WHEN YOU EXPECT THE WORST IN OTHERS

Expect the worst and you won't be disappointed.

That's been a slogan of mine for as far back as I can remember.
Experience tells me I am not alone. Most of us have at least a trace
of misanthropy in us. Unfortunately, some of us let it get carried
away.

Take, for example, three recent cases of white men who lost their jobs
for making statements that offended blacks. Only one was quickly hired
back. Each illustrates in strikingly different ways how you can get
into trouble these days for expecting the worst in people.

In New Jersey, Gov. Christine Todd Whitman fired Col. Carl Williams as
superintendent of the state police because of his assertions in a
newspaper interview that certain crimes were associated with certain
races. He specifically linked minorities with drug
trafficking.

In Washington, D.C., WARW-FM fired nationally known "shock jock" Doug
"The Greaseman" Tracht, who after playing a recording by Grammy-winner
Lauryn Hill, remarked, "No wonder they drag them behind trucks," a
reference to the dragging murder of James Byrd Jr., in Jasper, Texas.

Earlier this year, black District of Columbia Mayor Anthony Williams
accepted the resignation of David Howard, a white aide, after some
black staffers were offended by Howard's use of the word
"niggardly."

The Scandinavian-rooted word really means "miserly" and has no racial
meaning at all. Yet Williams apparently thought he could score a few
points with black voters, many of whom were still unsure of a black
candidate who received more white votes than anyone else on the
ballot. The local and national uproar was so great that Williams was
embarrassed into inviting Howard back.

Mayor Williams' sin: He expected too little of his city's black
voters.

That's nothing compared to the low expectations New Jersey's Col.
Williams had about blacks and Latinos. The Garden State's top trooper
denied condoning the practice known as "racial profiling" in police
stops. But his statement betrayed attitudes far more pernicious in the
upper reaches of a department that long has been criticized and
occasionally sued by minorities and civil libertarians for enforcing
the unwritten crime of DWB, or "driving while black."

Federal figures show that more than 70 percent of the nation's cocaine
users are white. Yet it is blacks and Latinos who find themselves
fending off the presumption of guilt. A 1996 case, for example,
revealed that while 13.5 percent of the motorists on the southern end
of the New Jersey Turnpike were black, 46 percent of those stopped by
police were black. Horror stories abound of innocent black families
and individuals being harassed.

As a result, the colonel committed the ultimate career sin. He
embarrassed his boss. Had she not taken drastic action, she would have
been perceived as condoning the same attitudes, presuming the worst of
blacks and the best of whites.

But narrow-minded as Col. Williams' words may have been, he sounds
brilliant compared to the Greaseman, who already was recovering from
an earlier offense to decency. In 1986 Tracht was forced off the air
briefly for joking that after Martin Luther King's birthday became a
federal holiday, if somebody "shot four more" maybe "everyone would
get a whole week off."

Lost in most of the national buzz about Tracht are the standards, or
lack of them, practiced by his bosses. Tracht's broadcasts were

delayed by seven seconds and the station positioned a censor on a
"dump" button, which would bleep out anything Tracht said that sounded
too offensive. Station officials admitted the "dump" button was seldom
used.

Apparently no one at the station realized (until their switchboard lit
up) that jokingly calling for racial murder was stepping over the line.

Like Howard Stern, Don Imus and other shock jocks, the Greaseman was
addicted to the multimillions of dollars he was making by pandering to
his listeners' worst feelings. He was more talented than most, but in
a show-business world that was willing to give him all the rope he
wanted, he eventually hung himself. Twice.

The real test will be whether the Greaseman gets hired again. Chances
are remarkably good that, as long as he continues to pull in the
ratings, he will find another station as soon as the heat dies down.

All three of these cases offer examples of lessons learned the hard
way about today's racial attitudes. It would be nice if more of us
could learn our racial lessons the easy way, through easy and honest
dialogue, instead of waiting for a crisis.

But cases like those I cite above could make us Americans even less
eager to speak honestly and openly about our racial perceptions,
prejudices and suspicions. I hope for better than that, although I
expect the worst.