ourselves not only equal but superior to the task, our accomplishments are often dismissed as not of our making.
So when Jack Welch sprang forth recently to accuse President Barack Obama of cooking the books to conjure up favorable employment numbers, it had a familiar ring to it: just as my boss couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that a Black lawyer wrote a stellar brief with no help from her White colleague, Welch’s instinct was to insist that a Black president couldn’t possibly be doing a good job, so empirical proof of progress on his watch must be the result of fraud. The economy may be improving on President Obama’s watch, but he really didn’t write that . . .
Welch’s baseless rant could easily be written off as an attempt to shock his way back into relevancy – were it not for the fact that his attitude is replicated all over the political space and treated by the media as credible perspectives. In fact, some of them come from the media.
For example, columnist George Will informed us recently that President Obama’s robust poll numbers have nothing to do with voters’ support for or confidence in him. No, Mr. Will explained, it’s just that he’s Black and White voters, overcome with “White guilt,” are giving him a pass because they don’t want to fire the first Black president. In Will’s cramped view, President Obama may be ahead in the polls, but he really didn’t write that . . .
The media highlighted yet another diatribe from Romney surrogate John Sununu about President Obama’s supposed shortcomings, which Sununu always manages to couch in the language of ugly racial stereotypes. According to Sununu, the president’s lackluster debate performance was both the product and proof of his supposed laziness and stupidity. Previous presidents have had bad debate performances, but their off nights were just off nights, not evidence of sloth and ignorance. President Obama had a bad debate performance, so he did write that . . .
And ubiquitous, race-baiting media hound Donald Trump literally accused the President of “not writing that,” repeatedly insisting that it was Bill Ayers, not Barack Obama who wrote the president’s best-selling memoir “Dreams From My Father.”
“Bill Ayers wrote ‘Dreams from My Father.’ I have no doubt about it,” Trump said. “That . . . book was total genius and helped him get elected. But you can tell Obama wrote [“Audacity of Hope”] because it read like it was written by somebody of average intelligence with a high school education.”
The first book was brilliant, so Barack Obama didn’t really write that. The second book was just average, so he did write that.
By gently dipping, but not soaking, their words in racist code, these people have managed to regularly inject their poisonous language into the conversation and, with the media’s cooperation, poison the body politic. To his credit – and much criticism – MSNBC’s Chris Matthews has been among the few White journalists to break ranks and call these comments out for what they are: naked race-baiting for political gain.
“[A]s a White guy, I know when I’m a target,” he said recently. “And when I see racial coding going on out there like this welfare and work thing, I know they’re talking to me. …They’re talking to my family. They’re trying to … get it all heated again and get us to vote race, vote tribe again and the majority tribe wins.”
Matthews is right. And he refuses to treat such smears in the gingerly, “he-said-she-said” manner that many of his colleagues seem to believe constitutes “balanced” reporting. He and anyone else who is paying attention know that racism continues to jingle around in America’s pockets like so much small change – and that these comments are part of an ongoing effort by desperate people to scrape together enough dingy coins to buy a few more years of political power before they slip off into the wrong side of history.
But if the media continue giving a platform and a pass to the purveyors of racist stereotypes – even the benign-sounding but insidious “he really didn’t write that” sort – they shouldn’t be surprised to one day find themselves on the wrong side of history with them.