Happy Warrior

IN the mood for a “national conversation about race”? Me neither. America has many delightful attributes, but the ability to discuss race honestly is not one of them. Instead, it has an ongoing pseudo-discussion of race. You know the sort of thing: A District of Columbia official gets fired for using the word “niggardly” in a budget meeting; Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee complains about the racist nomenclature of hurricanes.

The latter was back in 2003, when Congresswoman Jackson Lee argued that blacks are being discriminated against because hardly any devastatingly destructive meteorological phenomena are given African-American names. The black community can’t relate to some white-bread wind like Hurricane Andrew. Why are there never any Hurricane Leroys? It’s deeply racist and insulting to imply that only forces of nature with effete WASPy appellations are capable of inflicting billions of dollars of coastal damage.

IN the mood for a “national conversation about race”? Me neither. America has many delightful attributes, but the ability to discuss race honestly is not one of them. Instead, it has an ongoing pseudo-discussion of race. You know the sort of thing: A District of Columbia official gets fired for using the word “niggardly” in a budget meeting; Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee complains about the racist nomenclature of hurricanes.

The latter was back in 2003, when Congresswoman Jackson Lee argued that blacks are being discriminated against because hardly any devastatingly destructive meteorological phenomena are given African-American names. The black community can’t relate to some white-bread wind like Hurricane Andrew. Why are there never any Hurricane Leroys? It’s deeply racist and insulting to imply that only forces of nature with effete WASPy appellations are capable of inflicting billions of dollars of coastal damage.