In the latest episode of the ever-popular game of I’m-Not-Really-A-Racist-Asshole, the former chairman of the Roger Williams University, Ralph Papitto board admitted to and apologized for saying “nigger” during a board meeting. (I refuse to use the cutesy “N-word” expression; it’s an ugly thing to say, and shouldn’t be reported as if it was some kind of baby-talk euphemism.) Papitto stepped down after 40 years on the board, reportedly after being pressured off in response to the remark, which he made while discussing the difficulty of recruiting minorities for the board. Prior to that, several board members were forced out in response to their attempts to remove Papitto.
This episode calls to mind several recurrent themes in the ongoing struggle to eradicate racism. At the meeting, Papitto corrected himself, saying that he couldn’t use the word because of what happened to Don Imus. The implication here is that racist white guys are being persecuted for innocuous behavior. Had he pulled down his pants and urinated on the table, he would not have been surprised if he was ejected from the board; the connection he is failing to make is that open racism — and yes, referring to African Americans as niggers counts as open racism — is socially unacceptable behavior in the modern world.

Papitto is 80 years old. Although he implausibly claims that he never heard “nigger” until he watched rap videos — hip hop has a huge following among white octegenarians, of course — and had never used the word prior to that day, the reality is that he grew up in a time when the use of the word would not have raised an eyebrow. This fact is often raised as a defense for old racist white guys, as if it is impossible for them to correct their behavior, much less their delusional beliefs. One has to wonder if Ralph was still tapping Morse code into his telephone or trying to fit a saddle on his SUV. People are amazingly adaptable — if they want to be.

The worst part, though, is the tired assertion that “it just slipped out”. Everyone has had the experience of accidentally saying something that they never think — oh wait, no they haven’t. Here again, the point is being missed, and missed badly. It’s not saying racial slurs that makes one a liability to society; it’s the attitudes that lie behind them. We can sit around all day contemplating the historic or linguistic qualities of “nigger” without doing any harm. It’s when one internalizes the hatred and loathing for one’s fellow man that goes with the term that one becomes a liability. The problem is not that the chairman of the board of a university said “nigger”, it’s that he was thinking it, and it was undoubtedly coloring his judgment.

It will inevitably be argued — generally by people who feel strongly about their right to be closet racists — that such considerations amount to criminalizing thought. They in fact do not, and no one has seriously recommended making racist thoughts a crime. We are all of us perfectly free to stew in the mental sewage of our own choosing. The same people, however, might be less sanguine about being told that their child’s teacher had frequent sexual fantasies about children. So long as those fantasies are not acted upon, the teacher has committed no crime, but there are few who would say that such a person has any business working with children.

Ralph Papitto is not being persecuted. He has every damn right in the world to say and think all kinds of hateful trash. The board of Roger Williams University is, however, quite correct in concluding that a person with his attitudes is not temperamentally suited to oversee an institution whose mission is the education of young people, some of whom may be the target of Mr. Papitto’s “slips”.