If they can get past Rupert Murdoch’s lovely parting gift of $40 million, a lot of people will revel in the denouement of Roger Ailes’ Fox News career. But just because the hens at Fox might be safer from some predators, it’s a limited victory. Sexual harassment remains a seemingly intractable problem in the U.S. workplace because a lot of fully civilized people don’t know what it is….
Until I told him, he hadn’t heard that Fox had dumped Ailes after investigating harassment allegations by Gretchen Carlson and apparently finding that she wasn’t singing solo. Alluding to the generally blond, youthful good looks of the women he supposedly harassed, my friend commented, “Why would he ever think women like that would be attracted to him?”
I was stunned. How could someone so smart be so ignorant? Was his disconnect just a momentary departure from humanity? Could someone I know so well be a misogynist?
Nah. Some white people just don’t get that virtually all black people, at some time in their lives, have been treated differently just because they aren’t white and, more important, that even if that unfairness was unconscious, it’s still racist. Reflexive treatment based on someone’s immutable traits is insidious, and it won’t stop until empathy is a default response to human pain.
Trying to follow Ellen Alperstein’s argument means makes my head hurt, but as for her anti-discrimination point — do you approach pitbulls the same way you approach cockerspaniels? Do approach dobermans the same way you approach pomeranians?
Human breeds are different just as dog breeds are different. I suspect that Ellen Alperstein is more concerned about her personal safety in black and latino parts of town as compared to the white areas of Beverly Hills and Bel Air.
