ON BEING BLACK WHILE PRACTICING WHITE PRIVILEGE

I've come to the conclusion that the word that best describes "white privilege" is "obliviousness."

White privilege is the ability to walk around oblivious to the fact that you are white because you're only around other white people 97% of the time seeing white images 98% of the time which is impossible for most of rest of us.  When you don't get to feel like a racial-other sometimes, you don't get to feel your race. You feel "normal" instead and like white is not a social construct as real as gendered behavior with very real social consequences like poverty, like stereotypes that kill you, or like stereotypes that your group uses to kill others, etc.  

The best part of white privilege is being oblivious to the fact that you can just walk around being you and never stop to think about your surroundings and how you are being judged just by walking around being you.

White people do not think of themselves as living in segregated neighborhoods, oblivious as they are of the fact that only 1 or 2 out of every 100 families is something other than white in their neighborhoods. So they are also oblivious to the fact that I might not want to water the plants in their home while they are on vacation, even though they don't live that far away, because I don't want to be shot on my way into the house or on my way out because their white neighbors know I don't belong there with my black self.

"White privilege" is the ability to be oblivious to the benefits of being treated like a normal person just because you are white.


So I decided to see what it's like to be white in regards to the Dallas Shootings. I decided to just watch the headlines go by and not investigate much after the initial shooting.  That means I looked at the television or heard stories on the radio said "tsk-tsk" to myself and thought "that's a pity about their families"

I acknowledged that the shooting of the Dallas Police Officers was bad. But I did not spend one second listening to President Obama talk about how terrible the shooting was. I did not read one article about one officer. I don't know if they were in their 20s or in their 50s. I don't know if the cops killed were single, married, or bigamists. I don't know if they had kids, were planning to have kids, or childless. I don't even know if the funerals have taken place yet. I don't know one of their names.

Therefore, I don't have any nagging feelings about how stressed the families of the dead are. The families of the dead are nothing more than abstract concepts to me, not real people. And, I don't have to care about abstract concepts.

So is this feeling of oh-well-violence-happens the way the white privileged person feels when it bypasses and overlooks racism to the point that he or she doesn't bother to notice the pattern in the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Rekia Boyd, Laquan McDonald, Miriam Carey, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Akai Gurley, Tarika Wilson, Walter Scott, Natasha McKenna, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Mike Brown, Alesia Thomas, Yvette Smith, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile.

I know it takes an effort to seek out your own privilege, to find the benefits you receive in life just by belonging to a certain group.  I mean, why would you investigate what you perceive as "normal?"

And oppressed groups use their oppression to refuse to look into their privileged positions. I observe this in my own groups all the time.

• White feminists don't look for their white privilege because they know as women they are oppressed. 
• Black men don't look for male privilege because they know as black people they are oppressed. 
• White gay male people --overtly racist as hell I've discovered and sexist too--  don't investigate their white privilege or their male privilege because they are oppressed for being gay. 
• Black women don't look for Christian privilege because they are oppressed as black people and oppressed as women. 
• White men don't look for their white privilege, their male privilege, or their Christian privilege because every political and non-political decision was made among them for centuries and now they can't even call the shots as to who will be president.
  

Even though I could only practice a small section of white privilege, I must say I can see its benefits. Life feels a lot more peaceful when you are only looking at one side of a problem, your own side. The thing I can't make-shift experience is the belief that there is only one side, the white side that you don't acknowledge as being "the white side" because you kinda-sorta don't believe race exists anyway

--because race doesn't really exist for YOU personally
--because you don't experience being a racial-other by being surrounded by people not-white
--because you don't have close relationships with people of other races where you'd go their home and become aware of differences you'd have to RESPECT

While I tried to experience white privilege by choosing to be oblivious, I think what I really did was refuse to engage what W.E.B. DuBois calls my double consciousness as a black person.  I didn't engage the part of my brain that is on the outside of blackness looking in. I only had awareness of black people's feelings from the inside, I only had awareness of being overwhelmed by the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. By choosing to be oblivious, I did not have to think about how white people looking at Dallas felt about Black Lives Matter, how white people probably feel unfairly targeted since they are pretty much OBLIVIOUS to the patterns of black deaths at the hands of police.


