BP, NAACP, Kamala Harris, and Kyle Cornell

Yesterday a 26-year old white radio host at a Cleveland station was fired from his job for having recorded and aired a station promo in which he said, “The U.S. officially has its first colored vice presidential candidate. More coming up after the game on Newsradio WTAM 1100 Cleveland.”

In the three articles I read on the subject, no evidence was presented nor claims made that Kyle Cornell was known as a racist or that he intended the use of the term “colored” in reference to Kamala Harris to be derogatory.

BET (Black Entertainment Television), in its article on the subject, tells us in the last line how we SHOULD refer to the Democratic VP nominee: “Sen. Kamala Harris is the first Black woman, Indian-American and HBCU alumni to run for Vice President of the United States.”

https://www.bet.com/news/national/2020/08/21/kamala-harris-radio-host-fired.html

Kamala Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was born into a brahmin family in Madras, India. Her father, Donald J. Harris, hails from Jamaica. Donald Harris has written about his own mixed black and white ancestry. His paternal grandmother, “Miss Chrishy,” was a “descendant of Hamilton Brown who is on record as plantation and slave owner and founder of Brown’s Town…”

https://www.jamaicaglobalonline.com/kamala-harris-jamaican-heritage/

So, if we’re going to talk about ethnicity or ancestry in terms of color, we could say that Kamala Harris is black or that Kamala Harris is brown or that she has mixed black, white, and brown heritage. We could also say, to use out-of-date and out-of-favor language, that she is “colored,” or to use the up-to-date and politically correct term, though based on the same idea, we could say that she is a “person of color” or a “woman of color.”

BP used to stand for “British Petroleum,” but the increasingly global company officially changed its name in 1998 to BP Amoco plc and in 2001 it became BP plc. I thought the same process of substituting an acronym for a name had occurred with the NAACP, the organization formerly known as The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. But when I checked the group’s website today, I found that I was wrong. It still employs that full, old-timey name:
“Vision Statement: The vision of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure a society in which all individuals have equal rights without discrimination based on race.”

https://www.naacp.org/about-us/

The NAACP, as a venerable civil rights organization, co-founded more than a hundred years ago by W.E.B. Dubois himself, has every right to keep its original name. But by keeping it, it helps keep alive that term, “colored people,” which is embedded in its name, not as a term of opprobrium but of pride.

The offending party at the radio station, Kyle Cornell, apologized, in a way that seems both sincere and inept: “"I wasn't trying to be malicious or in any way decimate the character or anything like that. That was never the goal. And for that, I am truly sorry. For the station of WTAM too, I feel awful for putting them through what they've had to go through over the past 24 hours...I just want them to understand it was a rough choice to make and that I accept my punishment and know that I still love and care about everyone at the station, wish them well and I hope that they can forgive me for making a judgement in error and something that I know is not me."

I do wonder whether firing an employee based on an ironclad “zero tolerance” policy, even for such a public relations misstep as saying “colored” on the air instead of “person of color” – if it was nothing more than that – is the best way for Americans to relate to one another right now. As a nation, we are still figuring out how to talk about who people are racially, especially when, as is the case with Kamala Harris (or Barack Obama) and with more and more Americans each generation, the mother and father come from very different ethnic backgrounds, which can complicate how to accurately identify them. Perhaps compassion, coupled with explanation and education, plus an opportunity for redemption, might do the country more good than cold, hard termination of one’s employment.