Bryant Gumbel, who is an African American television personality, recently had this to say about the Winter Olympics:
So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention.
Hmm. Let's do a thought experiment. Suppose there was a meeting of, say, African American mathematicians, and some conservative white reporter doing a story on the convention made the comment:
So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest intellects, despite a paucity of whites that makes the meeting look like an NAACP convention.
What do you suppose the media reaction would be? Would the reporter be allowed to keep his job? I suggest that that reporter would probably find himself, like Larry Summers, out of a job. My point is not to suggest that Mr. Gumbel is a racist or that his comment is inappropriate. I don't know whether he's a racist, and I don't believe, actually, that there was anything wrong with what he said. My point is simply to point out the racial double standard in our society. Blacks are permitted to say almost anything about racial differences without being seriously criticized, but if whites make similar remarks it could cost them their jobs and their careers. Summers came under fire at Harvard for making perfectly reasonable remarks about gender, not about race, but the principle is the same.
This situation is not only unjust, it's absurd. All it does is exacerbate ill-feeling among white males toward minorities and women. It's time to agree that whatever is appropriate or inappropriate to say of one race or gender should be appropriate or inappropriate to say about another. Neither race nor gender should be taboo subjects, nor should any race or either gender be granted a position of privilege, preference, or deference in the public discourse.
Let's stop criticizing and destroying people because they make perfectly sensible, even if sometimes mistaken, statements just because those statements don't meet the stringent standards of our hypersensitive social thought police.