She publicly apologized the next day.
I have heard no speculation that the cause of her outburst was the race or
gender of the line judge.
Nor have I heard any speculation that West's outburst was due to his
possible deep-seated dislike of country music or blonde women.
Why pull together these episodes of September savagery where decorous
speeches, matches and awards ceremonies have given way to spectacles of
outbursts, lost tempers and uncivil behavior?
There is a difference between coincidence, when A and B occur together but
one does not cause the other, and cause and effect, when A causes B. To the
casual observer, coincidence is often mistaken for cause and effect.
Early in my career I moved from finance to marketing. Several marketing
employees were convinced that the move of a finance person into marketing
would ruin the marketing department.
Soon after the move, there was pushback regarding my approach to negotiating
with vendors. Was this due to prejudice against finance people, or a serious
question regarding policy implementation? Assuming the latter, we worked
together to create a consistent policy. Was prejudice against finance people
moving into marketing still evident? Certainly. But by addressing the
substantive questions regarding policy, the prejudice dissipated.
To answer my own question, I do not believe that Obama's comment regarding
West was prejudiced. But it provided us the opportunity to rethink
prejudice. While we cannot condone prejudice, we cannot afford to believe
that prejudice is lurking behind every comment, prejudging that it will
surface. Instead, we must focus our energy and efforts on substantive policy
issues.
Might some portion of the pushback regarding Obama's performance be due to
underlying racial prejudices? Certainly.
Would an approach to solve substantive questions regarding policy without
regard to outlying prejudged beliefs go a long way toward dissipating any
remaining prejudices? Probably.
Is it fair to label all opposition to Obama as racist? Certainly not -- and
possibly prejudiced.