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Another perspective

It's time to require racial sensitivity classes in schools

Thursday, March 4, 2004

Allegations that a Chicago firefighter used a racial slur over the department radio, coming on the heels of the recent lawsuit filed against Chrysler Corp. for discriminatory lending practices, gives a peek at the horns of the racist demon that is, tragically, still alive and spewing in America today.

Both episodes show that although civil rights laws and affirmative action initiatives have contributed immensely to equality in the U.S., the demon of racism is still breathing its fire of social and economic oppression.

So what better time than now to launch a new strategy to help control and eventually exterminate the racist scourge ravaging Chicago and our nation?

In the suit against Chrysler, although the accusations have yet to be substantiated, a quotation in the deposition made by a finance manager at a South Side car dealership appears reasonably credible to most white Americans.

It purportedly came from the mouth of Chrysler's former Midwest zone manager as he complained about the auto dealership losing revenue because of the Martin Luther King holiday:

"Hey, let's shoot four more and give us the whole week off," the exec is accused of saying.

And in the later incident announced by Fire Commissioner James Joyce, a firefighter, apparently unaware his radio receiver was on, broadcast over city airwaves an apparent complaint about a motorist displaying Wisconsin license plates:

"There's nothing worse than a cheesehead (racial slur)," he is heard saying.

Jokes and remarks of that sort are common both in businesses and neighborhood environments.

Even among educated whites, a demographic that presumably encompasses automobile management executives and many firemen, similarly offensive comments and attitudes are pervasive around the water cooler, at the supper club and at family gatherings.

A year ago last summer, for example, a college-educated state worker regaled a gathering at our neighborhood barbecue party with what he deemed a harmless, amusing proclamation. It went something like:

"I changed my mind about shipping them all back to Africa," he said, "since that would put all the police, the crime reporters and the prison guards out of work. And that means my wife's brother (a downstate prison employee) might have to come and live with us."

While such derisive banter is less overt than it used to be, it's just as prevalent, with conversations in white enclaves characterized by knowing glances and coded language.

The "N word," for example, may be taboo, but veiled references with terms such as inner-city, hip-hop, drug-related, crime-infested, dark complected, bad neighborhood, welfare cheat, disadvantaged, high risk, underprivileged, streetwise or minority type, usually all signal the same thing.

Opponents of affirmative action disagree, arguing that racism no longer exists, that slavery is obsolete, that Jim Crow is history and that civil rights laws have been applied and enforced with monumental success in restoring full freedoms to African-Americans.

But realistically, we understand that government regulations, while necessary and successful, have not been able to dictate morality or to transform human hearts, whether at a corporation's headquarters, the neighborhood firehouse or at the backyard barbecue.

The only real hope for that kind of change is with the slow but sure process of education.

Granted, the zone manager, the driver of firehouse Tower 14, and my erstwhile neighbor were certainly educated, and maybe even earned degrees in the liberal arts and the humanities.

But something was lacking at their high schools and colleges, something more humanly important than statistical analysis, calculus or intro to business.

Why not plug that education gap with a course in racial sensitivity as a college degree requirement?

Such courses already have been found to be highly successful for training personnel in human resources, or for modifying the behavior of those convicted of hate crimes or for retraining at corporations convicted of discrimination.

Why not start even sooner, in a country where race hatred is among the most egregious of our social maladies, by installing these classes in high school?

We can teach all of our children tolerance and racial equality, so that they don't fear, deride, and discriminate against each other later on.

Instituting this curriculum requirement can be a pretty simple thing to do.

State school boards and college faculties need only substitute a racial sensitivity course requirement for a current elective in social science or humanities.

Even better, pledging to make it a federally funded measure might be a smart, bold stroke by a Bush, a Kerry, an Edwards, et al., in the forthcoming presidential campaign.

Meanwhile, Commissioner Joyce is conducting an investigation of the incident by one of his men.

And Chrysler knows they're wrong and more than likely will settle the lawsuit out of court.

You can bet on that, just as you can bet that nothing profound is going to change in our racist culture unless we plant the seeds of understanding and harmony in our nation's schools.

David McGrath is a free-lance writer and professor of English at the College of DuPage. He lives in Oak Forest.