“Black Hole”

Cultural Context:  An apparently racially offensive reference made by a white Dallas, Texas County Commissioner during a Commissioners meeting this week.  In a discussion about traffic tickets, Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield referred to the County Collections office as a “black hole.”  Two black Commissioners demanded an apology, claiming the statement was racist in nature.  In statements after the meeting,  Commissioner John Wiley Price also indicated that terms like “devil’s food cake” (a recipe traditionally made of chocolate) and “black sheep of the family” were also racist in nature.  Read the FoxNews article.

Huh?

Is every use of the word “black” in our language now a racist statement?  Is every reference to something dark now a racist statement?  Is every reference to chocolate?  Every reference to the “devil?”  I’m concerned.  The answers to these questions will determine whether I’ve been offending people willy-nilly my whole life, because those words have been incorporated into my vocabulary since I was a preschooler.  What about the terms “little white lie,” “white noise,” or “white-collar crime?”  Should I be offended by society in general, the technology sector and the judicial sector respectively?

Two observations:

• This ridiculous discourse has now been given national credence in that it appears in today’s news on Politics at FoxNews.com.  No doubt I’ll hear someone discussing it ad nauseam as I surf the channels tonight.  I saw the story when it rotated into one of the top news spots on the home page — you know, the ones with the giant headlines.  It was right above a sublink to the story about Atlanta retiring its “Men Working” construction signs in favor of the more politically correct “Persons At Work.”  Commissioner Price now has his 15 minutes.
   
• In writing my description above, I realized that to portray it accurately I had to list the parties as black or white.  This story is only pseudo-significant if the race of each Commissioner is made clear.  I thought the whole purpose of seeking racial equality and reform was that a person wouldn’t need to be defined primarily by his race.  Talk about a step backwards.

For the record:
Wikipedia tells me:  ”A black hole is a region of space in which the gravitational field is so powerful that nothing, not even light, can escape its pull after having fallen past its event horizon.  The term “Black Hole” comes from the fact that, at a certain point, even electromagnetic radiation (e.g. visible light) is unable to break away from the attraction of these massive objects. This renders the hole’s interior invisible or, rather, black like the appearance of space itself.”

Wikipedia also tells me that the term black sheep: “originated from the occasional black sheep which are born into a herd of white sheep due to a genetic process of recessive traits. Black sheep were considered commercially undesirable because their wool cannot be dyed as white wool can.”

Devil’s Food Cake:  I’m not even going to go there, except to say that if you are resisting your sweet tooth, chocolate would certainly be classified as sinful.

With due respect to Commissioner Price, we both live in the American South where racism has been a huge issue and a very real experience for many since way before I was born.  In fact, my home state of Mississippi has been the poster child for racism since well before the Civil Rights Movement began.  We (both black and white citizens) continue to struggle to overcome its effects and its stigma in seeking a place of relevance in society in 2008.  In all honesty, MANY disparities still exist between the educational, economic, health and social opportunites available for blacks versus whites.  These are real life battles for our future that are still being fought, and we must win them.  We don’t have time or energy for the ignorant, hypersensitive and publicity-hungry battles over semantics to which this situation shifts the focus.  It’s shameful, and it’s holding us back.