Page 320 - The Social Animal

302 The Social Animal

episode some months later, the comedian Michael Richards—known
to most as Kramer, from the hit TV series Seinfeld—had what many
described as a meltdown on stage after being heckled by an African
American man in the audience. During a shouting match that was
videotaped and posted on the Internet, Richards frequently called the
heckler a “nigger.”The story was widely publicized, and Richards, like
Allen, was denounced and ridiculed in the media. Soon after, a drawn
and beaten-looking Richards appeared on national television to apol-
ogize to America; the next day, seeking “racial healing,” he met with
black leaders Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson; the next, he sought psy-
chological counseling to confront his “inner demons.”
Without question, significant changes have taken place in
American society in the last few decades. Legislation forbidding
discrimination has opened the door of opportunity for women and
minorities, giving them greater access to higher education, as well
as to prestigious professions like law and medicine—and politics.
There is no doubt that our society is much less prejudiced against
women and minorities than it was some 40 or 50 years ago. On sur-
vey after survey, the percentages of people willing to admit that they
hold prejudices toward women, blacks, gay men, lesbians, and other
2
minorities have been dropping sharply. To mention just one indi-
cator of this trend, in 1963 almost 80 percent of our white citizens
said they would move out of their own neighborhood if African
Americans began moving in. But by 1997, that figure had declined
to about 20 percent.
And yet, although hate crimes and other overt expressions of
prejudice tend to be less frequent and flagrant than they used to be,
prejudice lingers in a number of forms, exacting a heavy toll on its
victims. In Los Angeles in 2004, a black firefighter named Tennie
Pierce was served dog food in his spaghetti by fellow firefighters, in-
cluding his station captain, who laughed as Pierce ate it. For the next
year, Pierce said, he was subjected to “verbal slurs, insults [and]
derogatory remarks,” including taunting by other firefighters who
barked like dogs and asked him how dog food tasted. Finally, Pierce
filed a lawsuit alleging racial harassment. The firefighters said it was
“only a prank”; Pierce felt the “prank” was specifically intended to hu-
miliate and dehumanize him, and that the department had a long
history of savagely harassing African American and female firefight-
ers to get them to quit. Pierce won the lawsuit.