Admitting a mistake

Hello all - well, I have been gone for a little while. Work was pretty intense - I was assisting the JDC in coordinating their meetings for the United Jewish Communities General Assembly, which was being held here in Jerusalem. I have been under the weather for a while now, but am hopefully back on the mend.

In any case, since my last blog, a new President of the United States was elected...as well as a new mayor of Jerusalem! Regarding the former, I have to say that it was amazing watching the coverage from here in Israel. There was a great deal of emotion displayed here around the concept of an African-American being elected. I was greatly dismayed, however, at the horrificly inadequate lack of understanding of the black narrative in the United States. It is difficult to explain the significance of overcoming racism (at least making a dent in it) to a culture that has not been witness to it.

They have the emotional empathy, but do not know the details: the post-election coverage included a great number of stories of the struggle for racial equality in the United States, and there were many things taken out of context, glossed over, or not referred to at all. There was one instance of blatant disregard for cultural norms and sensitivities, when an Israel Channel 2 reporter used the 'n' word during a feature story in describing "white teenagers getting into black culture." That story also included coverage of succesful modern black entertainers - a clip of Oprah Winfrey jumping up and down, and a few seconds of Bill Cosby. That was all they could come up with.

I remember as a teenager in my high school newspaper getting into an argument with a colleague in my class. It was a girl I had a crush on, which made it all the worse. I was proposing to write a story on the fact that our school - Santaluces High, named after a now-extinct local Indian tribe - had a 'Chief' as a mascot. Part of my 'modest proposal' was that we should change our names to represent other ethnicities and see if those mascots would be universally accepted...the Santaluces Blacks, the Fighting Jews, the Thundering Latinos...Caucasians, Asians...you name it. I was a minority in my school, and really felt it. I had an instinctive need to stand up for those who were being discriminated against, even if it was an extinct Indian tribe. The above mentioned girl was questioning my need to stand up for the victim...the story ran, and in the end my car was keyed. Twice. The school's mascot is still the Chief. However - I got hundreds of kids in the school to at least think about the matter.

So, I called Channel 2 to complain about their lack of cultural awareness and sensitivities in using the 'n' word, and was given the runaround for more than an hour. In the end, I was referred to Channel 2's lawyer and instructed to write a letter. I am doing so, but am also going to go ahead and start an online petition against Channel 2 for not only committing this error, but failing to properly acknowledge and correct it. I will post that link in this blog shortly. This is too great of a country to have such an inept news channel. And this is too important a time to get this remarkable story wrong.