Editor’s Note: E. King Alexander, Jr., the author of this post, is a Louisiana, California, and Texas attorney engaged in indigent defense in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana. He currently serves, with Julie Hayes Kilborn, as Co-Chair of the Amicus Committee of LACDL.  Before dedicating himself to indigent defense, King focused on civil litigation including intellectual properties and was a longtime professional musician.

This has only to do with social, versus criminal, justice, but it was inspired in part by Dr. Alan Bean’s post on Rep. Joe Wilson and this writer’s second response to it, which caused thoughts to gel that have been percolating for awhile. It concerns use of the R-word. In order to be clear, the word itself will be spelled out now lest someone assume that the R-word is “Republican”: the R-word is “redneck.” Some of the comments on this site (not posts, but comments to posts) have employed it, certainly not a unique situation on the Internet, but that is only the free or tolerated speech of the public at large, not condoned by the site or the foundation and people behind it.

The R-word is a racial epithet, and should be retired. No gold watch, no pension.

The R-word is an exonym. That means it is a word that at least formerly was used only as a pejorative and by persons outside the subject group. (Another example of an exonym also starts with an “R”– namely “Redbone,” signifying a group for which there is no polite term, and which some say, with correctness as it turns out, does not truly exist as a single ethnicity. Like the R-word at issue here, there are today persons who identify with that group and who have in fact embraced the exonym, giving it a second life as an ethnonym, though by and large the term remains at best controversial, and at worst, fighting words. See, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redbone_(ethnicity) ).

One need only visit any of numerous political debate chats and public comment sites online and pretend to be white and to espouse some conservative viewpoint, in order have the R-word hurled like a javelin of invective in the most hateful and vitriolic manner, often by the very amateur polemicists who claim to represent positions of tolerance and equality. Throw in the suggestion that one hails from the South, even without a view associated with the political right, and one may find that the regional component complemented by the racial is enough that people who may not otherwise have a dog in the fight will blurt out the R-word. It is manifestly unfair to apply a racial epithet selectively according to mainstream political views that any American is entitled to hold, or according to region as indicator of lack of sophistication and of genetic bottlenecking. The same views may be held legitimately by a person of any race, or any part of the country. As for rusticity, the South certainly has no monopoly on it. Eh? Yah.

Moreover, persons having a Scots or Ulster Scots, Presbyterian background or heritage (formerly the “Covenanters,” what in Ulster is now simply called “Protestant”) have further reason to take offense at the R-word. When it is applied to them, they are being name-called not only for their ethnicity, but also for their religion. See,http://www.scotshistoryonline.co.uk/rednecks/rednecks.html . During the Second Great Awakening, in 1810 the “Old Side” Presbyterian Church gave rise in Kentucky to the revivalist Cumberland Presbyterians, whose ordination did not require a higher education degree. It soon grew throughout Appalachia and beyond. Presbyterian William Boardman’s 1858 book The Higher Christian Life, emphasizing the personal relationship with Christ, influenced the Holiness Movement and Pentecostalism, eventually expanding the variety of white Americans who would come to be seen as fair game for targeting with the R-word. The religious component is also seen in the “WASP” (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) racial-religious stereotype. This includes notably the Anglicans, who arguably are Protestant only in their schism from the Pope of Rome and certain doctrinal leavings of the Puritan Interlude which were later hidden in the hinter pages of the Book of Common Prayer. Some white Southerners may attempt to distinguish themselves from the nefarious R-word by claiming liberal politics (which is often the very goal of the person using it), or a Roman Catholic dispensation, or some other non-Protestant, non-Christian, or ethnic exception. It is quite understandable that they would wish to escape the ignominy which has accrued to the label.

Here is a true anecdote that illustrates the wrongheaded use of the R-word by someone who should have known better. New Orleans blues harmonica ace and bandleader J. Monque’D was performing with his band in the 1990’s in England, when he noticed a scowling woman standing at the edge of the club stage, shouting something over and over at him as the band played. J. is a Creole of color, very light-skinned and straight-haired, tall, and often wearing a white plantation-style hat. He identifies as African-American, or black, and certainly under the one-drop rule, so would have the law considered him when he was born. The main clue of his ethnicity to strangers is the yellow gold dental work which is part of his constellation of trademarks, familiar to those who have seen him in a memorable Louisiana Lottery television commercial in which his broad smile in the final frame serves as the punch line. His gold teeth would not have been apparent that night in England as he played the harmonica. When he finally figured out what this odd person was yelling at him repeatedly, he realized it was the R-word. It seems that she perceived him as white, and felt compelled to heckle and condemn him in public for coming into her country and “stealing the black man’s music.” She expressed what she considered her superior social consciousness by trying to shout down his performance with a racial epithet. How ridiculous is that?

