I don’t want to overreact to this possibly careless comment by SLATE’s William Saletan, but it really rubs me the wrong way. In discussing Dr. Dean’s recent union endorsements, Saletan writes:
Gephardt has dredged up quotes in which Dean bashed Medicare and said he would consider raising the Social Security retirement age. So, Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, brags onstage that SEIU’s endorsement gives Dean the support of the country’s biggest health care union. Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, says Dean will make sure Medicare and Social Security are “adequately funded.” The testimonials reek of defensive language. In his speech, Stern says his members are “totally comfortable” with Dean’s positions on health care issues. That’s like a white person saying he’s “totally comfortable” with the black family next door. [Emphasis added]
That sounds like Saletan is saying that no white person could possibly be totally comfortable with a black family next door, presumably because all white people are racist to some degree.
If that’s what he means (but if not, what?), that grates like fingernails raked across a (SLATE) blackboard.
There’s a black family living next door to us. Maybe I need to ask all the relevant experts to find out exactly what my attitude toward this family should be. After all, I’d hate to find out that I was harboring racism, when all along I thought things were just fine.
Change that to a bunch of young Islamic males – Koran bangers. The kind of perfectly normal Islamics that hijacked four jet planes on September 11th and within little more than two hours slaughtered 3,000 innocent people. But, then again, if they were living next to me, I could profile them as easy as 1, 2, 3, and keep an eye on them for you.
I think the point he is trying to make would be clearer if there were a way to emphasize that the key word is *saying* in that last sentence. If you have to go out of your way to say that you’re “comfortable” with “those people”, then you’ve got issues. Its like Howard Dean on the whole South thing — he loses prestige every time someone says “Dean is not a bigot”, not because that makes him a bigot but because it calls his presumption of non-bigotry into question. Its, whats the word, damning with faint praise?
Patrick McKenzie