Some Friendly Advice to Well-Meaning Whites From a Well-Meaning Black

Several months ago, after Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder had lost his job at CBS Sports for publicly examining the origins of the thick thighs on black athletes, I called an editor at a local newspaper to pitch a column I had written delineating the many qualifications of racism. Howard Cosell had started the ball rolling by referring to a black football player as a monkey, Al Campanis had followed Cosell by openly doubting the ability of black Americans to float, let alone run a baseball team, and now Snyder had seen fit to say that a giant buck and big-boned woman perched somewhere among the branches of American blacks’ family tree were responsible for the ease with which black running backs trample white linebackers each Sunday in the fall.

I was crestfallen when the editor declined to use my column, but I found some encouragement in the suggestion that I keep it nearby, just in case. “Because Snyder won’t be the last to make the same mistake, I’m sure,” the editor predicted.

And right on cue, enter A.B. “Happy” Chandler, former U.S. senator, governor of Kentucky and commissioner of baseball.

Chandler is the octogenarian who several weeks ago referred to Zimbabwe as “all nigger now” during a meeting of the University of Kentucky’s investments committee, and who has since suffered some minor abuse as a result. Amazingly, like Cosell, Campanis, and Snyder before him, Chandler can’t understand what all the fuss is about. After all, he explains, back in Henderson County, Kentucky, where Chandler grew up, “We called them niggers and they didn’t mind. We never had any trouble.”

He neglects to mention, of course, that had there been any trouble, a short coil of rope and a strong tree would have no doubt cleared it right up, as they so often did at the time.

Admittedly, Chandler is just an old man living in the pitch-black closet of the past, but his confusion with the sensitivity of today’s black Americans to certain terminology and trains of thought is shared by many who do not have the same excuse. People half Chandler’s age and light years more sophisticated are making similar verbal blunders daily, succeeding in alienating black viewers, clients, co-workers, et al., by the score, and presumably all but a handful do so because they don’t know any better. These people can be helped.

I offer the following advice, then, so that these unenlightened individuals might once and for all have a full and complete understanding of what social misplays black Americans find most offensive and intolerable:

--First, the “n” word is out, in any context, at any time. Don’t say it, write it, or sing it in any key, including B-flat. Don’t use it as a “sounds like” clue in charades or a six-letter word in Scrabble, and if the opportunity ever presents itself, don’t sign it for the deaf.

--Unless the subject is Alex Haley’s “Roots,” pass on any long-winded and colorful dissertations on slavery and its practices.

--Refrain from making any comparisons between black people and anything that may now or in the future reside in San Diego Zoo.

--Avoid asking any question that begins, “Is it true what they say about your . . . .”

--If you feel a need to talk about breeding, tell it to thoroughbreds at Hollywood Park.

--When describing successful black people, use the terms “hard work,” “diligent,” and “self-sacrificing” whenever possible. In other words, pretend you’re talking about Larry Bird.

--Attribute nothing merely to “soul,” and keep “rhythm” out of the conversation altogether.

--If you must greet someone upon their introduction with the comment, “I didn’t know you were black,” fake ecstatic surprise as best you can.

--Do not attempt to impress anyone with liberal use of the expression “right on.”

As rules of conduct go, these are rather simple, yet in one form or another, they have given white Americans fits for generations. The underlying theme--that blacks have grown weary of regularly hearing about slavery as well as the narrow, twisted limitations some have always attached to us--is nothing new. I provide this tongue-in-cheek variation in the hope that it will succeed in making the point where other, less frivolous versions have failed.

Otherwise, it’s a good bet that Happy Chandler will soon enough be passing the torch of racial insensitivity on to a new master of the multi-media faux pas. One who will almost certainly, like his loose-lipped brothers before him, emerge from the din of protest wondering what on earth he said or did to tick off so many black people.