Thus there can be no question that the R-word is used, with the intent to discredit or cause emotional pain to others, as an insulting shorthand for a set of demeaning racial, ethnic, regional, and religious stereotypes. As such, the R-word can have no place in the civilized exchange of ideas, nor in polite society, much less in our schools, but rather must go the way of every other ethnic slur: into disapprobation, and ultimately into oblivion.

Some will ask, “What about Jeff Foxworthy?” It is true that there are those who in good humor toward themselves, their relatives, or their community and race, use the R-word. Does that make it okay? The late great comic Richard Pryor formerly used the N-word prominently in his routines. However, after visiting Africa at the height of his career, and before his life-threatening freebasing accident and the diagnosis of his Multiple Sclerosis, he had an epiphany and announced that he would never again use the N-word in his standup comedy routine. Users of the R-word for comic purposes should follow Richard Pryor’s great example in keeping with the Golden Rule: there can be no same-race humor exception to the condemnation of a racial slur. Jeff Foxworthy, therefore, should be the first to receive a cease-and-desist letter from the USCDL (Unsophisticated Southern Caucasian Defense League).

 Should there be a musical exception? After the notorious Don Imus radio incident in early 2007, and in agreement with such black leaders as the Rev. Al Sharpton, Def Jam Records co-founder Russell Simmons searched his soul and concluded that the N-word, as well as certain other terms which were demeaning of women, had to go. Whites who have used the R-word in music should follow this additional great example of self-improvement from the black community: there can be no same-race music exception to the condemnation of a racial slur. The second USCDL cease-and-desist letter should go to Jerry Jeff Walker.

What about those people whose manners, conduct, and mode of life closely correspond to the R-word stereotype? May we not at least call white Southern social conservatives by the R-word, because they are such A-words (props to Van Jones )?  No, there can be no “call a spade a spade” exception for the R-word. It should not be forgotten that there were, and are, stubborn people who insisted that there are black people, and then there are N-words. In each case the word itself is wrong precisely because of the hurtfulness and the stereotyping, and it has to stop.

The seriousness of the final point here cannot be left to inference, no matter how adequately the “USCDL” references may telegraph the tongue-in-cheek component. Jeff Foxworthy’s “You might be a redneck if …” one-liners date from the early 1990’s. He has substantially moved on. The song “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother” was actually written in the 1960’s by Ray Wylie Hubbard, and made famous in 1973 by Jerry Jeff Walker, who recorded his seminal album “Mr. Bojangles” in 1968, the title song honoring the great African American showman Bill Robinson. BMI lists no fewer than 390 songs with some form of the R-word in the title. ASCAP lists another 146 R-word-titled songs. These figures exclude those songs that only use the R-word in their lyrics. There will be no stopping the R-word’s comic and musical use in our lifetimes. Nevertheless, this writer believes, as Russell Simmons realized, that the target group’s using a pejorative to defuse it is only a transitional strategy, prelude to the preferred one of eliminating it altogether.

The final point is this: there is, emphatically, no moral equivalency between the R-word and the N-word. The writer has learned to vet these forays into sensitive issues, and is indebted to, prepublication readers who are neither white nor Southerner, yet live among them. Though the Covenanters who were the original targets of the R-word were in their time and place a people hated and subjugated by an oppressive majority in a society that was not, for them, entirely free, the R-word as used then and today cannot compare to the N-word which has been applied to an entire race who were literally enslaved and subsequently oppressed legally, economically, and socially here in America right to the present time, which has seen Barack Obama shatter the ultimate glass ceiling well before many thought possible. While the R-word is a much lesser concern, it is nevertheless an evil that it is applied with great hostility and frequency especially to conservative whites of any or no religion, from any part of the country, in the attempt to discredit them, shout them down, and silence their views. As such, it is an odious race-based weapon against political free speech and the free exchange of ideas.

How long will it take for sensibilities and consciences to close this last loophole in the Golden Rule and generally-accepted doctrines of political correctness, to reject and condemn the R-word?

 King Alexander

In the past two days the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has been bombarded with angry letters demanding to know why Superintendent Jerry McCullough and the Arlington Independent School Board refused to let the (largely minority) school children under their charge hear their president extol the virtues of hard work, discipline, self-confidence and hope. 

In response, Superintendent McCollough issued this statement.  Jerry is a nice guy, no question about that.  But I can’t imagine a black or Hispanic administrator folding so completely in the face of conservative white paranoia.

Hopefully, lessons have been learned.

According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: “District offices were besieged with phone calls when parents and the media learned that about plans for students to attend an event where [President George W.] Bush is to speak.”

