Let's Talk About It

    There's an old joke about racism.  How does every racist joke start?  Then the person who intends to tell the joke gets up and looks around to make sure there are no people who might be offended, meaning minorities. That, of course, doesn't take into account an awful lot of white folks are offended by racism and racist jokes. It does take into account the teller knows what he's about to say is offensive to his neighbors and even his friends. It's a joke. Sometimes we're not bad people,  just thoughtless. Some people are just bad.  Rotted to the core for whatever reason.
    Earl Butz was a Secretary of Agriculture.  In 1976, he told an incredibly offensive racist joke while aboard a commercial flight with other officials.  He was surprised to find out some in his audience were offended.  After all, he'd taken a long look around before he told the joke.  It took overcoming 246 years of slavery and another hundred years of Jim Crow to make it no real surprise Butz was immediately fired and fired by a Republican President in the final month of a campaign.
    Let's talk about that overcoming and human progress.  To be sure, there were heroic and extremely articulate figures among the oppressed races. So many come to mind. But Dr King always stays in mind.  He admonished us that not only should we be judged on the content of our character but we most certainly always are so judged in the end.       
    It's that content of character that's made all the difference.  It's what makes the idiot with his racist joke look around.  I'm sure it's what made Butz, in his tightly laced brogans, look around.
    Content of character.  None of the slow, incremental progress made in race relations over the long years would have been possible without informing and strengthening good character on all sides. It is well we study and are informed by the minority members of our society.  It is good to hold dear and honor their contributions to the common good.  However, we can't ignore the fact that none of the progress could have been made without people of good character on all sides.
    Now, as white people, we are confronted by people in positions of leadership who don't bother to look around before they say or do something offensive.  These people seem delighted they can display and employ elements of their lesser character.  As Earl Butz illustrates,  people of lesser character have always been with us, limited only by social convention; that pressure that makes them look around before doing or saying something even they know is offensive.  We can't allow that kind of backsliding; that kind of coarsening of our society and our future as neighbors and friends. We have to always respond.  It's our duty to ourselves, our future and our past.