Last night, House Republican leaders voted to remove Rep. Steve King of Iowa from his posts on the Judiciary and Agriculture Committees, a direct rebuke for his white supremacist statements. Although some of his colleagues had chided him in the past, it did seem a bit like a sudden pile-on.
Even Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell suggested that King should consider “another line of work.”
Perhaps Mr. King, who barely won his bid for his ninth term last November in a surprisingly tight race against a solid Democratic challenger in a conservative district, had finally worn out his welcome.
But he’s not the only one.
James Watson, a trail-blazing DNA scientist and 1962 Nobel Prize winner, is being stripped of his honorary titles after he made blatantly racist comments (again) in a recent PBS documentary “American Masters: Decoding Watson.”
Watson, 90, is best known for co-discovering the double-helix structure of DNA with Francis Crick (based on the work by chemist Rosalind Franklin.) He should have been equally known for a lifetime of racist and homophobic statements, which he rolled back from time to time with lukewarm apologies.
But it appears that he has long believed that genetics proves that white people are superior to black people, despite clear science to the contrary. So much so, that he once expressed doubt about the prospects for Africa, and despite hoping that all people were equal, he said, “people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true.”
I wonder if he ever had to deal with black employees.
He’s now lost his honorary titles at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York where he had been the director from 1968 to 1993. “[The laboratory] unequivocally rejects the unsubstantiated and reckless personal opinions Dr. James D. Watson expressed,” they said in a statement.
It’s painful to consider the kind of damage racists can do when they are free to shape policy, science, hiring, and the allocation of resources.
King and Watson appear to believe terrible things, things which their long-time supporters either missed or were prepared (or felt forced) to overlook. I confess I struggle with this.
I think the world would be better off if we came to some sort of reckoning about how to deal with powerful people who believe terrible things, and effectively address the opportunity costs associated with keeping useful bigots around. Until we do, we’ll still be punishing them when it’s too late.
Still, I think this is a moment to be hopeful, and that the sanctions of individuals will send a message that this way of thinking won’t be overlooked anymore.
For more on the theme of accountability, check out this brave new ad from Gillette. It speaks to the impact of toxic masculinity by addressing #MeToo, sexual harassment, bullying, male mental health, and the dismissal of women by men at work. But more poignantly, it captures the way that the culture has long supported these behaviors.
Called “The Best Men Can Be,” it is a deft update on their thirty-year-old slogan,“The Best A Man Can Get.”
It’s not subtle. Over scenes showing harassment, misogyny, and “boys will be boys” posturing, comes the narrator’s voice: “We can’t hide from it. It’s been going on far too long.” The implication is that things have changed. “We believe in the best in men. To say the right thing, to act the right way.”
I expect the message will resonate with Gillette’s other target audience, women. (Women drive 70-80% of all consumer spending, either through cash money or influence, after all.)
But a brief clip of Terry Crews, the actor and now-advocate for sexual assault survivors, is the closer shave. “Men need to hold men accountable,” he says.
It’s what an ally does. Sure, it may be too late for the Tiki torch crowd, but it’s a start.