I first realized that , prisons had become the go-to institution for treating mental illness when I met Adolphus, a man in his forties who lived in Tulia, Texas, with his elderly mother. Adolphus had been diagnosed with schizophrenia by the doctors at the state hospital in Big Spring, but he rarely stayed on his meds. They made him feel sleepy, he said, like his head was stuffed with cotton.
Dolphus, as his family called him, preferred to self-medicate. He used crack cocaine. It made him feel normal.
Dolphus showed up at the door one night asking for twenty dollars “so I can get myself a room.” I offered our guest bed. “You got any HBO back there?” he asked.
It was easy to get frustrated with Dolphus. His mother called the police when his delusions got so out of control that he made her afraid.
Eventually, Dolphus was caught with a few rocks of crack. Well, not exactly. When the police asked him to turn out his pockets, he swallowed the crack and then refused to give permission to have his stomach pumped.
The DA decided that Adolphus needed to be permanently removed from the streets, but there were no hospital rooms. Public health officials recommend that states maintain 50 psychiatric beds per 100,000 population; Texas has 8.5.
So Dolphus was charged with obstructing justice and, owing to his multiple prior convictions, the prosecution was asking for fifty years.
I learned that the trial was underway when the defense attorney remembered to call a family member when the trial was half over. We raced down to Plainview, arriving just as the defense was ready to present its case. The attorney didn’t know that Dolphus was schizophrenic. Nobody thought it mattered. Dolphus’s lawyer tried to put me on the stand to testify to that fact, but since I had no standing as a medical expert, the judge refused to let me testify and the jury was left in the dark. (more…)
Paige Patterson says it’s okay for a devout Muslim to study at Southwestern Theological Seminary. Why is this a big deal? I doubt the seminaries affiliated with American Baptist or Cooperative Baptist congregations would have a problem enrolling Ghassan Nagagreh, a student who believes there is no God but Allah and that Mohammed is his prophet.
But there are good reasons why even the Washington Post took notice when the president of Southwestern Seminary pulled strings on behalf of of a non-Christian student.
Paige Patterson is committed to Truth with a capital “T”. Scientifically verifiable truth; the kind you can take to the bank. Make no mistake, fundamentalism has its advantages. Start with the a priori assumption that every jot and tittle of the Bible springs directly from the mind of God, and things get real simple.
If the Bible says only orthodox Christians are bound for glory, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and Muslims need not apply. No exceptions.
If the Book says women can’t exercise authority over men, there will be no female pastors, simple as that. (more…)
It takes time to wrap your head around education reform. The vocabulary is daunting: Common Core, charter schools, VAM, high stakes testing, Race to the Top. And just when you think you’ve mastered the material, you realize that the details don’t matter because the education reform debate is being driven by money. First you have the poor people who don’t have enough money to send their kids to school with a full stomach. Secondly, a handful of philanthropists has distorted the reform debate by placing far too much money on the table.
The school reform issue boils down to a simple question: who is responsible for low student achievement? Should we blame a society with a remarkably high tolerance for poverty; or should we blame educators and administrators who blame poverty for their poor performance? (more…)
Would Jesus support the death penalty? Mother Theresa posed the question to the Governor of California in 1990. She was pretty sure he knew the answer.
Only 5 percent of Americans believe that Jesus would support government’s ability to execute the worst criminals. Two percent of Catholics, 8 percent of Protestants, and 10 percent of practicing Christians said their faith’s founder would offer his support.
The Barna poll revealed that 42% of Christian Baby Boomers believe the government should have the right to execute the worst criminals (whatever Jesus might think).
But pose the same question to Christian millennials (roughly those between 18 and 30) and only 32% give an affirmative answer.
Things get really interesting when the death penalty question is posed to Christians who are particularly serious about their faith. The Barna study
“showed an even sharper difference in support for the death penalty among “practicing Christians,” which Barna defined as those who say faith is very important to their lives and have attended church at least once in the last month. Nearly half of practicing Christian boomers support the government’s right to execute the worst criminals, while only 23 percent of practicing Christian millennials do.”
Did you catch that?
When you ask boomers about the death penalty, religious devotion increases support for the death penalty by ten points (give or take); but devout millennials are ten point less likely to support the death penalty than the nominally religious members of their cohort.
