Should Pat McCrory Apologize? »
There are times - which occur all too frequently - that it seems like perhaps everyone ought to just take a really deep breath and relax a bit. The latest example of this is our illustrious leader Pat McCrory, who has been catching a huge amount of flak for the comments he made last week about the Fourth of July festivities uptown.
On July 5th, McCrory wrote in a letter to the city manager that they should be congratulated for their efforts in containing things (you may recall that prior years have not gone so smoothly). This, despite the fact that 169 people were arrested uptown. At least there wasn't a riot, right? Anyway, McCrory also made the unfortunate choice of saying that (quote) "too many of our youth, primarily African American, are imitating and/or participating in a gangster type of dress, attitude, behavior and action." Some people, including the NAACP, quickly demanded an apology. To throw fuel on the fire, McCrory insisted that he wouldn't.
And why should he? There are plenty of things that people say all the time that offend people. Just because he's in a position of authority shouldn't mean anything - and if your kids are dressing up like gangsters, why should Mister Mayor say anything about it? As you may be able to tell, I really don't care if he apologies or not, because I don't think that he has any apologies to make.
Let's examine what he said: "Too many of our youth". Frankly, even a small handful of youth can be too many - there's no number attached to this statement, so there's no need to apologize yet.
"Primarily African American". This is definitely a gray area. Used alone, it could say that all those African American youth are trouble-makers. But in conjunction with that first part, it says that the portion he's talking about - be it 5, 50 or 100 - is largely composed of African American youth, and from what I've seen, I agree. After all, you'll see a few white kids who want to be Eminem
The rest just describes what the youth are doing, and how they go about doing it - "Are imitating and/or participating in a gangster type of dress, attitude, behavior and action." I don't think anyone would have any problems with any of those words, so where does the real problem lie?
I think that most anyone would agree that the problem is Pat "Whitebread" McCrory making a statement that, on the surface, seems to target African American youth, is getting a certain segment up in arms. But if you actually dissect it, it does no such thing - sure, it could be directed at every African American youth in Charlotte, or it could be directed at a tiny subset of them. Before getting your panties in a wad, how about just figuring out exactly what is being said?
Am I off-base here, or am I just as white as McCrory? That's a somewhat rhetorical question, and as I've mentioned before, I can be anal about words. So I'd like to know. Really.
Update: Though he has met with Charlotte NAACP leaders, Pat McCrory hasn't apologized to this point. It all just faded away, so far as I can tell. I did go on vacation for a bit, though, so I may have missed something. Did anyone else see anything happen?
