Alex Wong: Fighting racism, McCarthy style

Growing up in predominantly-white Silver Spring, Md., Ben Stein expected that certain things would be said to him. As a Jew attending a school that had a Jewish quota and where it wasn't unusual to find the word "nigger" in the lesson plan, the young Stein wasn't much surprised at the anti-Semitic slurs thrown at him throughout his childhood.

Things hadn't much changed when he left Silver Spring to attend college and law school and neither did Stein's expectations. Walking back and forth on the Choptank Bridge in Biloxi, Miss., protesting segregation, Stein was spit on repeatedly by angry white men. He held a picket sign. They held hunting rifles.

Some people also didn't take too kindly to Stein's fundraising efforts for the New Haven Black Panther Party back in 1968 or his pro bono work as a poverty lawyer for predominantly minority communities. Some people just didn't like a white man -- a Jew -- crossing such boundaries. But, again, Stein didn't expect anything less.

Those expectations stayed with him when he entered politics. President Nixon appointed him the special assistant for minority affairs. That meant that this fresh-faced 28-year-old had to walk into city halls and GOP meetings across the nation and trumpet the virtues of something called affirmative action. It wasn't rare that politicians and union heads called the young man a "nigger lover." His job left him disappointed at times. But it never left him surprised.

But what surprises Stein -- and what should appall anyone who knows of his past -- is that he is being persecuted and torn down by those on this campus who claim to be on the side of equality and on the forefront of our fight against racism.

Based on suspect quotes that showed up in a college newspaper in Chicago after Stein spoke there -- quotes that have been refuted by Stein, and recharacterized by the newspaper -- Penn activists have begun a initiative against Stein, labeling him a "racist extremist."

This knee-jerk reaction from Penn's "socially conscious" set is embarrassing and wrong. This is a man who has suffered for civil rights. This is a man who produced an award-winning television movie, Murder in Mississippi, about the deaths of civil rights workers in the South. This is a man who does not deserve these unsubstantiated attacks.

But sadly, this is not an isolated incident.

Rather, it is indicative of a disturbing trend in the modern day civil rights movement. Instead of carrying on the fight against real racism, instead of doing the hard work of rooting out institutional and legislative discrimination, civil rights advocates have transformed their movement into a McCarthy-esque witch hunt for closet racists.

With our society's racial mores drastically changed since the 1960s, the fastest way to ruin a celebrity -- and to score easy political points -- is to call that person a racist, rally around that allegation and ignore all evidence to the contrary.

This past spring, it happened to David Broder, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist. Broder for decades has written in favor of civil rights and taken many politicians to task for discriminatory legislation.

But despite his record, Asian-American communities were calling for his head. Speaking during the U.S. spy plane incident and obviously referring to the Chinese government, Broder stated on NBC's Meet the Press that "the Chinese are not nice people." But this quote was taken out of context and bandied about as evidence of Broder's closet racism.

The same thing happened to the elder George Bush. In 1988, the then-vice president was introducing his half-Mexican grandchildren to President Ronald Reagan. A microphone nearby picked up the vice president referring to the kids endearingly as his "little brown ones."

The quote sent the Hispanic community into a frenzy, saying it was indicative of Bush's deeply-embedded prejudices. This was despite the facts that this man has welcomed Hispanics into his own family and that, amidst the furor, no one actually explained why the term "little brown ones," while perhaps not in good taste, was racist.

This type of racial activism -- if you can call it that -- is shameful in two regards. Not only does it wrongfully smear upstanding citizens on the flimsiest of evidence, but it draws valuable attention and energy away from the real issues that afflict minorities today.

The effort activists are using to sabotage the reputations of celebrities should be used to equalize disproportionate sentencing laws for crack and powder cocaine. The time and money these activists spend on inflating their self-righteous egos should be spent on helping poverty-stricken minority communities.

But I doubt the witch hunts will stop. Defaming a celebrity is much easier and grabs so much more attention than lobbying grunt work.

But the fact is that fighting discrimination is about grunt work. It's about commitment and it's about tangible results. Or at least -- as Ben Stein knows -- it used to be.

Alex Wong is a senior English major from Wyckoff, N.J.

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