Bingo.  My reply was to my wife. It was not intended for the entire museum list.  New York City is made the pun of many jokes out west, my use of the term black was not intended to be offensive to anyone, my apoligies if it did seem offensive--E-mail can certainly be mis-read and misinterpreted!  I love jazz is why my wife forwarded the message to me, I would hope the museum would hire a predominatelly balck staff.  I wourk in the field of native amnerican art and we are not shy or offended about trying to balance the ethnic make-up of our staff.  Tahnks for your comments.

>>> Caroline Hayes <[log in to unmask]> 08/17/98 07:24PM >>>
My initial impression was that Michael Herring was trying to reply to the job
posting sent to him by someone who got it from the list, but ended up
accidentally sending his personal reply to the list.  Perhaps I'm wrong, but
maybe whoever sent the job message to MH did so because MH isn't on the list.
This may be why MH hasn't responded - perhaps he doesn't even know that he
erroneously posted to a whole listserv.  Has anyone tried emailing their
complaints to MH *directly*?  I think that would have been more useful than
complaining to the entire list - although it has been interesting to read
people's opinions.  Given the number of people who wrongly berated the person
who sent the job posting, rather than the one who had written the offensive
reply, I would guess that upset people were shooting off their replies without
having carefully read the information as to the origin of the message (just as
MH did).  I just wonder what the good of a debate amongst the list members is
if, in fact, the originator of the offending message is left unaware of his
error and/or people's reactions to it.