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    Racial Slur? What Racial Slur?

    Posted Friday, February 27, 2009 9:52 AM | By Samantha Henig
    The teachable moments continue with yet another instance of a politician who should know better making a supposedly well-intentioned racial slur then falling back on a stammering defense. ("But being clean is a good thing!" "But I said I liked his tan!") The latest: Los Alamitos, Calif., Mayor Dean Grose's claim that he didn't know there were racial undertones to a doctored image of the White House lawn as a watermelon patch, which he sent in an e-mail with the subject line "No Easter egg hunt this year."

    Grose announced Thursday that he plans to resign because of this controversy. But first, he argued that he hadn't meant to offend anyone and wrote the following in a fairly unrepentant e-mail response to a black businesswoman who demanded an apology: "The way things are today, you gotta laugh every now and then. I wanna see the coloring contests."

    The first problem here is that, as with the New York Post cartoon, the joke excuse falls flat when the thing just isn't funny. There's also the issue of the way these apologies are phrased: the passive voice; the attitude of I didn't mean to offend you and I'm sorry you got offended, rather than I did something offensive and I'm sorry for my action.

    We as a nation may have felt triumphant and accepting on Nov. 4 and Jan. 20. But a black man leading the country hardly means the end of racism within it, as shown by these ongoing gaffes—and the conviction of the offenders, whether honestly held or not, that their racially motivated comments or drawings or actions were not in fact race-related at all. Eric Holder was right. We need to talk more about race. Maybe then it will stop keep popping up where Grose and Murdoch swear they didn't expect it.

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