The United States has earned the unenviable title “the incarceration nation.” We lock up six times as many people as countries like Canada and the United Kingdom. And Louisiana owns the highest rate of incarceration in America. Theo Shaw and Robert Bailey, Jr. came close to serving a decade or more in prison; instead, both young men have graduated from college and are readying themselves for even bigger things. On Friday, Theo was the subject of a human interest piece in the NO’s Times Picayune. The next day, Robert Bailey, Jr. graduated from Grambling University and joined the army.
Theo Shaw was at the bottom of his high school class when he was arrested for participating in a high school beat down. But his attorneys believed in him so much that, eventually, Theo started believing in himself. He had to dig himself out of a big academic hole, but he went at the task with grit and determination. He is currently working with the Southern Poverty Law Center in New Orleans and is doing a wonderful job.
Robert Bailey, Jr. with his proud family
Robert Bailey could have been serving time in an isolated Louisiana lock-up; instead, he will be serving his country in the military. He just needed a chance.
That’s why I decided to bring the story of the Jena 6 to national attention. It took some good fortune and the assistance of a broad network of advocacy groups and pro bono attorneys, but we got the job done. In most cases, young men like Theo and Robert have no one to speak for them; no one to believe in them more than they believe in themselves. We can’t save each young person individually; we need to reform the system. That is precisely what Theodore Shaw is doing.
As notorious black youth go, Marshall Coulter can’t hold a candle to Theodore Shaw. Coulter, described by family as a “professional thief,” hopped a Marigny homeowner’s fence in dead of night last July, and the homeowner shot him in the head. That shooting and two more arrests have made Coulter infamous in New Orleans. (more…)
It was good to see the State Board of Education race in North Texas getting some well-deserved attention in the Texas Tribune. Pat Hardy has been one of the sensible conservatives on the State Board for a dozen years, but for some that’s not enough. Real conservatives want creation science taught in Texas classrooms. Real conservatives must believe that Texas school children are being taught that the 9-11 terrorists were freedom fighters and that communism is terrific.
Or so says Eric Mahroum, Hardy’s opponent in the imminent runoff election.
Hardy has been placed in a difficult position. Mahroum’s contentions may sound crazy to folks who don’t live in Texas, but most of them have been written into the state’s Republican platform (which, much to the embarrassment of moderate Republicans, reads like Tea Party screed from beginning to end). This explains Mahroum’s central contention:
She’s here for the Republican Party and that means she has to represent her party and our platform.”
The article mentions Democratic candidate Nancy Bean (my wife in case you were wondering) only in passing, the assumption being that either Republican candidate will have a powerful advantage in November. Perhaps. But if the Tea Party man wins this runoff, a lot of moderate Republicans will be tempted to vote for the alternative candidate even if it means losing the convenience of voting a straight ticket.
One could comment on the confused dishonesty of Mahroum’s rhetoric, but his appeal to the scriptural authority of the Republican platform is the central issue at this point. Party platforms are almost always written by the activist wing of the state party, and this document is no exception. Many Republicans flatly disagree with their party’s platform, but they continue to vote for the red team anyway because, well, what would the neighbors think?
But moderate Republicans can tolerate only so much idiocy. There is a limit. Where the line is drawn is anybody’s guess; but if Pat Hardy loses this runoff election, we may find out.
Pat Hardy, a 12-year incumbent on the State Board of Education, is facing a tough challenge from a conservative activist in a Republican primary runoff that could shift the balance of power on the board.
Tea Party groups in the district, which includes Parker County and parts of Tarrant and Dallas counties, have thrown their support behind Hardy’s opponent, Eric Mahroum of Fort Worth, a restaurant manager who has no teaching or school administrative experience and is expected to vote with the far-right voting bloc on the 15-member, Republican-dominated board. Hardy has drawn criticism for taking votes with Democrats on the board, including on issues like teaching creationism alongside evolution in the state’s public schools. (more…)
The New York Times has a wonderful obituary celebrating the work and legacy of ethicist Glen Stassen. Paul Vitello’s lengthy article does justice to Stassen’s progressive Republican father and highlights Glen’s influential advocacy work, much of which took place during the years between my two sojourns at Southern seminary in Louisville (1980-1989). For instance,
Dr. Stassen was among the few prominent evangelical leaders to publicly challenge the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the leader of the Moral Majority, over his electioneering on behalf of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaigns in 1980 and 1984. And he was among the few to criticize Reagan over his domestic spending cuts, his military buildup and his use of the phrase “evil empire” in 1983 to describe the Soviet Union.
He went on to help mobilize the international disarmament movement that, by some accounts, played a role in removing intermediate range nuclear missiles from Western Europe in the late 1980s and early ’90s.