 

Steve Maxwell, chairman of the Tarrant County Democratic Party, told the Star-Telegram he respects McCullough for taking responsibility for the mess.

“It goes a long way to making people feel better that there is some sense of fairness in the Arlington school district,” he said.

“I would like to see it followed up with them agreeing to convene a school assembly to show the 18-minute speech to all students. It was very motivational and inspirational. I don’t know why they wouldn’t.”

Why wouldn’t the superintendent send a positive signal to Arlington’s minority community?  For the same reason he made his initial decision–demographics aside, white is still the color of power in Arlington.  Thus, the onus remains on teachers to make their own arrangements if they wish to show their students the speech.  I would like to know how many teachers take advantage of the opportunity.

Were you startled by Rep. Joe Wilson’s “You lie!” interjection during President Obama’s address on health care last night?  So was I.  But those who know and love Mr. Wilson the best are telling us what South Carolinians have known for a long time: Joe Wilson is a staunch defender of  “Confederate Heritage” who voted to keep the rebel flag flying atop the South Carolina legislature in 2000.  (more…)

Why are we so convinced that Curtis Flowers is innocent?  Two reasons: the state’s theory of the crime doesn’t fit the actual evidence, and the state manufactured phoney evidence by manipulating, badgering and bribing witnesses.

All are agreed that the gun that ended the lives of Bertha Tardy, Carmen Rigby, Bobo Stewart and Robert Golden was stolen from the car of Doyle Simpson while he worked at Winona’s Angelica garment factory.  Simpson made two visits to his car on the morning of the crime and reported that his gun had been stolen from a locked glove compartment shortly before the crime was committed.  Catherine Snow, one of Simpson’s co-workers, claims she saw Curtis Flowers leaning against Simpson’s car at 7:30 that morning.

Prosecutors argue that Curtis Flowers murdered Bertha Tardy because she had docked $82 from his pay to cover the cost of damaged lawn mower batteries. Flowers worked at the furniture store for three days just prior to the July 4th weekend in 1996. When Curtis didn’t return to work after the holiday and when he eventually contacted Ms. Tardy he was informed that he had been replaced. Prosecutor Doug Evans claims this provided Flowers with a sufficient motive for the most vicious murder in Winona history. (more…)

Editor’s Note: E. King Alexander, Jr., the author of this post, is a Louisiana, California, and Texas attorney engaged in indigent defense in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana. He currently serves, with Julie Hayes Kilborn, as Co-Chair of the Amicus Committee of LACDL.  Before dedicating himself to indigent defense, King focused on civil litigation including intellectual properties and was a longtime professional musician.

But for the celebrity of the defendant, the prosecution of 38-year-old Corey Miller in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana for second-degree murder would have been a fairly typical one. The defendant grew up in the Calliope (now B. W. Cooper) Housing Project in New Orleans.  The fact that he is a globally-known rap recording artist, uncle of kiddie rapper Lil Romeo, and younger brother of Master P*, founder of No Limit Records, whom some readers may know best as the worst-ever hoofer on television’s Dancing With the Stars, complicated matters worse.  The icing on the cake was the fact that the defendant’s professional rapper name was, until 2005, “C-Murder.”  The media have refused to accept his change of stage moniker to “C-Miller”.  At least one of his prospective jurors last month admitted that the label “C-Murder” formed a part of his preconception of the case.  For the other, less-candid panelists, the unfortunate “gangsta” handle remained, according to Paul Purpura of the Times-Picayune, “the elephant in the room.”

The trial concerned the death by gunshot wound, when Miller was 31, of 16-year-old Steve Thomas in a Louisiana nightclub, the now-closed Platinum Room in Harvey, one of the levee-side communities on the west bank of the Mississippi River in Jefferson Parish. That is the same suburban jurisdiction that sent white nationalist David Duke to the Louisiana Legislature in 1989, setting him up for later, unsuccessful runs for the U.S. Senate and for governor of the state. The venue, Louisiana’s 24th Judicial District, is co-extensive with the parish, and is reputed to be the most political judicial district in the state.  Recent years have seen more than one of its judges trade the bench for felon status in corruption cases from fixing the child custody case of a wealthy contributor to taking kickbacks from a bail surety company in exchange for lowering bonds.

