[Peace-discuss] "bikini liberalism" -- Tim Wise on NPR's dismissal of Juan Williams

[Stuart Levy]

I'd mentioned this article from Tim Wise at last week's meeting:

    http://www.timwise.org/2010/10/bikini-liberalism-juan-williams-implicit-bias-and-the-trouble-with-npr/

    Bikini Liberalism: Juan Williams, Implicit Bias and the Trouble With NPR

I’ve never been a fan of Juan Williams. Far too chummy with his FOX News
colleagues and too eager to attack longstanding civil rights leaders in the
name of supposedly courageous political “independence,” Williams is one I have
never thought to defend before.

But today such a defense is deserved. Williams, it turns out, has been done a
supreme disservice by his other employer, National Public Radio, and it is a
disservice to which the harshest condemnation should be applied.

[...]

... what had Williams done, exactly? He acknowledged his own biases, and then
explained the fallacy embedded therein. He was being honest, and in so doing,
demonstrating an important fact that the nice white liberals who predominate at
NPR try to deny, especially for themselves. Namely, that even the best of us
can be taken in by racism, by religious bias, by ethnic chauvinism, by
prejudice. No matter our liberal bona fides, the bottom line is this:
advertising works, whether for selling toothpaste, tennis shoes, or
stereotypes.

[...]

The only difference between Juan Williams and the people who fired him is this:
Williams is honest enough to admit his own damage.  And importantly, what the
research on this subject tells us is that it is precisely those persons who are
able to see and acknowledge their biases who are the most likely to challenge
themselves, and try valiantly not to act on them. In other words, it is the
Juan Williams’s of the world whose self-awareness in this regard will minimize
the likelihood of discriminatory behavior.  Meanwhile, it’s the liberals who
deny to their dying breath that they have a “racist bone in their bodies,” or
who swear they “never see color,” or insist that they are open-minded, forward
thinking and free of prejudice, who are often unable to see how their
internalized biases effect them, and move them around the chessboard of life
without them even realizing it.  Frankly, those are the ones from whom racial
and religious “others” probably need the most protection.