Racial Coding at NBC?

Time to do some petard hoisting.  Apparently at NBC they decided to set up a menu to “In Honor of Black History Month.”  And what, pray tell, was on the menu?

Fried chicken, Collard Greens, white rice and black eyed pees.

Yes, really.

Now normally, I would let this slide, say that it doesn’t necessarily mean very much.

But let’s not forget the record here.

According to MSNBC, the people attending those town halls last summer were dangerous racists, including one guy who brought an AK-47 to one meeting, a classic white racist.  Who, um, was black.

And then there is Chris Matthews saying that he forgot Obama was black for an hour.  And claiming that all the tea partiers were white.  And that he wasn’t surprised Obama was good at basketball.  Or claiming that Palin’s supporters were racists.  And claiming racial subtexts in ads that didn’t exist.

And they put Jeneane Garafolo on with Keith Olberman to claim that the Tea Partiers were racists, too.  And then because Scott Brown might have been associated with them, Keith Olberman said that Brown was a racist, too. Oh, and Olberman said he was a racist because he featured his pickup truck in an ad.

Oh, and Olbermann himself suggested that a young black man’s prowess on the football court represented “Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles at its finest.”

And I have long said that seeing racism everywhere is a sign of a racist mindset itself.  For instance, I always though Jonah Goldberg was brilliant taking down silly claims of racism in the Lord of the Rings movies:

One is tempted to ask who is the real racist here? On the one hand we have people — like me — who see horrific, flesh-eating, dull-witted creatures with jagged feral teeth, venomous mouths, pointed devilish ears, and reptilian skin, and say, "Cool, Orcs!" On the other hand we have people, like Mr. Yatt, who see the same repugnant creatures and righteously exclaim "black people!" Maybe he should spend less time vetting movies for signs of racism and more time vetting himself if, that is, he free-associates black people with these subhuman monsters.

The fact is progressivism can hide some of the most backward attitudes.  I am a supporter of affirmative action, in certain contexts, but I recognize that for many white people affirmative action is supported because they just don’t think black people can make it.  We see where in Oakland they tried to declare Ebonics to be a language that was “genetic” in basis.  We see in Berkeley High School where labs are being closed because they were perceived to primarily benefit white children.  Liberal doesn’t mean racially enlightened.

So, yeah, I think there is a real race problem at NBC, and this is the latest example.

That being said, we should be careful about racial coding issues.  The fact is that there is a generation that is growing up unaware of many stereotypes.  They don’t know the negative association that comes with Watermelons, or how black people were stereotyped as ape-like, and about fifteen other issues I can’t even think of.  And a lot of these things are the kinds of things you don’t know unless you are told.  As we get more and more beyond race as a society unintentional associations are bound to crop up.  Should we claim that any person who suggests a black man likes watermelons is a racist?  And the fact is all humans resemble apes to various degrees, some more than others.  I long joked that Isaac Asimov looked like an extra from Planet of the Apes.  In other words simian resemblance is not confined to one racial or ethnic group.  So we shouldn’t be quick to assume that if a person says that a black man resembles an ape, that this is a racial thing; he might feel the same way about a proportionate number of white people, asians, etc.

I mean what is the alternative?  Assuming a person knows about of all those ugly stereotypes?  In essence punishing a person for not knowing that watermelons are associated in a racist way with black people?  I guess then we should enroll our children in a class on all the ugly things that have been said according to race, fill their heads with that garbage.

Or, we can recognize that this ignorance of racial issues is a good thing.  It’s good that kids growing up never heard of half this shit.  And let us, the older generations, tolerate that ignorance.