NPR’s “Race Card Project,” a series of stories on the topic of race and society, found another way to make us confront our own latent racism as well as the lingering racism in society this week by telling us the story of a white guy named Jamaal.
Jamaal has suffered indignities because of his name and he’s happy to tell us about it. He once got pulled over for additional screening after 9-11 on an overseas flight, along with a bunch of other men with foreign-sounding names and a white grandmother named Jenny Smith. He’s had waitresses hand his credit card back to black dining companions rather than him, and he has had students tell him they thought he would be black when they first saw the name of his teacher. And—that’s about it. How he endured these shameful episodes I don’t know. But it speaks well of his generation. Truly, he can understand the tribulations of today’s African-Americans.
The race mix-up has worked to his advantage, too: Based on his name as well as his hobbies and heroes listed on his resume (note to self: add hobbies and heroes to resume) he was taken for an African-American when he applied for a teaching job. The presumption got him the gig, the principal confessed, as the school wanted some diversity and a role model for the minority males in the school.
Jamaal proudly points out that while he might not have been what they had in mind when they were trying to hire for “diversity,” as the son of two hippy liberal parents who grew up in rural Oregon he did indeed add to the diversity of the school.
I’m not sure how to break it to young Jamaal, but the left’s battle over diversity refers solely to race. And having two hippy parents and an NPR orientation wouldn’t make someone the least bit diverse in any school in America. While he’s absolutely right in his declaration that he can be an excellent role model for African American kids, that’s totally besides the point of these set asides, at least from the perspective of their defenders.
Why NPR profiled a white man in a series about race and society is beyond me. It was about as informative on the issue as Eddie Murphy’s undercover expose as Mr. White.