Whatever my little experiment was or was not, being oblivious felt better than being woke.

So I guess my next question is this: 

How do we make obliviousness more painful than being woke for the white privileged?

I think maybe Donald Trump may be part of the answer. He is causing a lot of psychological pain for white people, but not enough. A lot of white people are still able to make themselves believe, SOMEHOW, that Donald Trump just sprang up out of the ground without any contribution from the white population at large.

I think it's true that some of racism can be solved by radical love, as Sadie Smith said in an interview once. I believe this. I've seen this. I've seen white women, white mothers wake up to racism when they start noticing the obvious about how black people are treated. You have to love to care to desire to look. But a white mother loving her children doesn't always work. Some white mothers of black children are more dedicated to protecting their whiteness and the privilege and their rosy cheeked world view than they are their children, SOMETIMES with the encouragement of a black spouse that married her for the status of her white skin more than love.  But I think radical pain is the other solution, maybe the bigger part of the solution.

How do we make obliviousness radically more painful than being woke for the white privileged?

This is the question we must work on. Donald Trump is providing an ugly mirror and psychological pain for white people-- that they are still running from. I think the other part of the pain comes from hitting white Americans in their pocket at every opportunity. That's the pain that counts in this country. We just have to figure out a variety of ways to do it.

As far as getting white cops and white-wanna-bes who are cops off us, I really think making sure that police union goes broke trying to pay off victim's families is the first place we should go. Someone suggested police having to have liability to "practice" police work. That's a good idea. That's the method through which you can break the police union which negotiates that the city pay victim's families instead of the police union itself. Making the police union pay for liability insurance that will go through the roof the more they screw up will break the police union and remove their ability to hire the lawyer that gets a police murderer off.

We need to find ways to follow the money and get it out of the racists pockets. 

  

INVISIBLE WHITE PRIVILEGE VS MAKING WHITENESS VISIBLE

ON THE HISTORY OF
THE CONCEPT OF
"WHITE PRIVILEGE" 



While working for equality between men and women, PEGGY McINTOSH, a white woman, came to see that men were

willing to openly admit that women are disadvantaged in society
(women making 69 cents to every man's dollar)

but were unwilling to admit that men were advantaged compared to women in society
(men making a dollar when women are only making 69 cents)


You may have noticed that the same thing was said twice, using different words.  "Women are disadvantaged" and "men have advantages" (privilege) ought to mean the same thing to people who all those who tell themselves that they believe in equality.

But men only object to the latter - "men have advantages"

Peggy McIntosh realized how very important this irrational stance was.

"[Men would] say they will work to improve women's status, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can't or won't support the idea of lessening men's privilege. Denials which amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages which men gain from women's disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened or ended." If a person admits that someone else is disadvantaged, it is like they are only admitting that something unfair is being done to women by some anonymous *they*.  But if you say I belong to a group that has advantages, that means I have more than my fair share of something, that means I may have to give up something in order for equality to arrive.  Pretend we live in a world where men actually make $1.00 an hour while women make .69 cents an hour.  If we were to make wages equal between men and women in this fictional world, by waving a magic wand in a single moment, then men and women would both make .85 cents an hour.  The reason men will admit disadvantage to women but not the advantages of being male is because m en have no intention of giving up anything (.15 cents an hour) or saying they don't deserve exactly what they've gotten. They have no intention of admitting they are unfairly getting promotions, etc simply because they have a penis.   For you to acknowledge an advantage rather than another's disadvantage is to admit that you have things that don't belong to you. This would mean that everything you bought with that extra .15 cents an hour (1.00 - 0.85)  is essentially stolen . In real world dollars, if a man earned $100,000 year when he only should have made $85,000 a year -- everything he bought with that extra $15,000 a year is stolen.  Whiteness functions in the same way. White people will admit disadvantage of race but will become fuzzy headed when talking about their own advantages.  And McIntosh began to realize this, after she was confronted by a woman of color.

