Um… well, I think there’s a little shred of truth in what she has to say. I think she did a horrible job of saying it, but I personally do think that there are some civil rights leaders who could do a better job of focussing on the positives instead of continually ragging on, and raging against, the negatives.

I certainly don’t think they’re “racists” (Mary should know racists, there’s plenty of them in her party) and they’re not keeping people “enslaved”, but there IS a certain built-in bias (in civil rights leadership) towards continuing the “victim” mindset. If they’re not victims, a bozo like Al Sharpton is out of a job.

I don’t think Matalin was saying there’s no discrimination; I think she was saying that many civil rights leaders tend towards ALWAYS seeing discrimination, towards ALWAYS seeing blacks as victims, towards ALWAYS assuming that it’s because of external factors that they’re behind the other races in the United States.

And that’s just not true. For example, the whole notion of “racial profiling”. People often complain that the police stop blacks at a higher rate than their percentage of the population- but if cops are emphasizing police work in higher-crime areas, and a those areas have a higher percentage of black people living in them, then it makes sense that they’re going to wind up pulling over more black folks.

Does this mean the cops are racially motivated and blacks are victims of racism? No, it might just mean that (because of poverty and a whole host of other reasons, which we’ll not get into here) there’s more blacks in high crime areas and more blacks involved in crime itself.

But the black leaders, I think, rather than seeing the root cause of the problem (that there’s too many blacks stuck in poverty and high-crime areas) just complain about racism by the cops and make it an oppressor/victim thing.

(What’s more, what if a cop isn’t really racist, but through conditioning winds up with skewed perceptions of the various races? If a new cop is assigned to work in a desperately poor neighborhood, and it’s 98% blacks, and all he sees all day long are black criminals, is he playing the part of an oppressor later in his career when he’s in a more mixed area and pulls over blacks at a higher rate than whites? When he’s been repeatedly conditioned by the environment to see blacks as criminals? I’m not making excuses; the cops need to be better than that; but it can provide us some insight and a reason why they might act in what seems to be racially oppressive ways.)

I personally think that’s at the heart of what Matalin was doing a horrible job of saying. What she was mostly trying to do was more basic (and more base); she wanted to slag on those people who spoke at Ms King’s funeral, because those speakers rightfully slagged on President Bush.

It’s not so much racist as instinctive; those people said something bad about Bush, they must be punished and mocked and belittled. Hey, thankfully, Fox News is around to provide a convenient outlet for the Matalins of the world to do that.

Paul
Seattle, WA

I certainly don’t think they’re “racists” (Mary should know racists, there’s plenty of them in her party) and they’re not keeping people “enslaved”, but there IS a certain built-in bias (in civil rights leadership) towards continuing the “victim” mindset.I disagree with you here. Civil rights leaders are like union leaders, or the leaders of any cause: they advocate for the people they serve, trying to do away with any injustice until that injustice is gone. Ask any civil rights leader if things are better for their people than they were 30 years ago, you’ll get a resounding “yes.” But they will also remind you that a great deal of unfairness and injustice remains, which you cannot deny. Certainly discrimination remains.

To claim that they always see their people as “victims,” however, is a tainted charge at best. In this context, the word “victim” has a negative connotation, suggesting that the emphasis of the leaders’ message to their people is that they are powerless and beaten, which is untrue–the leaders more often emphasize empowerment and taking action.

It is unfair to say “ALWAYS seeing blacks as victims,” as I could say that your union leader “ALWAYS sees you as a victim” just because there is always an inequity to fight against and that leader will keep fighting until he gets you the resolution you are entitled to. Does your union leader continue the victim mindset for you? No. He is fighting for your cause. Yet I am sure that your employers might see him in a different way.

Again, ask a civil rights leader if all the ills suffered by minorities are caused by external factors, and they will just as readily tell you “no.” They recognize that there are internal problems as well, and that not all of one’s ills are caused by racism. And when they speak to their own people internally they will address these issues. But when they speak generally, to the public, they speak as advocates of their own group. And an advocate does not rag on the person they represent to the world. Again, think of your union leader. When he speaks publicly, does he go on about how the members of his union make mistakes and how they should better themselves? I doubt it. That’s not what an advocate does. It does not mean that they always see you as a victim, or that they try to make you feel like a victim, or that they don’t see internal problems and try to address those in a more internal venue.