Are liberals less racist and/or more knowledgeable about racism than others? Donny Deutsch evidently thinks so. On MSNBC this afternoon, Deutsch asked a black academic to give him an example of racism he'd encountered because "as liberal as I am, I can't understand because I've never walked in your shoes."
Prof. James Peterson of Bucknell was a guest in MSNBC's 4 PM EDT hour, during which Deutsch served as sidekick/kibitzer to host Tamron Hall. Peterson was in to comment on this evening's impending beer fest among Pres. Obama, Sgt. Crowley and Prof. Gates.
DONNY DEUTSCH: Let's do a little, one of these discussions right now between you and I [sic]. We've never met. You're an African-American man; I'm a white man. Give me an incident that's happened in your life that, as liberal as I am, I can't understand because I've never walked in your shoes.
Prof. Peterson described an incident from grad school in which someone scrawled the n-word on his study cubicle, and how that upset him during his upcoming exams and the year that followed.
I suppose it's refreshing to have an MSNBC personality cop to being a big-tme liberal. But his implicit suggestion that liberals are inherently more tolerant than others is so much malarkey, IMHO.