 This belief is common and why many white people cannot separate "racism" from "hate-ism"
But white supremacy and white racism work just fine with or without hate. 

McIntosh began to realize that she did not like to see racism as systemic but individual, just as men had done with sexism, misogyny. She, like many white people, would admit black people are disadvantaged but not that white people have advantages or "privilege" 

* * * * *

Based on an interview in "Mirrors Of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible" McIntosh said a black or brown woman asked her why she had stocked some library she was in charge of with all white female/ white feminist books.  As I recall, McIntosh denied it at first. But then she asked herself if she had indeed done this. McIntosh said she prayed and asked God to show her what benefits she had as a white person.

She wound up constructing a list, wrote it over several days, even waking up in the middle of the night to write things down and eventually turned it into an academic article or paper in 1989, called some variation of  "WHITE PRIVILEGE: UNPACKING THE INVISIBLE KNAPSACK

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
2. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
3. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
5. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
6. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization" I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
7. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
8. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
9. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods that fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can cut my hair.
10. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
11. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.
12. I can swear, or dress in second-hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.
13. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
14. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
15. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
16. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
17. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
18. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to "the person in chargw" I will be facing a person of my race.
19. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race
20. I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children's magazines featuring people of my race.
21. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.
22. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of race.
23. I can choose public accommodations without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.
24. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.
25. If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.
26. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more less match my skin.

http://nationalseedproject.org/white-privilege-unpacking-the-invisible-knapsack

A Clip From: MIRRORS OF PRIVILEGE: MAKING WHITENESS VISIBLE

YOUNG, JILTED, AND WHITE

 “Scott Roof, who identified himself as the suspect’s cousin, told The Intercept that “Dylann was normal until he started listening to that white power music stuff.”

He claims that “he kind of went over the edge when a girl he liked starting dating a black guy two years back.” He added, “Dylann liked her … The black guy got her”

fromWHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE CHARLESTON GUNMAN, 

NY MAG JUNE 2016 

FEELING REBLOGGY 

Well duh.

This is for the [mostly white] people who say “it starts with teaching our kids…” in conversations about systemic racism. And for those who retort “well, I have a more hopeful view for the future” when I point out how entrenched and embedded white supremacy is.

This is your kid. This is the future.

I don’t know where you people are getting this hope and optimism from, but coming from a black “millennial” who grew up in fully integrated schools and has a rainbow coalition of friends and acquaintances, your vision is blurred. I understand why. You see that your kids have black and brown friends and seem to get along well. There’s an interracial couple living next door. Social interactions look to be on an upswing. And from your suburban perch, things look pretty sweet. But you don’t see the countless microaggressions your son’s little football player friends endure. You don’t notice the husband neighbor’s family never visits, because the wife gets anxious when they’re around. Those things are easier to overlook.

Because things have gotten better… on a base level. I guess black people have more access, financial ability and rights on paper than we did 40 years ago. Offices are a little more colorful. Brown folk are much more visible in the workplace, in popular culture, in magazines, on TV. And there lies the problem.

Where you see a generation of kids raised in a melting pot, I see a generation of kids experiencing a culture shock. Because most white people don’t recognize or admit and certainly don’t talk about privilege overtly. But you practice it. And you still raise your children in it. So these kids start approaching adulthood and find the perks they were promised ain’t as easy to grab as they were for their parents... 

