Oh, yes, you are!

Anglo comedian Michael Richards was seen on TV by the entire world going on a racist tirade after he was heckled during a stand-up comedy routine. Afterwards, his excuse was: "I'm not a racist. That's what's so insane about this."

More recently, former NBA player Tim Hardaway, an African American, said on the radio: "Well, you know, I hate gay people. . .I’m homophobic." In a later interview, Hardaway backpedaled, saying: "I don't hate gay people. I'm a good-hearted person. . . I respect people."

"I'm not that kind of person," seems to be the spin phrase of the moment, fitting any situation in which a public figure finds that he or she has exposed their true nature for the whole world to see. How can they possibly believe (and how can their publicists possibly convince them) that such an excuse is remotely appropriate or effective?

What makes that phrase particularly insidious is that it ascribes the racism or the homophobia or the sexism or [insert any other type of discriminatory action here] as an outburst that happens only when the person "isn't" him or herself.

What that phrase doesn't acknowledge or face up to or handle is the fact that we live in a pervasively racist, homophobic, sexist and [insert any other type of discriminatory action here] society and that until everybody owns up to that very fact, not much is going to change. Cherríe Moraga, a Latina lesbian feminist writer, warns us that it's the "enemy within" that we must come to terms with at the same time that we struggle against all other enemies of justice and equality out there.

Racist tirades are racist, whether the person meant them to be or not. That's why they're called racist tirades. Saying that you're not a racist after you've proven the contrary with your actions only makes you look like a hypocrite and a fool. Saying that you hate gay people (any kind of people not like you, for that matter) immediately takes you off the already short-list of good-hearted and respectful people, precisely because such people make it a point not to insult those who are not like themselves. That's the whole point of cultivating good-person-ness and respectfulness.

What Richards and Hardaway, and so many others forget, and what we need to remember always, is that old and never-failing axiom: Actions speak so much, much louder than words.

Kudos to Harvard

Well, it took a paltry 371 years but Harvard finally did it: they just appointed their first woman president since its founding in 1636. And the universe must be in balance now because she happens to be the founding dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, which is what remains of Radcliffe College after it was merged into Harvard University in 1999.

Although I never much cared for the white Anglo-women focus of Radcliffe or of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, I must applaud the selection of Drew Gilpin Faust (great name, too!), an Americanist historian, as president.

Last year, when Harvard began their search, they were smart enough to e-mail the alumni and ask for our suggestions on what to search for. I said it might be nice if Harvard joined the twenty-first century and appointed a woman.

I'm sure that my e-mail didn't mean a thing on this search, but I'm glad the pressure was enough on the powers-that-be that a woman was finally appointed, especially after her predecessor, former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers, suggested that women were not the intellectual equals of men (at least not in math and science, to be more precise).

Today, kudos to Harvard. Let's hope President Faust steps up to the plate and hits it out of the park. We'll see what tomorrow brings.