Racism (or at least accusations of it) is back in the news, both
locally and nationally. Our mayor trotted out that old saw, for the nth
time, because he was ticked off at the City Council for taking him at
his word about “retiring” on July 30th and passing a resolution
declaring the office vacant as of July 31st.

The gall! Obviously, there’s no other explanation for that action
than racism. Oh, and he embellished the accusation, this time, by
adding the charge that the council’s action was “perverted.” Who knew a
resolution declaring a vacancy in the office of the mayor was on a par
with child pornography?

On the national scene, there have been two prominent racial
incidents: The first was the exclusion of a group of black children
from an apparently “whites only” swim club in suburban Philadelphia,
and the second occurred when our president entered the fray over the
arrest of prominent African-American scholar Henry Louis Gates by
suggesting it was possibly another example of racial profiling.

Imagine: an African-American male suggesting that law enforcement
officials occasionally target people of color for “special” treatment.
How dare he! It couldn’t possibly be because there’s hardly a black
person alive who hasn’t been harassed for the “crime” of being black,
could it? But the media, looking for a controversy about Obama when the
only other thing on their radar was the “birther” goofiness, jumped on
the president’s remarks as if he were channeling Jeremiah Wright.

It’s a sad fact that our mayor’s ubiquitous hurling of the racist
accusation has had the effect of inuring us to instances where the
charge may actually be meritorious — like the incident in
Philadelphia. It’s not unlike the way the villagers in the Aesop fable
stopped believing the boy who kept crying “wolf.”

I am the last person to scoff at charges of bigotry or intolerance,
being the child of Holocaust survivors and having had experience with
anti-Semitism. But I also have enough life experience to know that just
because you are a member of a group that has been historically
discriminated against doesn’t mean that everything bad that happens to
you is the result of discrimination.

I also know that just because a black person cries “racism” every
time something bad happens to him or her doesn’t mean it isn’t the
result of discrimination. The saying is: Just because you’re paranoid
doesn’t mean everyone isn’t out to get you. Eventually, even the boy
who cried “wolf” was right, even if, by that point, he couldn’t get
anyone to believe him.

There are lessons to be learned in these episodes. For Obama, it’s
that discussing issues of race may not always be welcomed, even coming
from him. Oh sure, everyone admired his confrontation of race in that
memorable campaign speech in Philadelphia. But that was as much because
it put distance between himself and Wright — someone many white
folks saw as a virulent black racist — as because it spoke to
broader issues of race.

We palefaces liked that speech because it made us feel Obama had
common cause with us in decrying the kind of racism we’re not used to,
the kind that threatens us. But identifying with a prominent black
scholar because he may have been the victim of the kind of racism we
would prefer to believe is mostly anecdotal? That was a bridge too far.
But the fact is, Obama’s foray into the subject of racial profiling may
end up having the salutary effect of making us (black and white)
realize that we may not have made as much progress toward becoming
“post-racial” as the pundits would have us believe.

The lessons in the Herenton episode are harder to glean, if only
because his accusations of discrimination have become so
indiscriminant. After all, the mayor has enjoyed a record-breaking
tenure in office in no small part because whites, as well as blacks,
have repeatedly reelected him and because he has been the beneficiary
of the white power structure’s largesse.

Nonetheless, the lesson in Herenton’s incessant invocation of the
race card, especially in juxtaposition with the incident at the
Philadelphia swim club, may be that racism is still alive and well in
this country, even if the carriers of that message may see that wolf at
the door, even when he’s not.