~ KINKY THOUGHT

READ MORE ON THE PATH FROM WHITE PRIVILEGE TO WHITE RACISMhttp://www.kinkythought.com/2015/06/young-jilted-and-white/

SHARAPOVA's WHITE PRIVILEGE DRAWS CLEAR LINES

BETWEEN THE HAVES AND HAVE NOTS

OF WHITE PRIVILEGE

DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT 

MARIA SHARAPOVA 

IS/WAS 

THE HIGHEST PAID FEMALE ATHLETE 

BASED ON LOOKING LIKE 

AN ALL AMERICAN GIRL 

WHEN SHE'S ACTUALLY RUSSIAN?

SHARAPOVA IS/WAS MAKING
MILLIONS OF DOLLARS MORE IN ENDORSEMENTS
THAN
SERENA WILLIAMS

WHO STOMPS HER ON THE TENNIS COURT ROUTINELY,

EVEN THOUGH SERENA'S RECORD 

IS PRETTY MUCH TWICE AS GOOD 

AS SHARAPOVA'S

Do you also understand how differently this conversation would be going if Serena had been caught playing dirty instead of Sharapova. Can you imagine calls for "the benefit of the doubt?" 

What I can imagine is how hard and far Serena would be dragged if she came up hot for a performance enhancing drug THEN had the audacity to lie about needing it for treatment, when treatment with the meldonium, the performance enhancing drug in question, is supposed to be weeks in duration, not a full decade. 
But I don't really have to imagine what would happen to a black woman in Sharapova's circumstances. It's already happened to Marion Jones

The two links below appear to be articles on Maria Sharapova and Marion Jones, respectively, that are written by the same white male author. While this man is not in Maria Sharapova's corner any more than he's in Marion Jone's, the amount of viciousness leveled at Jones seems quite different to me.

"NOTHING COURAGEOUS ABOUT SHARAPOVA COMING CLEAN"

THE MEAN-SPIRITED DAHLBERG QUOTE FOUND IN ARTICLE 

"Yes, she may have won her 35 singles titles - five of them in Grand Slam events - even without the drug. She may not have needed meldonium to become such a star that Forbes estimated her endorsement income at $23 million for last year alone.

She might have found some way to dig down deep in the final games of a match when exhausted without having to use a drug that helps her keep playing.

But how are we to know what was real and what was aided? How will the players she beat along the way ever know if they were beaten fair and square?"

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/mar/10/column-nothing-courageous-about-sharapova-coming-c/

MARION JONES EFFORTS TO REHAB IMAGE  

THE MEAN-SPIRITED DAHLBERG QUOTE FOUND IN ARTICLE

"It's the oldest trick in the image rehabilitation handbook. The only surprise was Jones waited nearly two whole months after getting out of prison to see if she could pull it off. It would have worked even better had Jones been able to get a day pass and appear with Oprah while still in her prison uniform.

I guess we're supposed to feel sorry for Jones, if only because Oprah apparently does. I guess we're supposed to forget the scam that she pulled for so long because, hey, she has children and really seems to care a lot about them. 

Cool in her prime, we now find out that Jones also has feelings. Lots of them, judging from the amount of tears flowing during the show."

 http://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/Commentary-Marion-Jones-efforts-to-rehab-image-3187383.php


Is it just me? Or is there quite a difference in the levels of viciousness between the two articles -- written by the same person?

Jones went to jail for six months for lying during the investigation. Sharapova has not lied about taking the drug itself but many suspect she's obviously lied about why she was taking this performance enhancing drug as it appears one is only supposed to take meldonium for 6 weeks max, and not 10 years running.

Sharapova clearly hid what she should have know to be a performance enhancing drug. This drug was reportedly used on "soviet super soldiers" to enhance their endurance too. Banned list or no banned list it appears she was using a drug to get over. And she did get over on several people she beat-- just not Serena Williams. Serena trounced her 18 times anyway.

So will anybody even call for Sharapova to go to jail? She took money out of the pockets of everyone she beat, didn't she?

