Another View: If only we'd listen to each other

Reno Gazette-Journal, July 25, 2010

Like the confrontation between a Cambridge, Mass., police officer and a well-known Harvard professor shortly after Barack Obama became president, (last month's) firing — and rehiring — of a Department of Agriculture employee because of a snippet of a speech she'd given was said to be a "teaching moment" for America. One can only hope.


Like the Massachusetts incident — which led to Obama's "Beer Summit" — the controversy over Shirley Sherrod's speech, in which she recounted a racial epiphany years ago, wasn't really about race. Rather it was about the determination of some Americans to find bias where it doesn't exist.


When a white police officer confronted Henry Louis Gates Jr., an African American, because a neighbor reported a possible break-in at Gates' house, the professor claimed bias and the incident spun out of control from there.


When a blogger-provocateur posted a tiny piece of Sherrod's speech, some commentators quickly claimed "reverse bias," and that incident, too, spun out of control ... until someone actually listened to the whole speech. After Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack forced her to resign, he sheepishly had to apologize. President Obama joined in the apology — without any beer this time. (Some of those commentators apologized, too, and then managed to find new snippets to be outraged about.)


If there's a lesson to be learned, it's that we all need to do a better job of listening to each other instead of looking for reasons to be offended. If we did, the issue of race would take care of itself.


Source : http://www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20100806/OPINION/8060318/1048