COMMENTARY
Rod Watson: Vile e-mails tarnish more than sender
Thank goodness for forthright bigots. In the fashion of Archie Bunker, who never considered himself to be wrong, Lewiston-Porter School Board President Robert Weller saw nothing wrong with forwarding racist and sexist e-mails.
He defended his right to offend in the name of free speech and claimed he did nothing “other than what everybody else in the world does.”
Even after changing course this week and apologizing—sort of—Weller seems more upset over the fact that “a private district matter has become a public concern” than over what the e-mails say about him and his electronic soul mates, including other board members.
When asked whether someone forwarding such messages should be on a board setting educational policy, he called it a “stupid question” before quickly apologizing.
“Am I a racist? No. I’m the most colorblind person you would ever see,” he assured me.
This from a man who forwarded a cartoon showing Barack Obama promising jobs while young black males run away, and another lamenting that Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic nomination to “a Negro.” Perhaps that loss was to be expected, since in this worldview, women don’t need wristwatches because “there is a clock on the oven.”
But anyone who focuses just on Weller misses the larger picture. Just as “All in the Family” prompted America to take another look at itself, even if the central character never did, Weller’s e-mails raise wider questions.
They should prompt the Lew-Port community to re-examine itself because they raise questions about the people who put Weller in office and those who made him board president, keeping silent as these e-mails were exchanged. They also raise questions about the others in Weller’s e-mail loop who sent and received such messages.
When the e-mails are looked at in that light, the socioeconomic gaps that still define American society become explainable not so much by the behavior of those who get stereotyped, as by the attitudes of those doing the stereotyping.
You have to wonder:How many of Weller’s e-mail buddies are in position to approve or reject when a black or a woman applies for a job, a mortgage or a business loan?
How many are teachers making assumptions about what black or female students are capable of?
How many are cops who see a “group” of white teens walking down the street and decide they can safely be left alone, but who see a “gang” of black teens and figure they need to be rousted?
How many are judges who decide that a white kid who does something stupid was being childish and deserves another chance, but that a black kid doing the same thing is an incorrigible thug who needs prison time?
Attitudes such as those expressed in the e-mails aren’t left on the keyboard pad; they color outlooks and unconsciously infect behavior.
That’s why this is bigger than just one man so clueless that he doesn’t know he has a problem. It’s about all of the other people in the Lew-Port community— and beyond—who share the same biases but who haven’t been outed yet.
Weller winds down his apology by writing that we must learn from mistakes, concluding with the words “I know I have learned a great deal from this incident.”
Just what has he learned?
“I have learned that your private e-mail is no longer private,” he replied.
Unfortunately, that was the wrong lesson.
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