And there is this:
At the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., where he became a professor of Christian ethics in 1976, Dr. Stassen clashed with administrators who urged faculty members to place ideas like prohibiting abortion, the subordination of women in the family and the literal truth of biblical texts at the core of their teaching.
A bit of nuance would be helpful here. Although I’m sure Stassen made Southern presidents Duke McCall and Roy Lee Honeycutt nervous from time to time, Glen was generally at home in the pragmatic conservatism of the 70s and 80s. The overt fundamentalism of Albert Mohler and the puppet masters who elevated an untested neophyte to the presidency of the denomination’s flagship seminary changed all that. Glen stayed at Southern four years into Mohler’s reign, a testament to Dr. Stassen’s commitment to peacemaking. To quote Bob Dylan, “anyone with any sense had already left town.”
Here’s my favorite bit:
In the early 1980s, while on a research sabbatical in Germany, Dr. Stassen served as a liaison between the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign in the United States and several European peace groups.
He was inspired, he said, by the grass-roots activism he saw there: demonstrations drawing hundreds of thousands of people to protest plans for basing NATO missiles in West Germany and 30,000 churches joining in peace forums that filled pews to capacity.
When he returned home, he assumed a greater leadership role in the disarmament movement, serving as co-chairman of the freeze campaign’s strategy committee, a coalition of peace and labor groups that helped organize a protest in Central Park in 1982 that drew about one million demonstrators.
“A thousand things happened to bring about the slow-dawning realization that a freeze was in the interests of both sides,” Dr. Stassen wrote, referring to the 1987 treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union that finally ended the buildup. “People had more of the power and took more of the initiative than is usually perceived.”
It is always in the government’s interest to play down “the role of the people,” he added. “But the treaty would not have happened without them.”
Four people died on the evening of April 26, 2014 when a vehicle driven the wrong direction on Texas highway 287 slammed head-on into a vehicle carrying four passengers. No one knows why Terri Johnson, forty year-old Wise County Justice of the Peace, was driving the wrong way, although alcohol has been ruled out as an explanation.
Authorities were slow to release the names of the three other persons killed in the head-on collision and they have been largely overlooked in the reporting of the story. They weren’t responsible for the accident, and they didn’t hold prominent positions in the community, so all the attention descended on Ms. Johnson.
Last Saturday, my wife Nancy and I drove three and a half hours to Quanah, Texas to attend the joint funeral of the three semi-anonymous victims of this unspeakable tragedy: Juan Rios, 32, of Quanah, his wife, Amy Culwell, and Juan’s mother, Terry Rios, 50, also of Quanah. Nancy and I were in attendance because Amy is Nancy’s cousin, the daughter of Craig Culwell of Tulia, Nancy’s step-uncle.
I had never met Juan, Amy or Sherry, and sometimes felt like a bit of an impostor. But the 800 people who jammed First Baptist Church of Quanah knew these people and hard grief was etched in every face we met. The sanctuary might have held 500 people sitting shoulder to shoulder, with 300 more pressed along the walls and foyer. There must have been 100 floral bouquets arrayed across the front of the sanctuary.
There was something remarkable about the entire experience, and four days later I’m still trying to figure out what it was.
I suspect the families had a hard time finding clergy willing to preside at the funeral. Juan and his mother Terry were both Roman Catholic while Amy belonged to the Church of Christ. This isn’t the gay-marriage-blessing United Church of Christ we’re talking about here; this is the southern Church of Christ, the staunchly conservative wing of the Restoration Movement that refuses to worship or “fellowship” with Baptists. Catholics are right out.
As a result, the two officiants were a Catholic deacon who serves three North Texas parishes (the shortage of priests grows more acute each year) and a Baptist from a small church in a small town I had never heard of. Unlike most of their clerical colleagues, these men were willing to give solace to a deeply traumatized community even if it meant stretching the rules a bit. If your theology doesn’t let you respond to deep grief, you need a new theology.
Both officiants bent over backwards to be inclusive and welcoming. “We come from different backgrounds and denominations,” the Catholic deacon declared, “but we all follow Jesus and we all want to get to heaven.” When he asked how many of us were Christians every hand shot into the air. Well, maybe not every hand. He didn’t ask if there were any atheists or agnostics in the crowd, or if some preferred the “spiritual but not religious” label. That’s not a thing in Quanah, Texas.
