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Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Can we talk about prejudice?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In his plea for forgiveness, Andrew Young made an interesting point. “Any ethnic reference — no matter how well-intentioned or objective in its original utterance in print, on television or in our Internet blogosphere — becomes fodder for scandal and infamy.” His reference was, of course, to the remark that Jews, Koreans and Arabs had ripped off blacks in ghetto grocery stores.
Unless discussed openly somewhere, the prejudice that slipped out of Young and of Mel Gibson earlier does sit unchallenged, perhaps to be passed on from generation to generation. Of all the civil rights survivors of his era, Young was the most sophisticated, the most broadly exposed to the corporate world and therefore the one with the most balanced view of capitalism and free markets. To find that he still harbored not only the resentment but the misunderstanding of a market economy, even after taking Wal-Mart’s money, is a bit of a surprise. And the kind of thinking that presents a real obstacle to building a durable conservative majority.
I’ve been in ghetto markets. I’ve shopped there. In today’s world, you couldn’t give me one. The personal risks are enormous. They strike me as street-corner versions of the liberal resentment of corporate success, fostering still the attitude among customers that Young expressed: ethnic — or corporate — exploiters are getting rich and moving on. But, noted Kevin Young Sup Park, president of the Korean American Association of Greater Atlanta, last night, Korean and other immigrants have served in areas no one else would. “We were there. We didn’t have money to move out and open big grocery stores. We worked six or seven days a week.”
The question Young’s remarks and his apology prompt is a simple one. Is it possible to discuss prejudice or any other sensitive topic with any degree of intellectual honesty in a way that leads to resolution or at least understanding? Or is it an issue destined always to devolve into shouted epithets and slogans? I can’t get away from the Georgia Tech speech code. Is it better to force people, an Andrew Young or a Muslim fanatic included, to hold “hate speech” or prejudice in, or to get it out in the open?