And how is it the moral outrage over what Sharapova has done is mostly missing? I've seen articles on giving her the benefit of the doubt. I've seen articles on "everybody's doing it" anyway. But I haven't seen any real outrage about her INTENTION to cheat, not like the outrage there was when a black little league team from Chicago, Jackie Robinson West, got one or some of their players from a town outside their district.


 These's little boys were stripped of their title. The accusation was that the adults sought superstar players outside the designated geographic zone allowed in order to enhance the team. However, Little League Officials knew where the little boys lived long before the championship game took place and they had a deadline by which they should have challenged the residency. But Little League Officials didn't do it. 

"The lawsuit filed by the families of JRW players claims team officials and Little League concealed the residency information to benefit from attention the team was getting. The lawsuit also claims that ESPN broadcaster Stephen A. Smith defamed players' parents by implying they were involved in the alleged fraud."  http://abc7chicago.com/sports/jrw-parents-seeking-reinstatement-of-little-league-title/1200924/ 

The thing I see that all these boys have in common is that they are a black, making them a black team playing under a black all-stars name, Jackie Robinson.  If I was a black parent in Chicago right now, I'd want my baby boy playing on that team rather than a 90% white team where he might feel like an outsider.  It's freaking little league. 

But when you're black? All the rules matter. The teeny tiny rules matter. There's no benefit of the doubt. There's no honest mistake. There's no human weakness to be considered. There's no "Monica was afraid when they started asking her about steroid use." There's only put Monica in jail for lying. There's drag Monica for being a disgrace. There's take away medals and trophies and vacating wins for black women and little black boys. 

So somebody please tell me why there's  not the slightest risk of Sharapova going to jail. And what is Sharapova going to lose other than a few endorsements (Nike and  few others) And will Sharapova lose ENOUGH endorsements that America's non-American Russian sweetheart disappears into a disgraceful oblivion so that Serena Williams, America's real sweetheart, becomes the highest paid athlete like should have been all along? 

Serena has beaten Sharapova 18 times

Please read: 
"The Benefit of the Doubt: A Case Study On White Privilege

http://mediadiversified.org/2016/03/08/the-benefit-of-the-doubt-a-case-study-on-white-privilege/ 

WATCHING VANILLA ISIS IN OREGON WHILE REMEMBERING CHOCOLATE MOVE IN PHILLY

Anybody thinking about the 1985 police bombing of M.O.V.E. in Philadelphia just about now?




If not you don't remember, please read more:

"After my stories last week on the 30th anniversary of the MOVE siege in West Philadelphia in 1985, in which Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on a [black] residential neighborhood, leaving 11 dead — including five children — we were surprised by how many people told us they'd never heard of the bombing."

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/05/18/407665820/why-did-we-forget-the-move-bombing

SPENDING LIGHT PRIVILEGE WISELY

Dr. Joy DeGruy  (author of "Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome")

BIG LESSON
IN A SHORT STORY
OF AN ENCOUNTER AT A STORE
WITH HER 10 YR OLD

Dr. Joy DeGruy is a nationally and internationally renowned
researcher, educator, author and presenter. She is an ambassador for
healing and a voice for those who’ve struggled in search of the past,
and continue to struggle through the present. Dr. Joy is the acclaimed
author of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome —America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: The Study Guide , with a second book in the works , Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome Part 2: Be The Healing.




Dr. Joy is a natural storyteller which makes her a natural teacher

More of her biography on the next page

THE TALK: To Have Or Not To Have, That Is NOT The Question

JULY 13 2013

"I was chatting just yesterday about the necessity of educating my 11-year old around race matters in an era that claims to be post-racial and among a generation indifferent to racial complexities. I was wondering whether sharing my viewpoint would unduly harm her sanguine perspective and dampen any hopes that things indeed had changed.

I guess my face has been rinsed with one final splash of cold water. She and I will need to sit and talk about the realities of race. I'll be the thief who steals from her pocket the innocence of childhood. Maybe, if we're lucky, she'll live to see what I won't see, the realized dream of a post-racial America, in her children or perhaps even her grands.

