racial sensitivity
July 2, 2009As a white girl, I’m probably not as sensitive to racial issues as I should be. But I also think there are a lot of people who are much too sensitive to race.
I read this post on fair.org and couldn’t help but think that maybe Ishmael Reed is overreacting a little. There are plenty of negative stories done on white people. I guess the problem here is the title “Black in America.” It draws too much attention to the fact that these subjects are black; it makes their race the emphasis, and Reed worries that it will cause people to make negative generalizations about black people. But I think the only people who will make these generalizations are people who are ignorant and would make uneducated generalizations anyway. One black person acting a certain way doesn’t mean all black people act that way. Just as if a white person is a meth addict doesn’t mean all white people are. Hopefully Reed realizes that not all Americans think that way.
The news media should be color blind and not base stories on color of skin unless it really makes a difference to the story. This goes in the other direction, too, because I’ve heard of some networks not running stories because they involve negative footage of black people. If it’s news, than it’s news. It should run regardless of race.
black writers,especially the men, have been accused
of “overreacting” for over one hundred years by
white critics, mostly men, who just can’t bring
themselves to understand the points of view of
others.
Thanks for your response, Mr. Reed. I think race is definitely one of those topics that I have a hard time understanding all the sides of. Even this blog post, when I wrote the overreacting part, I was thinking that I was on the other side of the argument, but as I thought more about the title “Black in America,” I realized that it really does put too much emphasis on the color of the subjects. So I changed much of what I had written; it was wrong. Hopefully I won’t be like one of those critics who doesn’t try to understand the points of view of others.