I don't like Juan Williams. I don't like his mealy-mouthed "moderation" that makes him Bill O'Reilly's favorite so-called liberal. And I don't like that he's yet another anti-racism advocate who seems just fine with sexism and xenophobia.
And I can think of a couple of good reasons that Williams should have been fired from NPR before -- for calling Michelle Obama "Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress," for instance.
But I'm somewhat unconvinced that Williams should have been fired over last week's intemperate remarks on The O'Reilly Factor last week.
I'll tell you why after the jump.
I'm an antiracism advocate both personally and professionally. I don't think that gives my opinion any special weight, but I note it instead as a way of explaining where I'm coming from.
One of my formative experiences involved participating in the "Dialogue on Race" program run by my local YWCA. The success of that program depended on the participants feeling safe to express and explore their personal prejudices. The conversation depended on exploring the multidirectional relationship between our personal prejudices and the institutional realities that create, inform, reinforce, or contradict those prejudices.
Through this robust and layered discussion, the Dialogue on Race was able to explore the topics of institutional racism, power and privilege, and how we might organize to fight institutional racism. But it all relied on people being able to speak the truth about where they were.
And that, I think, is what Juan Williams did. He spoke the sad, ugly truth about where he is in terms of his perception of Muslims -- a sad, ugly truth that millions of Americans unfortunately share in.
America sorely needs to be able to hold the hard conversations that such raw statements demand, and to have those conversations in a way that isn't histrionic -- that doesn't automatically call for the firing of someone who makes a simple gaffe or expresses a personal fear. (I think there's a different standard for those media figures like Glenn Beck and John Stossel who actively race-bait, stoke racial fear, and/or advocate for the empowerment of institutional racism.)
My sense is that people need to feel free to vocalize their fears and misgivings, and those of us who advocate for a more just world should stand strong in confronting, correcting, and dispeling those fears without essentializing the fearful.
And here I'm reminded of Barack Obama's remembrance of his grandmother during his landmark speech on race during the presidential campaign. He called out his own grandmother's irrational fear of black men. But look at the fine black man that fearful woman helped to raise. It reminds me of my own grandmother, who after growing up in the segregated south had a blanket dislike and distrust of white folks, especially those of her generation. It reminds me that someone who has an irrational fear isn't necessarily a bad person, but a person who needs another point of view. (Folks who act on that fear, and use those fears to disadvantage those of which they're fearful is a different story in my book).
It's a point that Jon Stewart seized on in his treatment of the firing of Rick Sanchez. The guy isn't A BIGOT, even if he said something rightfully described and condemned as really stupid. My concern is that Williams' firing ends up sending the wrong message about how honest we're allowed to be in our society about how we feel. And that will have a real, negative and lasting impact on our ability to conduct the hard dialogues on racism, classism, homophobia, and other forms of identity-based prejudice.