It’s Time to Remember the Pain of Racial Slurs : Reaction to Palmdale Incident Shows Insensitivity

There was something that was both infuriating and all too common about the reaction to a racist incident in Palmdale the other day. It involved George Jenkins, who is black and serves as campus security director for Palmdale High School. Jenkins found that the school’s yearbook had compared him to Buckwheat--that stereotypical and unfortunate character from the “Our Gang” comedies of the enlightened 1930s (sarcasm intended).

Jenkins was understandably appalled, hurt and angry. His daughter was so depressed over it that she missed several days of school. But the elder Jenkins might have been angered most by the lame and insipid rationalizations offered by those who simply should have condemned the incident in the strongest terms.

Jim Gardner, yearbook adviser and president of the Antelope Valley Union High School District teachers union, said that the Jenkins slur was not made in a derogatory way. “If one (error) slips through, it ain’t no big deal,” Gardner said. “There was no culpability or malice.” Steve Landaker, president of the district’s board of trustees, was also disappointing. Landaker said he believed the Buckwheat comparison was made in fun and was not intended to hurt anyone.

The comments are reminiscent of those initially made by Palmdale Assemblyman Pete Knight after he distributed to fellow Republicans in Sacramento a sharply racist poem about Latino immigrants. Before he finally apologized for his reprehensible act, Knight said that he had found it amusing and was surprised that anyone would be offended by it.

In January, Burbank City Police Commissioner Ron Shively referred to Latinos as “wetbacks” in a meeting of the city’s FOCUS committee. Burbank City Council members quickly defended Shively as a fair-minded person of integrity. And on the campus of Cal State Northridge, we were recently afforded the following sad irony. A fraternity that was founded by Jews because they were unconscionably excluded from other fraternities had angered the school’s Latino population with a party invitation that referred to a ribald song about a Mexican prostitute.

The problem in each of these instances is the staggering insensitivity. As long as the slur has been leveled at someone else’s racial, religious or ethnic group, it is nothing to be concerned about. It is easily excused and brushed aside, and no care whatsoever is taken to understand how the affronted group or person truly feels. We’re going to remind you how it feels.

It is safe to say that relatively few of the racial, ethnic, religious and regional groups who settled in California were welcomed with open arms. You might recall the years when downtown Los Angeles law firms refused to hire Jewish associates, and when Jews were excluded from various private clubs. You might recall the old deed and block barriers or restrictive covenants of the 1920s that effectively barred blacks and Asians from 95% of the city’s housing. Your California ancestors might include those Caucasian survivors of the Dust Bowl and the Great Drought in the Plains states. As author Marc Reisner notes in his book “Cadillac Desert,” they were referred to as toothless dirt farmers and petty thieves, as an ignorant and appalling mob that had to be persuaded to settle anywhere but here, and as “a horrid upheaval from below . . . which could only end in driving all wealth and respectability from the state.”

Imagine, for a moment, personally suffering the indignities of any of these stereotypes or racist acts. Better yet, just take the image of Buckwheat, and substitute some likely symbol that has been used over the years to ridicule your heritage, your race, your religion, your sexual preference, your ethnic group. Now, tell yourself that your pain does not matter.

Just try to.