Bob Herbert writes an op-ed today about the Blair affair. No need to link, really. Like everything Herbert writes, the column was extravagantly crude, completely predictable and racially obsessed. In fact, the whole point of Herbert’s column is race. Maybe one in ten of his columns are not about race. But the Blair affair, Herbert insists, is not about race:
Now this would be a juicy story under any circumstances. But Mr. Blair is black, so there is the additional spice of race, to which so many Americans are terminally addicted. Listen up: the race issue in this case is as bogus as some of Jayson Blair’s reporting.
As Jonah Goldberg pointed out, if Americans are addicted to the issue of race, then Herbert is a major pusher. I’m skeptical that the Blair thing can be reduced simply to affirmative action. But I’m not skeptical that Blair’s race had something to do with Howell Raines’ treatment of him. Why am I not skeptical? Because Raines said so:
“Our paper has a commitment to diversity and by all accounts [Blair] appeared to be a promising young minority reporter,” Mr. Raines said. “I believe in aggressively providing hiring and career opportunities for minorities.” “Does that mean I personally favored Jayson?” he added, a moment later. “Not consciously. But you have a right to ask if I, as a white man from Alabama, with those convictions, gave him one chance too many by not stopping his appointment to the sniper team. When I look into my heart for the truth of that, the answer is yes.”
Herbert doesn’t mention this, but then he never mentions anything that might complicate his own self-righteous, racial preening. New York Magazine adds a nuance to this story-line:
“The two attitudes at the Times are Upper West Side liberal or southern guilt. Nobody knows how to deal with black as just neighbor,” notes one reporter. “The black reporters are really angry,” says one reporter. Because Blair opened the door to the idea that maybe they didn’t deserve to be there. Blair seemed to understand these issues, and turned them to his advantage. “There’s that perception that Howell has unique feelings in this realm, and the widespread perception is that this kid gamed the system,” says an editor. By all accounts, Blair was not hesitant to bring up race around the office. “As soon as we met, he wanted to know how I felt about him being a black man,” says a Times writer. “He was obsessed about how minorities were hired differently.”
Blair, it seems, took advantage of Raines’ Guilty Southern White Boy syndrome. This is what happens when race becomes the criterion of any enterprise. The point of a newspaper is not and should never be diversity. It should be journalism. And the idea that you need minority reporters to tackle minority issues is itself racially blinkered, and condescending. It leads to unreadable columns like Herbert’s. It impugns the abilities and talents of the many excellent minority journalists who simply want to do their jobs well. And it makes possible disasters like the Raines-Blair mutual fixation. The real tragedy of the current crisis at the Times is that the one shibboleth that needs to be addressed – the diversity obsession – is the one shibboleth that is off-limits.
The Dish 