No, we don't receive ad revenue from NBC, but we couldn't help noticing that things have reached a truly sad state when the most honest treatment of race in America happens on a sitcom:
30 Rock, Season 1, Episode 16, "The Source Awards":
Jack: Well, well, well Lemon. Steven’s a good man; he’s on partner track at Dewey, and he’s a Black.
Liz: A black?!? That is offensive.
Jack: No, no, that’s his last name: Steven Black. Great family.
Liz: Oh, yeah, of course.
Jack: They’re remarkable people, the Blacks: musical, very athletic...not very good swimmers. Again, I’m talking about the family. Black is African American, though.
We were working on yesterday's post about the upcoming Black Party at Pomona College and the letter the Claremont Colleges received concerning their censorship (okay when it comes to things they don't like), when it occurred to that the treatment of issues like race, gender, or class sometimes receive at the Colleges risks turning a good number of people into caricatures incapable of speaking for themselves.
These and other matters of political correctness are serious issues to be sure, and we have a long way to go to solving any of them at the Claremont Colleges, in this city, or for that matter as a country. We should have serious discussions of issues; however, we should also not become so serious that we misread something as innocent as a party flyer, as Scripps College Dean of Students Debra Wood did in February, or become so straitlaced that we can't laugh at ourselves.
The self-seriousness of those who would protect the oppressed or downtrodden in a way dehumanizes the very people they would protect. You almost want to see these protectors slip on a banana just to get them to lighten up enough to allow you to talk to them without having to walk on eggshells. These folks haven't figured out that the best way of deflating some of these stereotypes is to poke fun at them.
And efforts to stamp out racism or any other -ism through censorship, as Pomona, Scripps, and Harvey Mudd Colleges were accused of doing, seems a terribly Procrustean solution to what are really very human problems. Watching the current presidential campaigns try to deal with the same issues, one really does sense that there is a significant segment of the voting public who are ready to try some different approaches to such things as discussions of race.
Let's see how long it takes that debate to filter down to the local level.
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