It would be easy to jump on the bandwagon and join in condemning the entire state of Arizona as Racist. To do so would stand me in good stead with a great many intellectualoids and thought leaders who have themselves wasted little time and even less research before condemning Arizonans. But that would be too easy.
In case you missed it (have you been in a coma?) the voters of Arizona narrowly defeated proposition 302 which would have created a paid state holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. No sooner had the vote totals been announced than the Voices of Reason rose up in protest to declare that the heathen bigots in Arizona are racists one-and-all.
The written denunciations appeared by the truckload. The papers were chock-full of protests by right-thinking folks bemoaning the backward Neanderthal mentality which could manifest itself as rejection of a paid MLK day. One political cartoon (my favorite) showed a group of people standing around doing nothing discernible. One of these was wearing a sheet and a pointy hood and from this character had come the words, “Why, yes, I am from Arizona. How could you tell?” Which brings up the question: How can this cartoonist and his fellow editorialists know that Arizonans are racist?
Is it that easy to tell? One question? A single criterion? Was everyone who voted against a paid MLK holiday motivated by racial hatred? That’s quite a stretch of the imagination but it’s apparently what has passed for reality among those who favored this particular paid state holiday. I have to believe that these people have pointier heads than the Kartoon Klansman.
The people of Arizona have been cast into a stereotype. You remember stereotypes, don’t you? That’s when you say that all African-Americans are lazy louts on welfare, all fat people gorge themselves at every opportunity, white men can’t dance, Italian-Americans are mobsters, Asians can‘t pronounce “R’s,” American Indians are drunks, blonds are dumb and, well, you get the idea. The stereotype is a tool, no, make that a weapon, of the narrow-minded — the bigot. Bigots don’t care about the qualities of individuals; they’d rather put everyone into nice neat categories based on some superficial characteristic. Such as branding all Arizonans racist.
If the motivation of those who voted against the MLK day can be called into question then I suppose balance requires that we also inquire into the motives of the proponents of the measure.
From the proponents we often heard that the state of Arizona stands to loose countless millions of dollars in tourism and convention business. It has been a continuing theme. Why, only a day before the election we heard again that the NFL (National Football League) would pull the 1993 Superbowl from Arizona if a Martin Luther King paid state holiday were not enacted.
It becomes obvious then that crass commercialism, simple greed was the impetus behind the pro King day forces. It‘s clear that while hiding behind the facade of professed brotherhood and feigned admiration for Dr. King all they really wanted to do was line their pockets while the taxpayers of Arizona are stuck footing the multi-million dollar bill for an eleventh paid holiday for state employees. Fortunately, the sensible, decent, hard-working, tax-paying people of Arizona saw what was really happening and gave the avaricious exploiters their comeuppance.
Does that seem preposterous? Is it a fair characterization to say that simple greed is the only reason anyone wants a paid MLK state holiday? Of course not. It’s absurd. But less absurd than the outrageous charge that the ballot proposition was defeated simply because Arizonans are out-and-out racists.
During the more than five years that this issue has been tug-of-warred in the state of Arizona I don’t recall hearing anyone say, “We don’t need no holidays for negroes.” In fact I don’t recall hearing or reading anything even remotely like it. The issue of race has never come up except when the forces favoring the holiday attempted to use guilt like a bludgeon on their opponents by accusing them of being racists.
On the other hand, the dire commercial consequences which would attend a failure to pass the King holiday have been prominently featured in the print and broadcast media. Government officials, captains of industry and commerce and numerous assorted busy-bodies and do-gooders, including newscasters and columnists have all opined that the state of Arizona needed this paid state holiday else we would be shunned by convention-goers and the state economy would suffer. Clearly, there’s a much more solid basis for the greed theory than the racism theory.
So there you have it. Did the people who voted against the MLK holiday do so because they’re racists? Did the people who voted for it do so because they’re greedy opportunists? Or are both of these simple-minded characterizations just so much malarkey?
To the forces in favor of the holiday, there is simply no acceptable reason for not enacting it. And that, it seems, is justification enough to brand all Arizonans as racist.