Quanah Parker
The town is named after Quanah Parker, the Comanche leader who defied the US Army for years before finally being driven onto an Oklahoma reservation by a lack of food and good options. Colonel Ranald McKenzie and his soldiers brought Quanah’s followers to heel by slaughtering 1500 Comanche horses. Since a Comanche warrior is out of business without his horse, Quanah and his men surrendered to the white man and quickly adapted to his ways. The Comanche leader went on hunting trips with Teddy Roosevelt and started his own church–an adaptation of Christianity famous for its use of sacred peyote. “The White Man goes into his church and talks about Jesus,” Quanah said, “The Indian goes into his tipi and talks with Jesus.”
Like Quanah Parker, the people of North Texas are socially adaptable, and it was on display during the worship service. I couldn’t get over the diversity of the congregation–it looked exactly like the demographic breakdown of the surrounding community. Most of the mourners were white, but many were Latino and the African American community was surprisingly well represented.
I doubt very much that anyone has made a concerted effort at racial reconciliation in Quanah, Texas. That sort of thing would be frowned upon. But the three people who died in a tragic car wreck were well known in the community. Juan was a trucker and his Anglo wife, Amy, worked for years as a hair dresser. Both had attended high school in the same general vicinity and, a dozen years after graduation, encountered their old school friends on a regular basis.
The Sunday morning worship hour may be the most segregated hour in America; but when the school bell rings on Monday morning, we are about as integrated as we ever get, especially in small Texas towns where private schools aren’t an option and there’s just one school.
I have no way of knowing how many of the 800 people crowded into the sanctuary were regular church attenders. If the music was anything to go by, not many. I am used to officiating at funerals where the family has no church connection, but back in the day folks seemed to know a hymn or two, or they just let me pick the music. At the funeral in Quanah, the family picked the music, sometimes with eyebrow-raising results.
It could be argued that Country music, largely because it deals with the ordinary stuff of life, offers its own brand of spirituality. Take Luke Bryan’s recent hit, And Drink a Beer. Bryan calls the song “a memorial” because it was inspired by the untimely deaths of two family members.
When I got the news today
I didn’t know what to say.
So I just hung up the phone.
I took a walk to clear my head,
This is where the walking lead
Can’t believe you’re really gone
Don’t feel like going home
So I’m gonna sit right here
On the edge of this pier
Watch the sunset disappear
And drink a beer.
When that last line came over the PA system (there was no live music at all) all the church folk did a double take. Did the singer just say what we think he said?
Luke Bryan didn’t head down to the local church and visit with his pastor when the bad news arrived–he walked to the edge of a pier and drank a beer. There aren’t many piers in dry North Texas, but I suspect most of the folks on hand for this funeral deal with their grief by picking up a cold one.
Other than Kris Kristofferson’s One Day at a Time, Sweet Jesus, none of the songs were particularly religious. The recessional was Mariah Carey’s take on the old Harry Nillson song I Can’t Live, if Living is Without You. It’s a brilliant pop song, but there’s nothing remotely hopeful about it. But then we are talking about the deaths of three innocent people who by all rights ought to be alive, so the lyrics fit the occasion to perfection.
Well I can’t forget this evening
Or your face as you were leaving
But I guess that’s just the way the story goes
You always smile but in your eyes
Your sorrow shows, yes it shows
I can’t live, if living is without you
I can’t live, I can’t give anymore.
A lot of people in the room felt precisely that way. In fact, the lyrics of the songs that were played evoked deep sobs and emotional gasps throughout the room, so I guess they did their job.
The pastors said all the expected things about the dearly departed being in a better place, walking with Jesus, being reunited with family members, and all the rest, but it didn’t fit the occasion and the preachers appeared to know it. They also gave the mourners permission to be mad at God and assured us that God was big enough to take it. (Thirty years ago, such sentiments would have been almost unthinkable.) I suspect the country songs communicated because they didn’t try to say too much. In the face of senseless tragedy, there isn’t much to say.
When the church no longer central plays a central role, people find alternative communities of consolation. The folks who raised their hands when asked if they were Christians were sincere. Of course they were Christians. They are Texans, for God’s sake, and being a Christian is just part of the mix even if you rarely get up in time for worship on Sunday morning. But you didn’t sense that religion was the primary glue holding this group together. There must have been 60 people, most of them women, wearing Dallas Cowboy uniforms. In the bulletin, Terry Ann Rios was pictured in a Cowboy jersey–I guess she was a big fan. So were her friends. Watching the ‘Boys while grilling burgers and drinking beer is a big deal in small Texas towns, so showing up to a funeral in Cowboy blue and white makes a certain kind of sense. It evoked kinship and a sense of shared identity.
