Richard Ford's RACE CARD reviewed in San Francisco Chronicle

'The Race Card': Ford deplores the blame game
Reyhan Harmanci
The San Francisco Chronicle, Thursday, February 7, 2008

You want to pick a fight? Call someone a racist. Few labels hit so hard or bring up so many deep feelings. It's a dark stain on someone's character. Then-Los Angeles police Detective Mark Fuhrman was accused at the O.J. Simpson trial of using racial epithets, and after Hurricane Katrina, rapper Kanye West said President Bush "hates black people."

According to Stanford law Professor Richard Thompson Ford of San Francisco, the national dialogue on race needs to change. In his recently published book "The Race Card," he argues that when people talk about race relations, they too quickly try to ferret out racism without looking at the larger issues. In doing so, they leave open the possibility that opportunists will unfairly paint someone as a racist to further their political ends, while de-legitimizing some very real problems.

"I decided to write the book out of dismay and frustration with the way questions of racial injustice are typically taken up," Ford says. "Right now, we tend to deal with questions of race and race relations in the context of scandal. There's not much conversation about the day-to-day issues with racial tensions and injustices."

Ford takes apart some of the more prominent recent scandals, such as the treatment of Hurricane Katrina victims and the dispute between hip-hop mogul Jay-Z and the makers of Cristal Champagne. He also digs into older ones, like the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill Supreme Court confirmation hearings and the O.J. Simpson trial, to show how complicated events got reduced to screaming headlines.

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