Stupidity

There are a couple of good points to come out of this incident.

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- State Education Secretary Richard Riordan jokingly told a child her name, Isis, meant "stupid dirty girl," prompting the head of the California NAACP on Thursday to call for his resignation.

The first, as has been commented on at QandO and I Love Jet Noise (definitely need to start visiting that blog regularly), is that the NAACP backed away from their protest when it was disclosed that the girl in question, Isis D'Luciano, is a blond, white girl. No sense making a fuss when there's no political gain to be had for your cause.

Democratic state Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally, who had scheduled a protest by civil rights organizations, canceled the demonstration after an apparent mix-up over the girl's racial background.

...

Dymally did not return telephone calls. His office issued a statement Wednesday calling Riordan's remarks to the girl "outrageous and irresponsible," then issued another statement Thursday saying, "To err is human; to forgive is divine."

If she really had been black, they would have cried havoc and let slip the lawyers of war. In Dymally's case, it appears that forgiveness is only divine when he's the one being forgiven.

The thing is, even if the girl had been black, there would have been no way to prove that racism was the cause of the comment. Rather, the cause was either stupidity, or the inability to think through his comment before he made it. In either case, one should wonder what he's doing in the top spot in California's vast educational bureaucracy.

The other point I wanted to point out comes from the comments made by the girl's mother:

The girl's mother, Trinity Lila of Goleta, said her daughter was fine, and she considered the issue over.

"Obviously it hurt her feelings, but she didn't take it personally. She knew he was wrong and she let it go," Lila said. "I'm not going to sue them for therapy bills."

"He's already apologized repeatedly," Lila added. Although Riordan's office has tried to contact her, "I don't see what else is to be done."

Note that she didn't immediately run to her lawyer. Instead, she just dealt with it and is putting it behind her, as is her daughter. They understand the guy's only human, he made a mistake, he's apologized for it, and that's that. If only more people were like that. Well, maybe they are and you just don't hear about them.