Moving Past Skin-Deep Culture

Although Matt Damon's hosting Cultural Rhythms is fortunately no longer the hot protest ticket du jour, the engines of racialism that powered this sad hoopla still continue at full throttle. These attitudes are disheartening commentary on the state of our interracial relations. Working through our less than hospitable reception of Damon, then, may be an opportunity to get us back on track.

What, then, was the precise objection to having an extremely successful Harvard dropout emcee an extremely popular Harvard event? Was it that he didn't have the requisite knowledge of and appreciation for the rich explosions of culture over which he presided? That can't be right because one doubts that Jennifer Lopez or Antonio Banderas--other emcee possibilities considered--knew much more than he did about the minutae of Vietnamese cuisine or the intricacies of traditional African dance.

Could it just be that Damon wasn't privy to the "minority experience?" That can't be the answer either: Lopez, Banderas, and last year's emcee Will Smith all receive stratospheric paychecks. To hold them as monuments to the "minority experience" is to reduce an already vague term to a totally meaningless one. Granted, they might have endured difficult childhood experiences or have overcome significant discrimination before they achieved their current success. Maybe Matt Damon has as well--I simply don't know, but I doubt those who had a serious problem with him as emcee bothered to check.

No, the real problem with this year's Cultural Rhythms emcee was that he didn't have enough melanin in his skin. He was white. Its okay to discriminate against or make disparaging remarks about his race because he already has "power" in society--the same goes for all "European Americans." Next time you're watching a basketball game and a white guy misses, promptly purse your lips and deliver up a disdainful "Pshh! White boy "According to the current "intellectual" understanding of race, you're enlightened if you do so.

Our reaction to Damon, and the fad of self-exalting anti-whiteness that enabled it, is legitimated by policies that discriminate on the basis of race. I do not intend to imply that affirmative action caused the emcee buzz. But laws inevitably induce dispositions in the citizenry. Dispositions create a certain moral milieu, and that moral milieu gives rise to action. If, as a University and as a country, we wish to inculcate dispositions of racial harmony and toleration, then we should start by rejecting today's implicit then we should start by rejecting the today's civil rights ferment and re-embrace the Enlightenment ideals of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s civil rights movement. Who knows? We might even get a few more good actors coming our way.