Cord Jefferson, writing for Gawker, with a smart piece about racial slurs and the missed opportunities to affect actual change in our society:
What if, instead of forcing Paula Deen to beg everyone’s forgiveness through heaving sobs on national television, we instead used that airtime to chat with her about her beliefs? What if rather than giving her the idiotic question, “Would you have fired you?” as Matt Lauer did, we asked her to calmly understand why a white lady calling for black servers at a plantation wedding—a frighteningly common wedding them in the South—looks so ugly and so awful to a great many people? What if Deen were forced to confront an actual black person who was willing to speak rationally with her about her past racism and its origins? The conversation probably wouldn’t result in the Klan disbanding and volunteering for the NAACP, to be sure, but I have to think it would be better than seeing an old lady weep into Matt Lauer’s lap for 10 minutes.