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Dissent shouldn't be discouraged
(by Dave Lange - October 29, 2009)
COUNTY LINE, BY DAVE LANGE
Dissent shouldn't be discouraged
Racism really hurts. As a white person, I cannot tell you how much, because it is people of other colors who almost always suffer its consequences. But I can tell you, as an editor, that "racism," as in referring to actions by white people in a newspaper opinion column written by a white person, must really hurt too.
I can tell that from the missives I continue to receive more than six weeks after my longtime colleague Barbara Christian made that accusation regarding reactions by certain parents, directly, and local school administrators, indirectly, to President Barack Obama's Sept. 8 address to the nation's schoolchildren.
For those who might have missed the episode, most public schools declined to show the Webcast of the president's speech on the importance of education, and those that did went out of their way to let parents opt their children out of seeing it. School administrators caved in to an ongoing, organized political campaign intended to diminish the legitimacy of the duly elected president of the United States.
The citizens of the United States have a First Amendment right to criticize and oppose their leaders, and those of all political persuasions have done so throughout our history. Journalists -- those of us who devote our lives to freedom of speech and freedom of the press -- should not discourage dissent, even though we sometimes may question its incivility.
I, too, wrote a column about the uprising against a speech urging children to stay in school and work hard to get ahead. In the context of two ongoing wars in the Middle East, the exploding costs of health care in our country and economic and environmental challenges facing the entire world, I didn't see it as a monumental issue.
In my column, I sought to put reactions to the president's speech in a wider context with what I thought was a touch of humor about parents wanting to opt their children out of other school offerings, such as sex education, history and economics. It received not a single response.
Mrs. Christian's column, on the other hand, received many responses -- the majority of which objected to her accusation that demands made to schools against showing President Obama's speech were motivated by racism. Some of those who wrote letters for publication supported her position.
Personally, I believe that the attacks on the president and his every action, including a nonpolitical speech on education, are motivated primarily by politics, not racism -- despite some of the ugly rhetoric being spewed by the most outrageous attackers. I do not believe accusations of racism are constructive, enlightening or persuasive.
But that's my opinion. And Barbara Christian is entitled to hers. The entitlement to express her opinions in print comes by virtue of more than 40 years of news reporting experience. I have edited her stories and columns for 20 of those years, and, based on their content, I defy her recently offended critics to find a pattern of political dogma in her writing. In fact, the vast majority of her opinion columns are patently apolitical.
So, while I welcome and encourage feedback from our readers and will continue to print as many letters as possible in our papers, I'm not going to muzzle or retire Mrs. Christian. Freedom to disagree is an American tradition. Those who disdain the president and his politics get to have their say. And so do those who disdain the disdain.
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