The Real Racism

Can you imagine yourself a Jewish refugee from Germany in the 1930s banging on all the important doors of Washington, pleading: "Let me in! I can help you. I'm German. I can take you all the way inside the mind of Adolf Hitler!"

Or can you imagine yourself being a refugee from Russia during the Cold War banging on those same doors, shouting: "Let me in! I can help you. I'm Russian. I can take you all the way inside the mind of Joseph Stalin!"

Or imagine yourself as a refugee from Iraq many years later banging on those doors, shouting: "Let me in! I can help you. I'm Iraqi. I can take you all the way inside the mind of Saddam Hussein!"

Well, there's no need for any further imagining. I happen to be your real-life door-banger at the moment, and what I'm banging about is more relevant than the core thought-processes of Hitler, Stalin or Saddam Hussein. The "door" I'm banging on is YOU. And what I'm shouting is "Let me in. I can help you. I'm a white Southerner and I can take you all the way inside the mind of New York Times editor Howell Raines – whereupon you will understand the entire saga of Jayson Blair in its proper light!"

And, maybe, my insights are more worthy of trust than those of the imaginary informants listed above. After all, our imaginary Jewish refugee was no Nazi. The Russian refugee was no Communist. And the Iraqi was no fan of Hussein.

In a way, you could say I used to BE Howell Raines in several important ways.

My generation of young white Southerners never got our huge hunk of credit for bringing down segregation, racial unfairness and hostility to "Negroes," the totally correct term at the time. We never resented that credit going to the "Civil Rights Movement." Like Robert Redford and Paul Newman in "The Sting," we did our noble deed, smiled, tossed our little satchel of belongings over our shoulders and moved on.

We young whites of the South in the fermentous 1950s were somewhat analogous to U.S. Special Forces filtering in and getting the target territory softened up for the big push. We made the climate favorable for change. The race-haters couldn't call US "outside agitators" and "Yankee troublemakers." We were their neighbors, schoolmates, friends, and even sons, daughters, brothers, sisters and cousins.

My own major battle for racial "justice" was the overthrow of the ruling by the University of North Carolina that our black students (the first four were admitted in 1952) would not be allowed to sit in the student section during home football games in Kenan Stadium. The university ruled they could not sit there. We students protested. We organized. We militated. We won. The blacks sat with us without incident.

(If you're not weary of being asked to imagine, can you imagine a major American university as late as the 1950s solemnly deciding that thousands of white male students sitting in the stands watching the football game, their dates, a band, lots of cheering, some whiskey, some beer, AND FOUR BLACK STUDENTS was simply too combustible a mix to be sustained?)

I don't recall even knowing the word "conservative" at the time, but we knew what "liberal" meant and we were proud to be liberals. And I'm proud of what I did as a college liberal. And I'm sure editor Raines is proud of what HE did as a college liberal. And rightly so.

But this "character self-witnessing" about having practiced the right kind of liberalism way back then is slim mitigation for allowing a Jayson Blair to ridiculize the New York Times today.

The liberal part of my heart weeps when I see black journalists on TV pretending that "race played no role" or the neatly-hedged alternative of "race did not play the dominant role."

Yes it did. If Jayson Blair had been white, then on the second or third eyebrow-raising infraction, helicopter gunships from the flight deck of the New York Times would have snatched him out from under his laptop and – you remember the official North Carolina punishment – dropped him into sulfuric acid and sprayed him out over Death Valley.

The New York Times isn't famous for cutting erring writers and reporters a lot of slack. That is, unless they're "minority" reporters. The Raines-led New York Times cut Jayson Blair enough slack to wrap itself around the New York Times building, all of Times Square and Howell Raines' neck.

Where did Howell Raines go wrong?

He simply didn't know when to stop. He didn't know how to adjust his liberal instincts appropriately to the changing times. He failed to realize that treatment of a young black journalist that may have seemed saintly in the little leagues could be foolhardy, dangerous and, as it turned out, even suicidal at the very summit of world journalism.

When a doctor tells you to swallow as much of a powder as will fit on a dime, that's not the same as swallowing as much as will fit on 10 pennies!

You don't obliterate minority journalists if you're Howell Raines, even for clearly obliterate-able offenses. You work with them. You guide them. You help them out.

Affirmative action is not a policy with Howell Raines, it's an instinct. Controlled, that instinct leads to many good things and good outcomes.

Uncontrolled, it leads to Jayson Blair.

I remember, as the editor of my college daily newspaper, openly rejoicing with my liberal confreres when a crime in town was committed and the criminal turned out to be white. We were FOR the "Negro" and we did all we could to blunt all hostility directed toward them and push them forward in every way as far as we could.

The worst I can accuse Howell Raines of is not knowing when to stop blunting and pushing and when to start start saying: "OK. We've done as much as we can to correct the injustices of the past. From here on, pal, it's merit all the way!"

I claim no supernatural powers, but I somehow "feel" the thinking of Howell Raines when the Jayson Blair incident was fresh and the stories were small or nonexistent. (Hey, did any of you other conservative communicators get e-mail in those early days complaining that CNN and other liberal media were covering up for the New York Times by ignoring the story?)

Here's what I believe Raines was thinking.

"If we take the Sunday edition of the New York Times, the most widely read newspaper page in the world, and right at the tippy-top throw ourselves on the floor big-time and admit how utterly we've been had, THE WORLD WILL LOVE US FOR OUR OPENNESS AND OUR HONESTY."

Take that one line and press it between pages of your favorite book the way young girls press beautiful leaves found while strolling through the woods with an early love. That line is nothing less than the basic DNA of terminal liberalism.

When the world didn't come swooning to give the Times open-heart massage and a reassuring pat on the back, Raines probably marveled at the venality of all those fascist beasts out there who failed to form a pro-Times cheering section in spite of all that openness and all that honesty.

When the New York Times stood up in its foxhole with both hands raised, it only made it easier to shoot at. We've been served Jayson Blair copiously in print, radio, TV, serious forums, frivolous forums, office coffee nooks and water coolers – every which-a-way except in a country-and-western song, which I predict will shortly follow. (Kenny Rogers and Johnny Cash, please submit!)

What 6-year-old of either sex didn't want to take off the back of a clock to see what was going on under there? What moviegoer didn't want to be shown how those super-dazzling special effects were done? The "Saga of Jayson Blair" satisfies a much more important curiosity. Here you see the workings of the Liberal Mindset displayed like a slow-motion video of a smart bomb at a Donald Rumsfeld press conference.

"Folks, you'll see on the left of your screen how the bomb, sensing its target is a minority journalist, makes a U-turn and explodes itself harmlessly in the desert."

And that, folks, is the REAL racism. Expecting substandard performance from minorities and pre-excusing substandard performance from them says "What do you expect, folks? They're only BLACK!" Or Hispanic. Or female. Or whatever.

That kind of liberalism is the sincerest form of insult.

I do want to thank Howell Raines for helping me prove a point too many Americans fail to recognize. America is NOT a racist nation. And not only is America not a racist nation, America is a nation that will bend over backward to avoid the APPEARANCE of being a racist nation.

Raines proved that with sledgehammer finality when he couldn't bring himself to hear and heed the many warnings cross-crackling throughout the New York Times that they were being hustled by a member of a race Howell Raines grew up wanting to protect.

I have contributed precious little to modern theology, considering I'm such a sentient and reverent person. In fact, my only worthwhile contribution is this:

"God has given us the New York Times to test our patience.

"We must prove we are up to it!"