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Truth, Lies And Subtext (Bob Herbert, New York Times, 5/19/03)

Listen up: the race issue in this case is as bogus as some of Jayson Blair's reporting.

Mr. Blair was a first-class head case who was given a golden opportunity and responded by spreading seeds of betrayal every place he went. He betrayed his readers. He betrayed his profession. He betrayed the editors who hired and promoted him. But there was no racial component to that betrayal, any more than there was a racial component to the many betrayals of Mike Barnicle, a columnist who was forced to resign from The Boston Globe in 1998 after years of complaints about his work.

Although Mr. Barnicle is white, his journalistic sins have generally — and properly — been seen as the sins of an individual.

But the folks who delight in attacking anything black, or anything designed to help blacks, have pounced on the Blair story as evidence that there is something inherently wrong with The Times's effort to diversify its newsroom, and beyond that, with the very idea of a commitment to diversity or affirmative action anywhere.

And while these agitators won't admit it, the nasty subtext to their attack is that there is something inherently wrong with blacks.

Jayson Blair should have been yanked away from his computer long ago. There had been plenty of warnings. The failure to act on those warnings was a breakdown in management for which the paper is paying a heavy price. I don't want to hear that the devil — in this case a devil named diversity — was to blame.

As right wing reactionaries go, I'm pretty soft on Blairgate. I believe, with Mr. Herbert, that the individual primarily responsible for Jayson Blair's fall was Jayson Blair. I think that if the Times wants to tip the scales in favor of black journalists, it has a perfect right to do so. Heck, I think it has a consitutional right to say, "Quality, shmaulity [it is the New York Times], we're hiring the next black who walks through that door. I only hope she's a lesbian." But Mr. Herbert is so blind to the arguments against affirmative action that he walks right off a cliff.

First, what about the idea that the people injecting race into this controversy are "the folks who delight in attacking anything black, or anything designed to help blacks." I assume that he means conservatives, or Republicans or white men, in other words, me. So, just to keep the record straight, let's say again that the primary reason to reject affirmative action, on pure policy grounds, is the evident and substantial harm it does to blacks, by making it possible that blacks can find themselves in the world not as well-educated, not as driven, not as tested, as other Americans, a point that Jayson Blair has helped to illustrate so nicely.

Second, who, exactly, played the race card first? Howell Raines and the Times have gone out of their way to publicize who well their pressroom diversity program has worked. Why, it resulted in them hiring a very talented young reporter who they might not otherwise have hired, named Jayson Blair. Who, now, is taking refuge in the race question? Faced with the eivdence that Jayson Blair should have been fired months, if not years, ago, Raines suggested that he, a guilty white boy from Alabama who has overcome his paleoducation, might have given Mr Blair the benefit of a few too many doubts, because he is black. I guess Mr. Raines must "delight in attacking anything black", which at least fits the facts. (It's also worth noting that Mr. Herbert is just wrong about Mike Barnicle, as he must know. Mr. Barnicle was discovered lifting a joke from George Carlin. He was disciplined, but not fired. However, another columnist, a black woman, recently had been fired for making things up. The usual suspects -- if you want a list, find a Cambridge phone book -- screamed about the double standard and how Mr. Barnicle would have been fired if he were black. So . . . )

What Mr. Herbert entirely misses is the extent to which this is a "see, I told you so" moment for conservatives. Everything he blames conservatives for: injecting race into every issue, seeing blacks as inherently less qualified, suspecting that lying is a black trait, assuming that every successful black has had his path smoothed (usually by rolling over more qualified whites), either are the left's unspoken assumptions in backing affirmative action or are the entirely too predictable results of affirmative action. What makes it particularly sweet this time is that conservatives can now point to the Bush cabinet, more diverse and more competent than any Democratic cabinet, to show what true black achievement looks like. Bob Herbert is a smart guy, but he is blind to the very possibility that he is wrong. He can't even concede that his opponents mean well, let alone that we are right. As a result, he is pushing and pushing for a solution that will make the problem worse and worse. Posted by David Cohen at May 19, 2003 5:04 PM