Leonard Pitts: Not because he's black
Washington comes across as someone trying to use his race as a get-out-of-jail-free card
08:37 AM CDT on Saturday, July 7, 2007
My wife and I have a running joke.
Say the doctor informs me he's going to administer some test that will hurt like heck. When he leaves the room, I whisper to Marilyn: "You know why he's doing it, don't you? It's because I'm black."
It is, of course, a joke with a point. Namely, that some black folks can read race into anything. Some of us keep indignation in our hip pockets and conspiracy on speed dial.
But we'll get back to Isaiah Washington in a moment. First, the obvious disclaimer: I am not saying race is never the reason bad things happen. Au contraire. One often gets pulled over because one is black. One often gets substandard health care because one is black. One often fails to get the job because one is black.
Worse, because those in charge of pulling people over, giving health care or making hiring decisions are seldom clear and candid that race is their reason, it's easy to become paranoid, to believe everything is race until proven otherwise. So to be black is often to walk a tightrope above a snakepit of suspicions, both founded and un.
Apparently, Mr. Washington has fallen, and he can't get up.
He is, you will recall, the black actor from Grey's Anatomy who used an anti-gay slur during a fight with a cast mate. Months later, backstage at the Golden Globes, he used the word again in denying he had used it the first time. In the ensuing uproar, Mr. Washington apologized, entered what he calls an "executive counseling program" and filmed a public service announcement promoting tolerance. Last month, after all that, he was fired.
Frankly, it was cheesy of his bosses to wait so long. Why let the man jump through so many hoops just to give him the ax at the end?
But what sympathy you might have for Mr. Washington is undercut by the fact that he has gone on a PR offensive to talk about a firing that he believes happened, at least in part, because he is black.
As he told Newsweek: "Well, it didn't help me on the set that I was a black man who wasn't a mush-mouth Negro walking around with his head in his hands all the time. I didn't speak like I'd just left the plantation, and that can be a problem for people sometime. I had a person in human resources tell me after this thing played out that 'some people' were afraid of me around the studio. I asked her, 'Why, because I'm a 6-foot-1 black man with dark skin and who doesn't go around saying 'Yessah, massa sir' and 'No sir, massa' to everyone?' "
Which brings us to two truths that may seem contradictory but aren't: One, there is epidemic racism in this country. Two, you can find racism where it does not exist.
Forgive me, but Mr. Washington seems far more illustrative of the second axiom than the first.
Mr. Washington – like many of us, black and otherwise – seems knee-jerk where race is concerned. I mean, is it so hard to believe people feared him because they thought he was a volatile jerk? Or that a white actor of middling fame who disrupted his workplace would have also been fired? In his rush to make himself a martyr, Mr. Washington fails to consider these and other obvious questions.
He comes across as one of those brothers the running joke is meant to mock – the kind for whom race is a get-out-of-jail-free card. Unfortunately, like the boy who cried wolf, such people trivialize what is serious and give others license to do the same.
He lost his job for saying an awful thing. I wish he'd stop whining and deal with that.
Step 1 is to realize that black is not an excuse.
Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald. His e-mail address is lpitts@miamiherald.com.
1 comment:
I'm surprised that you dismiss race as a factor in what happened to Isaiah Washington, especially after he explained that he did not call T.R. Knight a faggot when he appeared on Larry King Live. Perhaps you did not know that Glenn Beck used the term on air, before ABC hired him, and, T.R. Knight used the word on air, before ABC gave him a raise. So, if you're right when you say that Isaiah was fired for using the word faggot, then you should question why white men get jobs and raises from ABC after using the word, while a black man gets fired. . .
You misrepresented Isaiah when you said that he used the word during a fight and "backstage at the Golden Globes, he used the word again in denying he had used it the first time." He never denied he used the word the first time. He specifically said, "I did not call T.R. Knight a faggot." Big difference!
Also, you mis-characterized the word faggot when you called it "an anti-gay slur." It is only that, when it is used as that. ABC and the media invented a whole new characterization of the word faggot to keep the fires raging around the lie that Isaiah Washington is a homophobe. Faggot is primarily used to demean the quality of masculinity, like bitch is used to demean the quality of femininity, and the word is generally used against heterosexual men. Take the case of Robert Graham Marshall-Andrew, the English politician and barrister who, during a conflict with his heterosexual peers, described the intervention by another heterosexual male as "here's another faggot." Or what about when Ann Coulter called Vice President Al Gore a “total fag,” on the David Letterman show. Even T.R. Knight admits that he’s never been called a faggot to his face
In America it is politically correct to admit the existence of racism while denying every manifestation of it. By admitting the concept, and denying the deeds, Americans maintain our racist status quo . . .
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