The Lamp of Vigilance

Credit Liz Sidoti with one of the more anemic arguments to date, that this nation still has a long way to go to bridge the centuries old racial divide–even in this post Obama age. Writing for the Associated Press, Sidoti argues that in spite of the election of Barack Obama to the nation’s highest office, “old racial stereo-types and internet-fueled falsehoods flourish.” As evidence Sidoti offers the editorial cartoon which appeared in the New York Post showing two Police Officers standing over a dead Chimpanzee, an email forwarded by Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose of watermelons on the white house lawn and the internet chat surrounding Obama’s citizenship.

A little historical perspective is perhaps in order. This nation was born in a world of chattel slavery. On the heels of a bloody civil war that ended the institution of slavery came lynchings, Jim Crow Laws, separate but equal education and literacy tests at the polls. The fact that the best Sidoti could come up with to bolster her argument were a few off-color emails speaks volumes.

Ignorance, petty politics and downright human ugliness will always be with us. What is more telling is how a society responds to it. There was a time when jokes such as that passed along by Grose would be told in public and greeted with huge guffaws. Thankfully those times are long gone. Today such jokes are relegated to the anonymous and not-as-private-as-the -mayor-thought world of the internet. If and when such attitudes come to light they are met with outrage, ridicule and the indulger is bathed in public humiliation and suffers political ruin. Grose was not celebrated; he resigned in disgrace. (more…)