Last month’s trial was not the first in this case. A 2003 trial resulted in a unanimous verdict of guilty of second-degree murder. The defense followed with a new trial motion alleging the prosecution’s failure to disclose pertinent background information on three prosecution witnesses. Judge Martha Sassone agreed and granted the motion, but her decision’s vindication on review did not prevent her subsequent political defeat in a re-election bid in which the ruling was made a prominent issue. The shooting occurred on January 12, 2002, six days into the festive Mardi Gras carnival season which officially begins on Twelfth Night (January 6) of each year. Amid questions of what caused the altercation, described as Thomas being beaten by “a throng of men,” and how the juvenile victim came to be in a nightclub where the legal age was twenty-one, there was conflicting testimony, including one witness who would claim that he and not Miller had been the shooter. (more…)

As this article from the San Antonio Express-News suggests, Rick Perry wasn’t responsible for channelling federal funds toTom Coleman and the Panhandle Regional Narcotics Trafficking Task Force.  That was the work of Governor George W. Bush.  As president, Mr. Bush learned from his mistake and worked hard to diminish the Byrne Grant Program.  Unfortunately, Democrats have done more to demagogue the drug war (and the counterproductive largesse it spawns) than Republicans.  Barack Obama appears to be upholding that dismal tradition. 

As the article notes, Rick Perry recently made dark threats about pulling the Lone Star State out of the Union (while currying favor with Neo-Confederate secessionists with dog whistle digs at the federal government).  The Governor then backed up the tough talk by turning down $550 million in federal unemployment compensation funds. 

Now Mr. Perry is busy ingratiating himself with a wide variety of law enforcement entities by selectively doling out $90 million from Obama’s newly-expanded Byrne Grant program.  Unlike the unemployed, police officers vote.  Law enforcement is one big government program that still enjoys broad support among conservatives.

Selective socialism pays off big at election time.

Kay Bailey Hutchison, Perry’s Republican rival for Governor, is charging Perry with hypocrisy, but I doubt she has the courage to critique the Byrne program.  Here’s the sad thing: Barack Obama, a big fan of HBO’s The Wire, knows the war on drugs is a pork barrell policy failure but every Democratic president needs to pad his tuff-on-crime credentials.  Sausage-making ain’t pretty.

The Arlington School Board has bowed to the will of a socially prominent minority.  White folks in Arlington don’t want their kids exposed to a stay-in-school pep talk delivered by a black Democrat.

If we needed additional evidence that Arlington faces a racial divide this ought to do it. 

Reaction from Arlington’s minority community has been swift and defiant.  Luis Castillo, president of the League of Latin American Citizens (LULAC) released a scathing statement this morning: (more…)

We dare not bury the past while the past buries the innocent.

(This post is part of a series concerning Curtis Flowers, an innocent man convicted of a horrific crime that has divided a small Mississippi town.  Information on the Flowers case can be found here.)

In July, 1996, four people were killed execution style at a Montgomery County furniture store: owner Bertha Tardy, bookkeeper Carmen Rigby, and two hired men, Bobo Stewart and Robert Golden.  Golden was black, the other three victims were white.  Six months later, Curtis Flowers, a young black Winona resident who had worked three days for Bertha Tardy, was arrested and charged with the brutal murder of four innocent people.  Thirteen years, $300,000 and five trials later, Mr. Flowers remains behind bars and the state has been unable to obtain a final conviction.

No capital defendant in American history has ever gone to trial six times on the same facts.  Curtis Flowers of Winona, Mississippi will soon be the first.

Winona is county seat of Montgomery County, a section of Mississippi that periodically produces startling narratives. (more…)

Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in 2004 for allegedly setting the fire in which his children died.  David Grann dissected this dreadful prosecution in a 17-page article in the New Yorker.  For the time-challenged, Dahlia Lithwick has produced the Cliff Notes version of the case in Slate:  “The entire prosecution was a train wreck of eyewitness testimony that changed over time: a jailhouse snitch who was both mentally impaired and stood to benefit from testifying against Willingham, “expert” psychiatrists who never examined the accused but proclaimed him a “sociopath” based on his posters and tattoos, and local arson investigators whose conclusions were less rooted in science than a sort of spiritual performance art. And at every step in his appeals process, Willingham’s repeated claims of innocence were met with the response that he’d already had more than enough due process for a baby-killer.” (more…)

Van Jones has resigned as President Obama’s special adviser on Green Jobs.  He says he didn’t want political flak about his past to interfere with the administration’s agenda. 

Criticism of the photogenic activist has come from a variety of sources but Glenn Beck of Fox News appears to be the muck-raker in chief.  According to the egregious Beck, Jones once accused George W. Bush of planning the 9-11 attacks, made derogatory remarks about Republicans prior to his appointment and has been associated with an anti-capitalist peace organization.

I have only met Van Jones on one occasion.  We were both speaking at a progressive conference in Washington D.C.; I was on a panel on new media and Jones gave a keynote address at the banquet that opened the gathering.  He was talking about the environment.  If you have heard Al Gore lecture on the subject you get the message–it was standard issue environmentalism.  The young people at my table looked up to Jones and were thrilled to be in the same room with the man.  (more…)