For a reporter, a healthy skepticism is as important as the ability to spell, and the classic warning from editors is this: If your mother says she loves you, check it out.
This is to reinforce that journalists are required to be watchdogs for the public, not press agents for the powers that be.
So when I wrote a column last week to praise a local college president for donating $1 million of his personal fortune toward faculty raises, above all I didn't want to sound like a press agent. I began with a dose of self-mockery and humor:
"I'm ashamed to say it," I wrote, "but when I heard (about the donation), my first thought was this: So what's this guy overcompensating for?"
I wondered what was in his closet or on his conscience that he'd lighten his personal fortune merely for his staff.
But such cynicism is a "lousy default position," I wrote, and so took Harvey and his wife at their word. They donated the money simply because "it was the right and proper thing to do."
I compared Harvey favorably to two other local college presidents, who never dipped into their own pockets like this for their employees. That, in fact, Harvey had donated another $1 million for scholarships a decade earlier.
Harvey explained his wealth comes from sole ownership of a Pepsi bottling plant in Houghton, Mich., so I also noted, tongue in cheek, that, "aside from contributing to obesity and tooth decay in Michigan, the money's clean."
I mentioned the ways he's grown HU since he first arrived more than 30 years ago. How he's drawn commencement speakers like Bill Cosby and Barack Obama. How far he's come from growing up a poor black boy in the segregated South to Harvard and beyond.
To add perspective, I also noted that, like any college president, Harvey is not without critics, and that HU has had its share of bad publicity — censorship of a student newspaper, a racial squabble involving a campus beauty queen, a double-shooting on campus.
But at least for a while, I wrote, Harvey's gesture "silences the cynics."
When I filed the column, I worried I sounded too much like a booster.
Little did I know that, for some readers, particularly some HU faculty, I sounded like a racist.
"One of the most blatant examples of covert racism that I have ever seen … It takes, in my judgment, a demented mind to turn a million-dollar gift .. into something negative."
"Ridiculously racist … I wonder if a white college president in this area had donated a million dollars … if Dietrich would have had the same view."
"The comment ... (about) obesity and tooth decay was a backhanded insult… ."
"Since Dr. Harvey has dealt with card-carrying Klansmen in the past, I'm sure he's not concerned about the white sheets of an opinion writer… ."
"Her cynicism leads me to believe she is one of the ones who need to be silenced."
And so on.
Apparently I managed to inject every racist code word, image or phrase imaginable into the column, from referring to Harvey growing up a "poor black boy from the Deep South" to referring to him as a "guy."
These accusations really should not surprise you T-girl. There are certain elements in any minority community which have a vested interest in perpetuating the stigma of "racism" against themselves. Sounds masochistic, does it not? Perhaps it is, however, too many in the minority community still need the excuses inherent in "racism" to compensate for underachievement, overall poor performance or justify a general lack of effort. Of course this is galling not only to those like yourself, who find themselves branded with the illogical and unfair label of "racist", but also to the members of the minority community who have refused to accept labels which others (even some of their own race) have placed upon them and have achieved anyway. The answer ... time. There is no way to legislate stupidity out of the psyche of any population; however, in time the idiots may die off and a better, smarter remnant will prevail in the evolutionary struggle.