In TV Interview, Schott Says Racism Doesn’t Exist

Marge Schott, the Cincinnati Reds’ owner suspended by baseball for a year for using racial and ethnic slurs, said Thursday she is not a racist and doesn’t believe racism exists.

“Well, I think it’s created by the press . . . that it really isn’t there,” she said on the ABC program “PrimeTime Live” Thursday night.

She said she is not “anti anything” and that the investigation leading to her suspension by baseball’s executive council was a “witch hunt” that wouldn’t have happened if she had been a man.

Asked by Diane Sawyer if she had ever used the word nigger, Schott said: “Oh, I’m sure that we’ve all used the word. I’m sure you have too.”

Is she sorry that she used it?

“Well, I think there’s some people brought up in a different era, OK, that have never really thought about it . . . and I don’t really think that there was a big fuss about the word, what 50 years ago?

“Words now . . . it seems like so many words are mismeaning. Now, I must admit that I’ve said the word Jap before. I don’t think the word Jap is offensive in Japan. But maybe to these American Japanese here . . . and I’m trying very hard to keep saying Japanese, Japanese. “

Schott said she does not think it’s tougher to be black in America than it is to be white, that she has never demeaned Jews in her speech because some of her best friends are Jewish, that she did not consider the swastika she keeps in her house a sign of evil--”I’d hate to think somebody died wearing it”--and that, in compliance with the terms of her suspension, she has already made plans to attend a multidiversity program.

She added, however: “I don’t even know what a sensitivity course is, I’ll be quite frank. I know the ethics I’ve been brought up into. And so I really don’t know what this sensitivity’s going to be because I’m a people person and I’ve never felt differently about some people vs. others. I really haven’t.”

She said she would probably hire a minority if two qualified people were pursuing the same job “but still I don’t want to (because) I don’t want to lead a false life. Like firing certain people to bring in other people. I don’t think that’s fair.”

She also said that, at 64, she does not think she will be changed by this experience and hopes she isn’t because she never wants to be artificial and that she has been hurt most by the fact that no other club owner has called.

“I really thought one of these guys would call and say, ‘Hey, Marge, hang in there, I feel for you,’ ” she said. “And that hurt me more than anything else, made me feel like an outsider.”