"No deals with the White Man"

On tonight's edition of KCET's Life & Times program, co-host Jess Marlow referred to an upcoming story about the Pechanga Indians (owners of a casino in Temecula) with something similar to, "They're succeeding by not making deals with the White Man."

Shortly after that, when introducing the segment, Val Zavala said something similar to "They're succeeding by not making deals with the White Man."

Then, at the beginning of his report, Life & Times correspondent Philip Bruce said something similar to "They're succeeding by not making deals with the White Man."

Lord knows, we white men have a bit of a tragic history with most Indian tribes. But, do we really need a borderline racist tagline like that, especially when the report in question had very little discussion of who the Pechangas are dealing with?

If the Pechangas are successfully running their casino without outside help, that's one thing. If other Indian tribes have had problems running casinos with outside companies, tell us about it. But if the Pechangas are illegally discriminating against people based on race or national origin, hopefully KCET will run another report to discuss that.

MultiCultiCult · Tue, 01/14/2003 - 19:15 · · Importance: 1