Or, just maybe and even more likely, she'll be having this same talk with her young ones too." - Jonathan C.

July 13, 2013

I still remember my parents having THE TALK with me when I was a kid. We had just moved to New York City when I was in 1st grade.

Prior to that I'd gone to kindergarten a mixed race school on a military base in Alaska. As the military had already been integrated for X years. the white people had adjusted (somewhat?). Therefore there had been no reason to give me THE TALK.

I had an impersonal section of THE TALK when we moved to segregated Texas. My parents had to explain to me why all the kids at my school were black. I say "impersonal" because we were living in a black neighborhood and I was going to a black school and the white people that hated ALL blacks were not going to be there at my school.

My parents didn't have to have THE TALK in its entirety until we moved to New York City. I was still in first grade. I can't remember the words actually said. I just have a general recollection of being given the news that I would be going to a predominantly white school and that it wasn't going to be like Alaska. (Bussing had recently started) I was told that the white kids there weren't used to black people. I was told that they might fear me and act like they hate me because of my skin color. I was told that I shouldn't really be afraid because the kids wouldn't REALLY know what they were saying. They would just be repeating what their ignorant parents said.

"Ignorant" was a big word associated with "racism" in our house. I remember vaguely being told what to do if one of my teachers was to verbally attack me in some way. I was told to behave politely and come home and tell my father. He would take care of it.

I DO remember my reaction to THE TALK. I got the runs immediately. I was scared I was ill most of the weekend. Most of it....but I started to relax because I knew I wouldn't be forced to go to school if I was sick. I confirmed this verbally at least once. I relaxed. And relaxing was my undoing (insert bitter laughter here) I was fine come Monday morning.

At P.S. 209 everything was arranged by height. I was tall, so I wound up in the back of the line and in the back of classroom more often than not. Even if I hadn't been tall, I started at P.S. 209 in the middle of the school year, so I suppose I would have wound up in the very back desk behind Stacy and Judy anyway.

In 1970 Stacy had long brown wavy hair to the middle of her back. Judy had long thin blond hair to the middle of her back. And that's pretty much all I saw of them for the remainder of the year. They never said hello to me. Ever. They didn't talk to me at all. They made sure their hands didn't touch mine when they had to pass back papers. They made sure their mouths were pursed in distaste every time they had to do so, but I rarely ever saw their faces at all.

My mother said I used to come home from school chattering at 100 miles an hour from the second I hit the door. She said she didn't realize that it was because I hadn't spoken to anyone all day...not until much, much later. I don't know if she knows to this day that those white girls were the reason I was so very, very silent and "well behaved."

That all took place in 1970. And now, in 2013, Jonathan's post about having to tell his daughter the very same things just made me burst into tears



 * * * * * * * * * * *
On July 13, 2013 we heard the Trayvon Martin Verdict.

On February 24, 2015, the Department of Justice decided they didn't have enough evidence for a federal hate crime prosecution.

To talk or not to talk about racism is not the question when you have dark-skinned child. The only question is how old can you let your child get? How long can you wait and still get there before another child or teacher says or does something...hateful or ignorant enough to be mistaken for hate? When is the question.  

White Racial Apology #100,816,024 Deadline's "Unfortunate" Headline -

"Pilots 2015:The Year of  Ethnic Castings -
   About Time or Too Much of Good Thing?"

Cutesy but Serious Format - Bart & Fleming, the apologizers,  must have these little discussions online much like Siskel and Ebert used to quasi-competitively review movies on television.

