Confession #2: As a freshman at college, probably two weeks after arriving, I was horsing around in the dorm hallway with some other guy and, after he had "goosed" me (or the like), I loudly yelled "FAGGOT!" at him. To me, the epithet was pure jest. It so happened, however, that the upper class resident on the hallway, who was present, was gay. As with you, my consciousness at that point (yea many years ago), was pretty meager; I'm not sure I had actually talked to a gay person, though there were a few notorious "homos" in my high school. In any event, the upperclassman, very quietly and with laudable dignity considering his own sexual identity, came up to me and told me that I probably find a way to express myself without resorting to group insults. Innocent that I was, I've never forgotten that moment, most especially the grace with which it was handled and the realization it brought about within me. Would that, in our blaring 100mph media-driven culture, we could focus on what really matters here: looking inward and seeing how fallible (racist, homophobic, violent, ignorant, hypocritical) we all area.
 

Well said, Anon.
 

WGD
 

I think Imus should be fired; a two week suspension is just a slap on the wrist and he's had them in the past. What lessons has he learned?

I watched Al Sharpton on the Today Show this morning and while I almost never agree w/anything he says and believe him to be a poor example of African-American leadership, his comments today were right on. Imus just doesn't get it; it's obvious he's sincere in his apologies and it can't have been easy to have gone on the Sharpton program yesterday all alone, and of course Imus is not a "bad person," in fact he's done great things for kids w/cancer and seems like a "good" person, but it's not about good and bad, it's about whether or not a two week suspension sends the right message. I think the suspension basically sends the message: you can screw up (several times), then apologise, be forgiven, and get right back out there w/virtually no long-term consequences to your behavior. This sets a terrible precedent and sends a terrible message. The airwaves should not condone racism by letting this go w/out terminating Imus. Let him say whatever he wants on Sirius w/Howard.
 

Richard,

Your story and anon's provide a different type of answer to the question of "Is it worth it [to come to a school with national reach, and attractiveness to students of particular smarts and personal wherewithal]?"

Of course the stories don't fully answer that question: how do you put a dollar figure on learning the importance of not being a bigot?

The big draw of schools like Harvard should always be the students that they attract. Prestige is a proxy for that, because prestige tends to draw people -- and so, of course, does good financial aid.

Any stories out there of class consciousness being raised at college? That should be higher on the radar.

Standing Eagle
 

At least one Harvard professor has written publicly on this "all whites are racists deep inside" theme. This was in the NYT in December, by sociologist Orlando Patterson.

-------------------

Our Overrated Inner Self

ORLANDO PATTERSON

In the 1970s, the cultural critic Lionel Trilling encouraged us to take seriously the distinction between sincerity and authenticity. Sincerity, he said, requires us to act and really be the way that we present ourselves to others. Authenticity involves finding and expressing the true inner self and judging all relationships in terms of it.

Authenticity now dominates our way of viewing ourselves and our relationships, with baleful consequences. Within sensitive individuals it breeds doubt; between people it promotes distrust; within groups it enhances group-think in the endless quest to be one with the group's true soul; and between groups it is the inner source of identity politics.

It also undermines good government. James Nolan, in his book ''The Therapeutic State,'' has shown how the emphasis on the primacy of the self has penetrated major areas of government: emotivist arguments trump reasoned discourse in Congressional hearings and criminal justice; and in public education, self-esteem vies with basic literacy in evaluating students. The cult of authenticity partly accounts for our poor choice of leaders. We prefer leaders who feel our pain, or born-again frat boys who claim that they can stare into the empty eyes of an ex-K.G.B. agent and see inside his soul. On the other hand we hear, ad nauseam, that Hillary Clinton, arguably one of the nation's most capable senators, is ''fake'' and therefore not electable as president.

But it is in our attempts to come to grips with prejudice that authenticity most confounds. Social scientists and pollsters routinely belittle results showing growing tolerance; they argue that Americans have simply learned how to conceal their deeply ingrained prejudices. A hot new subfield of psychology claims to validate such skepticism. The Harvard social psychologist Mahzarin Banaji and her collaborators claim to have evidence, based on more than three million self-administered Web-based tests, that nearly all of us are authentically bigoted to the core with hidden ''implicit prejudices'' -- about race, gender, age, homosexuality and appearance -- that we deny, sometimes with consciously tolerant views. The police shootings of Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell, they argue, are simply dramatic examples of how ''implicit prejudice'' influences the behavior of us all.

However well meaning these researchers, their gotcha psychology is morally invasive and, as the psychologist Philip Tetlock has cogently argued, of questionable validity and use. It cannot distinguish between legitimate apprehension and hateful bigotry as responses to identical social problems. A fearful young black woman living in a high-crime neighborhood could easily end up with a racist score. An army of diversity trainers now use Banaji's test to promote touchy-feely bias awareness in companies, which my colleague Frank Dobbin has shown to be a devious substitute for minority promotions.

I couldn't care less whether my neighbors and co-workers are authentically sexist, racist or ageist. What matters is that they behave with civility and tolerance, obey the rules of social interaction and are sincere about it. The criteria of sincerity are unambiguous: Will they keep their promises? Will they honor the meanings and understandings we tacitly negotiate? Are their gestures of cordiality offered in conscious good faith?

Scholars like Richard Sennett and the late Philip Rieff attribute the rise of authenticity to the influence of psychoanalysis, but America's protestant ethos and its growing intrusion in public life may be equally to blame. Whatever the cause, for centuries the norm of sincerity presented an alternate model of selfhood and judgment that was especially appropriate for non-intimate and secular relations. Its iconic expression is the celebrated passage from Shakespeare: ''All the world's a stage,/ And all the men and women merely players./They have their exits and their entrances,/ And one man in his time plays many parts.''

Shakespeare's ''self'' is inescapably public, fashioned in interaction with others and by the roles we play -- what sociologists, building on his insight, call the looking-glass self. This allows for change. Sincerity rests in reconciling our performance of tolerance with the people we become. And what it means for us today is that the best way of living in our diverse and contentiously free society is neither to obsess about the hidden depths of our prejudices nor to deny them, but to behave as if we had none.
 

News flash to Confederate-flag-hanging Richard and the guy who yelled, "FAGGOT!": It's nice that you don't consider yourselves racist or homophobic, but when you say shit like that, it's racist.
 

Well, um, duh. That was kind of the point, if you actually read those posts.

If I subscribed to the blog code of conduct, I would delete that post for general pointlessness, with a dash of incoherence thrown in.