In similar fashion, the trucker friends of the fallen Juan Rios made a point of driving their Kenworth and Peterbilt trucks to the church and they led the processional to the interment service ten miles to the north. It was 45 degrees F when Nancy and I got up that Saturday morning, but it was 95 when we arrived at the country cemetery shortly after noon. We must have walked half a mile to the graveside service, passing at least forty trucks parked in long rows along the way. The truckers formed a close-knit fraternity, an alternative church of sorts. They wanted to make a statement, and they made it.
North Texas is changing. The churches, once the heart and soul of every Texas community, are gradually losing their influence, especially among the beer-drinking crowd who watch the Cowboys on television, holler for the local high school team Friday nights, listen to country music, and rarely make it to church. This slice of Texas rarely votes, they don’t know anybody who’s anybody, they are over-represented in the state’s jails and prisons, they work hard at demanding and often demeaning jobs, and when they die the papers and the TV crew from Fort Worth pay little attention. So they cobble together an alternate culture in places where no one is looking, using bits and pieces of whatever lies close at hand and hanging onto one another for dear life.
As three balloons were released into the air a cheer rose from the crowd. Then we made our way back to our vehicles. I couldn’t help noticing the confederate flag flapping beside one of the headstones, a sinister reflection of the old Texas. Somebody felt they were honoring the memory of a loved one by planting a symbol of hatred and division by their grave. Maybe they thought the deceased would derive some consolation from the stars and bars. I wondered how these Old South holdouts, the quick and the dead, would feel about the racially diverse group of mourners filing out of the cemetery. Texas might not be changing in ways conservatives or liberals might desire, but in its own ornery way, Texas is changing in hopeful ways few of us comprehend . A funeral in Quanah, Texas gave me a glimpse into one emerging slice of the new Texas, and there’s a lot there to like.
I am gratified to see the many tributes to Glen Stassen that have been appeared in the wake of his death last week. My wife Nancy and I got to know Glen very well in the late 1970s when we were both students at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The nuclear power industry was gearing up at the time and a plant was scheduled for construction across the Ohio River in Indiana. If Glen hadn’t brought this to our attention we would have remained oblivious–(Lord knows, none of our other professors were talking about it). Instead, Nancy and I found ourselves in Indiana protesting a nuclear plant that, thankfully, was never built.
Glen Stassen was in love with Jesus’ vision of the kingdom of God. Other professors emphasized Jesus’ kingdom teaching on occasion (I am thinking of Frank Stagg in particular), but Glen built his entire theology on a kingdom foundation. Some would say he was more an Anabaptist than a Baptist, but Glen would have called that a distinction without a difference.
Glen was one of the most intelligent people on the planet, but that isn’t what anyone remembers about him. When you dropped by his office, the books were double stacked because the ample shelves couldn’t contain his personal library. But there was a humility to the man; he was all about converting the ideas of Jesus into action (“praxis” was the word he used).
I will never forget the “ethics luncheons” Glen helped organize at Southern. On one occasion, Duke McCall, the recently retired president of the seminary, defended American economic policy in South America against the critique of the liberation theologians. McCall counted the presidents of several international firms among his personal friends, he told us, and they had assured him that the American presence in the Third World was an unmitigated blessing. Glen didn’t agree, obviously, but he didn’t take the disagreement personally. Glen didn’t think about whether his shirt was tucked in, whether his hair was brushed, what neighborhood he lived in, or what other people thought of him. He just wanted to change the world. (more…)
If a random Google search is anything to go by, it was Ralph Waldo Emerson who originated this clever quip, albeit in a slightly altered form:
“I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives.”
It’s clever, even if the Emerson attribution is somebody’s little internet joke. Nevertheless, I disagree. Sorry chickens, sometimes motives must be questioned.
Take Donald Sterling, for instance. Please, somebody, take Donald Sterling.
The Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP was poised to give the notorious racist a lifetime service award when news broke that Sterling had been caught on tape making patently racist remarks about the very people who wished to honor him.
Incredibly, this would have been the civil rights organization’s second lifetime achievement award to Sterling.
There must be some explanation. And there is. Sort of. Sterling had made a series of modest donations to the NAACP over the years and the group wanted to keep the cash flowing.
Did NAACP organizers really believe that Donald Sterling deserved a humanitarian award? Almost certainly not.
Did they care? Same answer.
