A Color-Blocking Coda

I want to take this opportunity to thank LinkedIn members for offering me an incredible dose of self-scrutiny through their responses to my last post, “Megyn Kelly and the Curious Case of Color-Blocking.”

After all, at more than 38,000 page views to date, and virtually equal numbers of likes, shares and strenuously negative critiques, you must at least acknowledge that I know how to get the party started.

The experience is making me recall the reaction to my post about how Washington Post Legend Ben Bradlee influenced my career. My calculated choice of the snarky title, “How Ben Bradlee’s Outrageous Use of White Privilege Changed My Life,” released the hounds for some who didn’t even bother to read the post. Although the majority of commenters actually “got” that I had written an emotional tribute, people who went in for the kill were determined to expose me as a reverse racist, as well as illiterate, disrespectful and ungrateful, to name just a few of the opinions offered.

This time, I am bitterly jealous of a vastly more beautiful and talented woman, also a reverse racist, petty, too sensitive about color, totally clueless about how most white Americans REALLY feel about “Affirmative Action,” too critical about people who are only offering well-meaning compliments, unfair about a woman whose work I’ve never really observed, an obsequious Oprah acolyte…

It would take too long to list all the condemnations, but I’ll just add the one from the African American self-proclaimed Kim Kardashian devotee who likened me to a “vicious, female Rush Limbaugh.” Mercifully, that scathing Komment Kompletely Kanceled itself out.

Anyway, before I move on to other posts, I want to say that I’m grateful to those who contributed to this debate. For other entries, I have tried to respond to individual comments, but the depths of heartfelt praise and utter contempt about this one makes it hard to devote the time needed to carefully analyze 20-inch observations and craft direct responses. However, I did want to acknowledge that some people who didn’t like the post offered thoughtful analyses which were taken to heart.

But for the most part, once again, I believe that readers who concluded that I’m a reverse racist jerk ABSOLUTELY missed the point of the piece. I sense that they also weren’t quite comfortable with a woman of color having such a strong opinion about race, or offering sincere but pointed “admonishments” to white people. And quite a few nerves were jangled because people believed I was condemning those who would never intentionally be callous about race. In fact, one person even suggested I was dis-honoring the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by telling people to NOT ignore my color.

I am offended by that comment. And NOT because of the critique offered by yet another commenter, who opined that my taking offense to Megyn Kelly’s comment exhibited a lack of control over my emotions, and thus an inability to pose a rational argument. I am in complete control of my emotions when I say that so many people have misinterpreted Dr. King’s legendary comment through the years, it is intellectually offensive to his memory. He was not suggesting that ignoring color was the way to confer positive characteristics on other human beings. It takes work to SEE the fullness of another person’s humanity, to shun stereotypes and media images or long-held prejudices, and “judge” the aspects of their character whether they’re white, black or purple.

How long will it take for people to parse the difference between saying, “My husband is so loving and wonderful and smart that when I look at him, I don’t see a black man, I just see Doug,” versus “You are so smart and talented and wonderful that I don’t think of you as being black” ??? Is it really so hard to recognize that divorcing all the good stuff from black skin is not a compliment?

Really?

Anyway, regardless of whether I was being unfair to a woman whose work I’m not familiar with (perhaps) or whether people think the world should just forget about color altogether (I wish it would), I will not attempt a point-by-point response to that post. It was a strongly-held opinion by an intellectually strong-willed African American woman. Granted, that woman has not lived in the US for nearly 8 years, and though she has attempted to follow the ongoing racial and cultural turmoil from another continent, she might have more thoroughly pondered the repercussions of going toe-to-toe with anything related to Fox News.

But one young man has gifted me with some bracing clarity that I’m truly lucky to have achieved. Author/Speaker Justin Bariso, Founder and Principal at INSIGHT and a LinkedIn 2015 Top Voice, reached out to say the post gave him a completely different perspective—for an intriguing reason. I’m guessing he’s at least 20 years younger than me, and says his parents are white and Asian, and that most of his childhood friends were black. Justin shared that by reading my post, he “learned to see the world through a different set of eyes,” which I’m guessing means that as a biracial Millennial who grew up in a diverse community, skin color probably doesn’t register for him like it does with me.

Let's face it...I'm a freaking dinosaur by comparison. I was born in 1961, and I experienced "American Apartheid" at its finest. I have never played the race card, but I may have to admit to being a bit "color-stuck" based on my life experiences. Jason opened me to the possibility that there is hope in the younger generation, versus the reflexive lashing out that occurs too often when some of us older folks refuse to either "admit the reality of racial disparity" or to "just get over it and move on."

I’m glad I was able to use this platform to evoke emotions, opinions and even outrage about race in America. From the time I wrote a Newsweek “My Turn” column in 1982 about the merits of “Black English vs. Standard English,” until the time in 1987 that I wrote a St. Petersburg Times Op-Ed column about hearing a racist remark in the newsroom—just a week after I had covered a Ku Klux Klan rally—until the time I wrote about how racial turmoil had destroyed my hometown of Cairo, Illinois for an NPR online post, I’ve felt compelled to speak up about race. It is my belief that as long as we keep tip-toeing around issues, as long we believe in that elusive “Post-Racial” America, as long as we insist it’s not appropriate or helpful to try and see things from other points of view, we’ll never move forward.

That’s my opinion, and I’m sticking to it. Let the Games Begin!