A racial word to the wise

I don’t know if the spasm we are living through is more like the French Revolution, or Communist China’s Cultural Revolution, with our version being called (by the ever-edgy Christine Flowers), the Multi-Cultural Revolution.

You can’t swing a cat without hitting a celebrity or corporation crawling into a hairshirt to confess past sins, or to at least apologize (for something), promise to do better, and throw some money at the cause. And they better do it in language that resembles George Orwell’s Newspeak. 

Racism is serious, but the orgy of self-flagellation is absurd. When everything — including COVID-19, because it favors nonwhite people, along with the aged — is described as racist, then what isn’t racist? 

How about Starbucks? The preciously woke company that once arrogantly suggested its baristas should talk to customers about race, got the dunce cap for ordering employees to not wear anything supporting Black Lives Matter on the job. Starbucks got called out for hypocrisy, because it has allowed similar expressions in the past.

Starbucks promptly reversed course and ordered BLM T-shirts that employees could wear. Or must wear? Wouldn’t a worker not wearing it be perceived as accepting racism? When will Starbucks learn to stick to selling coffee, and not social justice Frappuccinos?

Cracker Barrel, somehow, got enmeshed in controversy. The word “cracker” is offensive to some white people? Could Honky Heaven be a replacement? No, probably not. 

Across the land corporations lined up to support America’s racial reckoning. It was cathartic, but it sometimes didn’t work out well. Comcast’s pledge of $100 million to the anti-racist cause was promptly criticized for being cheap — $100 million ain’t enough — and for having too few minorities in its executive suite. 

Out of nowhere, the country band Lady Antebellum changed its name to Lady A — which is what fans called it anyway — because Antebellum is taken to mean before the American Civil War, and that references an era of slavery and therefore approves of it? In its statement, the band did not say anyone had complained about the now-abandoned name, taken originally because it was the architectural style of a house they were photographed in front of.

Numerous corporations started writing checks and Tweeting out messages about equality (good), police brutality (bad) and the evils of racism.

The rolling bandwagon led to silliness.

ACCT Philly, the city animal shelter, posted a statement on its website saying it stands with those who demand change, OK so far, then jumped the shark: “We are aware that most animal sheltering and welfare organizations are predominantly white, something that must be acknowledged and addressed.”

Really? Why? 

Is animal sheltering an expression of white supremacy? From now on, does this mean only nonwhite dogs will be rescued? ACCT Philly not only left its lane, but drove into a ditch. 

At the Philadelphia Museum of Art, we learned anew that some words cannot be spoken.

“At this historic moment of anger and protest . . . It is vitally important to reaffirm that every individual life matters,” Museum Director Timothy Rub and President Gail Harrity wrote in an email to employees. Some staff members were “enraged.”

Any suggestion that “all lives matter” is branded as tone deaf, minimizing black anguish, and inherently racist. And a denial of racism became proof of racism in some intellectual circles.

You have to say what they want you to say, and how they want you to say it — or else you will be drowned in a torrent of rage from the Twitterverse, the sewer of moral outrage.

A question: Weren’t the corporations and nonprofits aware of racism last month? But then they were Tweeting about how much money they were spending to keep their staff safe from COVID-19.

So maybe George Floyd lit the light bulb in their heads, I can’t shake the thought that some of the corporations are motivated by guilt, while others may be responding to the fear of being targeted if they did not shell out.

Some will call this column racist. They will say I don’t get it. But I do. They just want me to go along. But I won’t. I didn’t obey my parents without question, so I sure won’t be quietly accepting their rules.

I do get it. When they say it, they mean Black Lives Matter, Too. But what many whites hear is “Only Black Lives Matter,” so they counter with “All Lives Matter.” It is not an attempt to diminish, it is an attempt to encompass black lives and give them the equality they seek and deserve. 

When it comes to racial justice, a majority of Americans are speaking with a united voice. They don’t all need to use the same words.