Tuesday, October 8, 2002
Page 7
AFFAIRS OF STATE (Column)
Politician Ignores Real Bias, Goes After Radio Hosts
By DAVID KLINE
Sacramento Mayor Heather Fargo and City Councilwoman Sandy Sheedy could be doing any number of productive things for the capital city, but instead they are wasting time leveling false and damaging accusations of racism against two radio show hosts.
Most notably, Fargo and Sheedy could have taken action against a city official whose department has been found by a jury to have engaged in real, honest-to-goodness racism.
In 1999, a federal jury found that the Sacramento Police Department, under the watch of Police Chief Arturo Venegas Jr., illegally harassed and discriminated against Deputy Police Chief Fred Arthur and Capt. Michael Shaw based on the officers’ race and age.
The jury found that the officers were forced out of long careers in law enforcement because they were too old and too white for the police chief’s tastes. The forewoman said “one instance after another” made it clear that age and race discrimination affected the department.
The jury was especially moved, the forewoman said, by testimony about a management seminar convened by Venegas at which a city-paid consultant said “middle-aged white boys” were “bureaucratic barriers to change.”
Shaw accepted a settlement from the city shortly before he was scheduled to go to court to let a jury decide how much he was owed in damages. He had asked for $1.4 million, but agreed to accept $100,000 for lost wages plus $200,000 for emotional stress and other non-economic damages.
Arthur wasn’t as lucky. Before leaving his job, he had caved in to pressure from the city attorney and had signed a paper that forfeited his right to sue. Last year, the courts upheld that contract.
So even though the jury said Arthur was a victim of discrimination, he didn’t collect a dime in damages — not even money to cover his attorney fees. To add insult to injury, he was forced into retirement at 58 years old, before he was eligible for full retirement benefits.
The City Council’s reaction to these two cases has been an appalling silence. The taxpayers were forced to pay $300,000 to one man for the Police Department’s race and age discrimination, and another long-time officer was treated like dirt, and the city didn’t raise a peep. Venegas still is in charge of the department, and Arthur’s lawyer says “nothing has changed at the city.”
Ridding the city of this discrimination should be at the top of the City Council’s list, since improprieties in the Police Department can directly affect our public safety. But rather than actually do something about an identified problem that exists within their purview, Fargo and Sheedy have chosen to attack two radio hosts for what Fargo called “inappropriate comments” about race relations in the city.
Angered by Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty’s 90-minute discussion of Time magazine’s article naming Sacramento as “America’s Most Diverse City,” Fargo started a letter-writing campaign against the hosts and the station that pays them, KSTE 650 AM (Their show also is carried in Bakersfield.)
Sheedy took the ball and ran with it. On city letterhead, she wrote to the federal government, asking for revocation of KSTE’s broadcasting license. She said Armstrong and Getty had tried to “generate hatred.” She said the hosts went out of their way to “bash, denigrate, and demean immigrants, people of color, non-English speaking Sacramentans, and the gay and lesbian community.”
Unfortunately, Fargo and Sheedy have refused to elaborate on their intentions or specify what they found so offensive, and it’s impossible to guess at what troubled them. For a listener with an average sense of humor and the capacity to weigh different sides of an issue, Armstrong and Getty’s discussion included nothing that could be deemed racist, offensive or demeaning.
Left guessing, one might conclude that the two politicians disagreed with Armstrong’s strongly stated opinion that people who celebrate “diversity” often gloss over problems caused by language barriers. Both hosts opined that students in this country can’t possibly learn as fast if they don’t speak English, and that teachers can’t be as effective if they have to translate instead of focusing on the subject matter of the class.
Put another way, Armstrong and Getty said people who speak a common language are able to communicate better. It would be interesting to hear Fargo and Sheedy explain why they disagree with this seemingly obvious conclusion.
However, instead of calling the show to discuss the matter, they decided to use their government positions and contacts in the community to punish the radio hosts for daring to express opinions different from theirs.
The uninformed, cowardly attacks on Armstrong and Getty raise red flags about Fargo and Sheedy. That these attacks have come at a time when real discrimination is being ignored is simply unacceptable, and should be reason enough to begin the recall process.
— Capitol News Service
Copyright 2002, Metropolitan News Company