We never seem to lack media coverage of high profile individuals who say or do things that seem to range from insensitive to outright racist, sexist or homophobic. In the media this past week, Don Yelton, Buncombe County North Carolina’s Republican Precinct Chair, was forced to resign when he made disparaging comments about young people and blacks in an interview with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show in relation to North Carolina’s new, more strict voter ID law. He said:
“If it hurts a bunch of college kids too lazy to get up off their bohonkas and go get a photo ID, so be it. If it hurts the whites, so be it. If it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that want the government to give them everything, so be it.”
Notice that Yelton did not use any particular adjective to describe whites as he did for students and blacks.
Julianne Hough, former “Dancing with the Stars” cast member, wore blackface to a Halloween party last week, purportedly as a tribute to a character called Crazy Eyes on the Netflix series “Orange is the New Black”, played by a black woman, Uzo Aduba. A firestorm erupted on social media and she has since apologized.
Jay Z is under pressure to cut ties with retailer Barney’s because two young black shoppers say they were the target of racial profiling when their credit card charges were questioned, only later to be found valid.
Am I just overly sensitive to these types of incidents or do we just hear more about them now because of the mass expansion of social media over the past few years? Or are we not making as much progress as I want to hope in creating an inclusive, more accepting world?
I don’t really know how Don Yelton feels about young people or Blacks but from his comments I can surmise that he has some prejudices. Hough may not carry deep-seated prejudices but I wonder how she did not know the history of blackface and why it is so offensive to blacks. She is not the first celebrity to be called on the carpet for appearing in blackface. Ted Danson and Billy Crystal, among others, have previously apologized for wearing blackface. But apparently she was not aware of this. Did Barney’s purposely question the two shoppers because they were Black or do they have a policy of questioning certain purchases? Police reports indicate, there have been 11 arrests at Barneys this year for credit card fraud: eight black men, two black women and one Asian woman. The data would make you wonder.
I think it is good that these incidents are being brought to light as long as we use them as learning experiences and opportunities to examine our own biases.
