So now they are going to ban menthol cigarettes. I suppose that there are good health reasons for that. I’m not exactly sure why the health problem with “menthol cigarettes” emanates from the first word of that phrase and not from the second. It’s kind of like “war crimes.” It’s the wrong one of those words that we try to eliminate.
But that’s not the most bothersome part of this latest governmental action. Since the proposed ban was reported, I have heard representatives of black groups applauding it. Their joy is triggered by how they view menthol cigarettes as predominantly smoked by black people. I don’t know the statistics and I wouldn’t be surprised if this canard were actually true. What I take issue with is how ascribing this habit to black people feeds racism.
These black representatives, in a good faith effort to help make the lives of black people better, are making it worse by reinforcing a stereotype. If black people have an inherent characteristic that makes them more likely to smoke menthol cigarettes, then it is not a big step for racist bastards to apply that rationale to fortify their slimy point of view that black people have other inherent characteristics as well – bad ones.
There are two sides to the ethnic distinction coin – positive and negative. On a positive note, it can be a great source of pride for people who believe that because they are Polish or Irish or Jewish or Black, or anything else, then somehow they possess a special quality. On the other hand, once we all accept the notion that a person’s ethnicity gives them special qualities, doesn’t it logically follow that there is a possibility that some of those qualities might not be so wonderful? And then doesn’t it logically follow that ethnic stereotyping is justified?
Ethnic stereotyping should never be justified. Why should we help it along?
It is a slippery slope once we engage in ethnic specialness. It would be nice to think that each ethnic group’s special qualities are uniformly good for society and that by engaging in this type of ethnic separation, we are simply identifying why society benefits from the special qualities of each. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work that way. History tells us otherwise. History does not just tell us this, it screams it. By the very act of separating ourselves from each other, we are inviting the antipathies that have forever plagued our attempts to live peacefully with each other.
When black leaders concede that such a thing as smoking menthol cigarettes is somehow a characteristic of being black, somewhere (and I think I know where), George Wallace is smiling.
We were right 