For people like Tim Wise, race and skin color are somehow connected to almost every occurrence in human affairs. In his view, race can be used to explain all kinds of things—much like how supposedly human-induced global warming has been blamed for everything from acne to zoonotic diseases (seriously). Not least among these things, apparently, is the 9/11 attacks.
He put forth the question, in so many words, of “why were we attacked on 9/11”? If one provides the answer of “they hate us because of our freedoms,” then surely that person is just a member of that nefarious “white middle class” providing a “privileged answer” from a perspective of blissful ignorance and indifference to the misdeeds of the United States and the suffering of other people in America and around the world. Wow, one question surely can say a lot about a person—just about everything from attitude to skin color sans the model of kitchen sink in their house. He also claimed that no “person of color” interviewed on television has answered the question that same way, not at least in the “hundreds” of clips that he has seen.
Both of the above mentioned claims are, of course, utterly absurd. First of all, this exact question met by this exact response, as quoted above, probably didn’t occur hundreds of times on television. Of more relevance would be how people respond to a similarly themed question or anything a person may say in the course of speaking on television that could be considered an answer.
The fact is that if there was ever a black conservative being interviewed on television that discussed why America was attacked on 9/11, then he or she would almost surely express, more or less, the view that Islamic terrorists are evil and hate our freedom; which is a view, according to Mr. Wise, that is reserved for members of “the white middle class.”
Tim Wise is a far-left guy and folks on the far-left tend to portray America in a more negative light than those on the right. Far-left folks, white or black, are simply going to be more inclined to claim that there is some other “explanation” or “reason” besides evil—defined in the case of Islamic terrorists as the love of tyranny and hatred of freedom—as to why the terrorists did what they did on 9/11.
Folks that have center-right politics, white or black, are more likely to acknowledge that evil exists and is a force against America rather than to blame America first. It is one’s political attitude, not his or her skin color, that is going to most heavily determine how a person answers this inquiry.
Mr. Wise should go to a tea party rally, for example, and ask this question of white and black tea party supporters, and he will likely find that their answers are similar, regardless of skin color. Likewise, he should go to a Code Pink rally and ask white and black participants this question, and he would likely find that just about everyone, regardless of skin color, will give a self-righteous rant about how Israel and the United States are evil and oppressive.
The point is that the color of one’s skin tells us nothing about a person’s world views and attitudes. Mr. Wise was wrong to suggest otherwise on the issue of 9/11 or the myriad of other issues he discussed. He was right that there is still a significant amount of racial injustice in America and that we must not be afraid to confront and defeat it. But adopting the Tim Wise attitude is counterproductive.
In fact, such attitudes actually impede progress toward racial equality. At the beginning of his speech, for example, he said “they [black people] already think we [white people] might be [racist].”
This comment is, quite frankly, insulting and demeaning toward every black American that does not baselessly suspect every white person who doesn’t see the need to talk much about race as a racist. Again, this attitude seems to be determined by one’s political outlook more so than one’s skin color.
People with far-left beliefs, regardless of skin color, tend to see racism as if it were water and they were stranded at sea—it’s everywhere to them. People on the right, regardless of skin color, tend only to see racism where some evidence of it (beyond mere political disagreement) actually exists.
In another op-ed, these issues can be addressed and explored in more depth. The subjects of race and racism are multifaceted and complex subjects. Short of writing an entire book, it is hard to do the topic justice. But if anything is taken away from this op-ed, it should be that skin color never tells us anything about an individual other than how much skin pigment he or she may have. The day that all Americans see other people as individuals with varying beliefs, attitudes, motivations, and goals—independent of skin color—is the day that the dream of a society in which the content of one’s character and not the color of one’s skin determines how one is judged comes true.
Bill Hanrahan is a fourth year student majoring in Political Science. He can be reached at WH750431@wcupa.edu.