Jul 9

Written by: Steve Erbach
Wednesday, July 09, 2008 10:13 PM

Remember David Howard, the Washington, DC, aide to then-mayor, Anthony Williams, who resigned because of the furor raised after he said that he'd have to be "niggardly" with the city budget? 

Well, something along the same lines has happened in Dallas County, Texas:

County commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections office that is used to process traffic ticket payments and handle other paperwork normally done by the JP Courts.

Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections "has become a black hole" because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office.

Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud "Excuse me!" He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a "white hole."

That prompted Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy.

Mayfield shot back that it was a figure of speech and a science term. A black hole, according to Webster's, is perhaps "the invisible remains of a collapsed star, with an intense gravitational field from which neither light nor matter can escape."

Other county officials quickly interceded to break it up and get the meeting back on track. TV news cameras were rolling...

black hole

n. The unplumbed depth of space between the ears of politicians – usually "black" – whose hearing is good enough to discern the utterance – usually by "white" politicans – of an innocuous and perfectly commonplace term that can be construed, with startling disingenuousness, as being a racial slur where there had been no such association heretofore.  The terms that are candidates for being pounced on contain the word "black" or contain homonyms for recognized racial slurs.  E.g., Blackberry, blacklist, black sheep, black hole, etc.

I think that if ever I am accosted with such an idiotic canard, I should have a stock phrase that I've memorized for just such an occasion. Perhaps: "Because I was the black sheep of the family, I was virtually blacklisted. I would have had a warmer welcome in the Black Hole of Calcutta. Unfortunately, the only contact I have with them now is via my Blackberry, which, fortunately, isn't as disingenuously black and white as my esteemed opponent."

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