This would be Mistake Number 1
Two thumbs down

The Apology is just one thing in a list of things to discuss

Here we have Mistake Number 2
"nothing special happening here" conveyed instantly

The apology consisted of apologizing for specific word  choices and word arrangement while never, Ever, EVER EVAH discussing what those words ("Pilots 2015: The Year of Ethnic Castings About Time or Too Much of Good Thing?") meant collectively... ala the Levi Petty Pettit apology (#100,816,019). As long as they cyber-droned on, they only discussed how things sounded
 

This isn't just mistake number 3, 
this is mistakes numbers 1 through 100,816,021

How is it everybody above the age of 12 understands that beliefs are connected to thoughts are connected to the words that come out of your mouth...until race is the subject.   When race enters the picture, white fragility, being what it is, white folk and Bobby Jindal seem to suffer this pinpoint amnesia and forget there is a link between belief, thought, and words (and sometimes actions too). Yes, sometimes you say "math" when you meant to say "bath."  But really cannot explain away an entire sentence or paragraph this way.

But this isn't about that. 

This is about how most of us understand that putting individual words together give them a separate meaning that's more than the sum of their...parts(?)  And a lot of the time we mean those meanings, regardless of what we want to believe about the purity of our own motivations.

The words that form the question, "Pilots 2015: The Year of Ethnic Castings About Time or Too Much of Good Thing?" have a meaning collectively.

And most people of color who heard these words, understood their meaning, collectively. That's why, "HELL NO" was the answer cyber-shouted by Shonda Rhimes and a host of entertainment news reading others.  
 
We, the "ethnic," were not confused. We were especially not-confused about the "too much of a good thing" part

And it's very rare we all get confused and lean in the same direction, all at the same time, for the record. I'm not even sure this kind of unified confusion is possible when a thing as complicated as the social construction of race is at the center. 

  But the thing that really killed me about the 100,816,024th white racial "apology"was this:   Bart and Fleming? These two chuckle-heads discussed the true and offensive meaning of the headline without even noticing that they had done so.

Before they started riffing on forever about the offensive uses of the word "ethnic"(???) which led to a discussion of the how boring the word "diversity"(???) is, they actually give us an interpretation of   "Pilots 2015: The Year of Ethnic Castings About Time or Too Much of Good Thing?" 

FLEMING:

....My co-editor-in-chief Nellie Andreeva’s goal was to convey that there was such an uptick of TV pilot casting of people of color
that it pinched white actors who’ve historically gotten most of the jobs,

Yeah, we know that's what you meant. We KNOOOW.  And we knew when we first read that "unfortunate headline" that "too much of a good thing" was expressing worry over "it pinched white actors"

THE HEART OF THE APOLOGY

FLEMING: I agree with all this, but after our turn in the barrel, I wanted to say a few things to our core readers who felt betrayed.  That original headline does not reflect the collective sensibility here at Deadline. The only appropriate way to view racial diversity in casting is to see it as a wonderful thing, and to hope that Hollywood continues to make room for people of color."


But problem is that  THIS

"Pilots 2015: The Year of Ethnic Castings About Time or Too Much of Good Thing?"
DOESN'T GET CLOSE TO MEANING

"The only appropriate way to view racial diversity in casting is to see it as a wonderful thing, and to hope that Hollywood continues to make room for people of color."   BUT IT DOES MEAN
  ...My co-editor-in-chief Nellie Andreeva’s goal was to convey that there was such an uptick
of TV pilot casting of people of color
that it pinched white actors
who’ve historically gotten most of the jobs,   ESPECIALLY WHEN FOLLOWED BY     and to question if this could last  if it was being treated as a fad.     which could mean in this particular collection of words
that this is uptick for "ethnics"
is temporary anyway
so why worry about it?    


Nellie may not have intended to convey the same ole, same ole  'What about US? Why isn't there a WHITE HISTORY MONTH!  I'm complaining because 95% of grade school, junior high school, and high school history class being about white wasn't enough.' 

Honestly, she may not have meant to express "What about us?" Again. But the headline, the explanation, and the apology  aren't slips of the tongue. This isn't like saying "math" for "bath." Hard core, card-carrying, overt racists express the very same things in harsher language. How many "bad word choice"  coincidences in a row are we "ethnics" supposed to swallow?