Motives matter. The NBA will soon deprive Mr. Sterling of his right to own the Los Angeles Clippers, but the octogenarian’s racial views have been a poorly guarded secret for years. In 2009, Sterling was sued by Clipper manager, Elgin Baylor, for discrimination based on age and race. Sterling repeatedly claimed that he wanted to have a bunch of poor black guys from the South playing under a Caucasian coach. Nobody in the NBA intervened.
The tape released by Sterling’s “girlfriend” V. Stiviano is singularly depressing. The Clipper’s manager is hurt that she would accuse him of racism. He is devastated that she would embarrass him by allowing herself to be photographed with Magic Johnson and, heaven forfend, memorializing the magical moment on Instagram. He repeatedly threatens to throw her over for a more accommodating woman if she doesn’t quit her lowdown ways.
In short, Sterling comes off sounding like a man who has spent his entire adult life surrounded by groveling toadies. Donald gets to say anything he wants, no matter how puerile and degrading. As a man of means, his motives don’t matter. And if he creates offense, he can cleanse his reputation with a paltry donation.
Cliven Bundy, the man widely feted for standing up to the bullying tactics of Uncle Sam, lost his support overnight when he shared his take on “the negro” with New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney.
“They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”
Like Donald Sterling, Cliven Bundy doesn’t think of himself as a racist. He introduced his remarks by saying it would be a shame if the “colored” people and “the Spanish” had to go back to the way things used to be. He then suggests that “the negro” was happier under slavery.
When his remarks spawned a tidal wave of outrage from sea to shining sea, Bundy was taken aback. “Was it something I said?”
Bundy was used to sharing his views with white people who shared his warped worldview and had no idea folks would take offense.
Sterling didn’t want his girlfriend associating publicly with “minorities” because he assumed “the world” would be offended.
With the media hanging on his every syllable, rancher Bundy assumed that his growing fan club would be enlightened and informed by his views on “the negro.”
No one asked why Bundy had been letting his cattle graze on government land since 1993 without paying the required fee. Not a single eye brow arched when the grand old man of the rolling plains allowed that the federal government had no legitimacy and therefore no authority. No one asked where these views come from. No one questioned the man’s motives.
Motives matter. Sure, plenty of westerners think the feds own too much land, or that federal officials can be heavy-handed. But when a man asserts that the United States of America is a legal fiction he is free to ignore, we’re dealing with something radical.
Historically, when Americans question the legitimacy of the federal government, the motive is racial resentment. So it was in the South before and during the Civil War. So it was during the nation’s brief flirtation with Reconstruction. So it was in the halcyon days of the civil rights movement. When the federal government ended slavery and segregation by legislative fiat reinforced, when necessary, by force of arms, the response has been predictable.
Motives matter. When a man like Cliven Bundy denies the authority of the United States to limit his freedom in any way, we need to ask why. Mr. Bundy shouldn’t have to reveal his deep-seated racism for all the world to see before we ask the obvious question.
Why are we willing to celebrate the heroism of a Cliven Bundy or hand out humanitarian awards to the likes of Donald Sterling right up to the moment they fly into a racist rant? And why, when the ugly truth is revealed, is the nation shocked, shocked! that anyone could think that way fourteen years into the twenty-first century?
Sure, Sterling deserves to lose his team (even if he profits richly from his humiliation). But isn’t there something a wee bit creepy about the orgy of recrimination we have witnessed on Sports Central and the evening news? The talking heads have been in a competition to see who could express the deepest outrage. Its almost as if we need to burn a token racist at the stake of public opinion every now and then to assure ourselves that we are a post-racial nation.
Donald Sterling likely had good reason to fear that his reputation would suffer if his girlfriend showed up in the wrong company. Guys like Stirling hang out with guys like Stirling; guys like Bundy hang out with guys like Bundy. There are millions of unreconstructed racists out there, folks, and the vast majority of these people would eschew the racist label. They’re just tellin’ it like it is. They’re all about free speech and the first amendment. They’re American heroes who resist the dictates of the politically correct.
But let one of these heroes slip up and use the n-word and we break out the tar and feathers. You can act like a racist so long as you don’t talk like one. Actually, you can talk like a racist so long as you avoid epithets and slurs.
Men like Donald Sterling and Cliven Bundy are the way they are because nobody questioned their motives. If we told them the truth, the donations might dry up. If we ask too many questions, our all-American hero story might vanish with the western wind.
So we gain the donation or the killer story and lose our souls.
If a random Google search is anything to go by, it was Ralph Waldo Emerson who originated this clever quip, albeit in a slightly altered form:
Friends of Justice 