Stereotyping has gotten a bad rap. Dangerous criminals often give off characteristic warning signals in their lifestyles and mannerisms. Just because someone looks, scowls or even acts suspiciously doesn’t necessarily mean he really is a criminal, but instinctively steering clear of such a person isn’t bigoted intolerance; it’’s smart.

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That’s how the column ends, but it all builds up to that point. I’ve been reading this column over for a few days now, and I still come to the inescapable conclusion:

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Dana D. Kelley’s latest column, “Put Trust in instinct” – discussing the murder of Georgia hiker Meredith Emerson –  is yet another love song to good old -fashioned racism. 

For decades now, there’’s been a concerted effort among the diversity dogmatists to demonize stereotyping as a sin.

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 It’s wrong to generalize groups, we’’ve been told, because general characteristics of a group don’t apply to all specific individu . . . als within it. “Stereotyping leads to bigotry !” has been the cry of the politically correct priesthood.

The whiter-than-white columnist who writes a regular column for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (and other papers) is regularly suspected of harboring racist tendencies. Rarely does a month go by when he does not write sneeringly of minorities, especially when it comes to  crime and punishment.

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Starting in the late 20th century, however, there began a movement to elevate the atrocity of certain politically incorrect infractions, including stereotyping. As long ago as 1988, in a piece about violent crime, The New York Times editorialized that “if fear creates victims, so does discrimination.” It was then, and is now, totally irresponsible to equate the “crime” of prejudice with what Hilton did to Emerson.

While I agree that the crime of racial prejudice does not nearly approach the magnitude of the murder of Ms. .Emerson, one can’t but wonder at how such satisfaction Comrade Kelley took in putting quotation marks around crime, when talking about prejudice, as if prejudice were not even worth talking about.

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Today’s scarlet letter is “I,”with intolerance being the offense for which the PC puritans would love to bring back the pillory. Generations of children have now grown up being taught that people who fail to conform to traditional social norms should, nonetheless, be tolerated.

For the Dana D. Kelleys of the world, diversity is something to be afraid of, and to sneer at. For all too many – and, I suspect, the most avid readers of Kelley’s columns – putting trust in their instincts would be to cross the street when you see a black man walking towards you, especially if they are young, and not dressed in a business suit.

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It would mean sending your son or daughter off to a re-education camp if they come out of the closet, or ransacking your kid’s bookbag, to make sure that not only are they not smoking the Devil’s Weed, but also are not checking the wrong kinds of books out of the library.

It would mean that you make damned sure that folks of certain ethnic or religious groups are watched at all times, by both the authorities, and by their neighbors. People who read that Koran thing, for example.

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It’s one thing for a writer to be provocative, and controversial, but it’s quite another for the state’s only major daily newspaper to regularly feature a columnist who seems to regularly issue clarion calls to racism.

rsdrake@nwark.com

 

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