The TV announcers seem surprised. What rocks have they been
hiding under? Those chickens have been headed our way for a long time.
One wonders when a pundit, in earching for the origins of Charlottesville, VA, will remember SCOTUS Chief Justice Roberts’ famous cop-out
in Shelby County v. Holder. As the Court
gutted voting rights, he claimed “…while any racial discrimination in voting is
too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that
problem speaks to current conditions.” (Emphasis mine) That is to say, “Hey,
racism is over now. We don’t need no stinkin’ voting rights legislation anymore.”
Or, will a reporter finally remind us that Ronald Reagan
first announced his presidential candidacy in Philadelphia, MS, the town where
the three civil rights workers: Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney
were slain by white supremacists in 1964.
The message was plain, “Hey y’all, I’m with you on this race
thing. Let’s make America white again.”
The chickens coming
home now have been wandering around long before Donald Trump announced his
campaign. One only had to be there when America elected Barack Obama president.
The thought of a person of color in the white house shook the foundations of
white society with enough strength to awaken Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis.
It did awaken Jim Crow like nuclear tests awakened the monsters of the 1950s’ Sci-Fi
movies. Bigotry was fashionable again in the bars, coffee shops, hunting clubs,
and hair salons of the South. Like all cancers, it soon spread over all of
America’s body.
People you thought were reasonable and sane began joking and
frolicking: photoshopping watermelon patches on the White House lawn, wearing
blackface outfits to parties, calling the gracious First Lady of our country a
gorilla, or resurrecting stale old racist jokes from the 1950s.
The chickens began to strut and peck. We ignored them,
perhaps because we were busy, perhaps because we were verifiably Caucasian, or perhaps
because we thought America was too strong to be lured into the cesspool of
racism, bigotry, and prejudice again. Maybe, after all, we did think the jokes
and jibes were a little bit funny. What’s the harm if it doesn’t affect us? Warum ärgern? Es ist nichts.
When situations arose that required complex analysis, we
discarded the complexity and chose sides. Violence drew lines that won’t be
erased for decades. It was righteous food for the flocks, and it drew them like
moths to a flame.
Other chickens, like the fundamentalist religion crowd, joined
in dragging new targets. The flocks grew. Fox “news” found an audience and
prospered, throwing enough grain on the ground to entice even the previously
sane into the mix. Old breeds infiltrated: the KKK, the Aryan Nation, even the
Neo-Nazis. Nobody seemed to notice who their flock-mates were.
It was a happy group, pecking and strutting the day away
until the Sean Hannity show came on so he could throw them their daily grain.
The chickens were happy and content.
Now they are coming home to roost and some wonder why. I
just wonder how come it took them so long.
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| Mr., we could use a man like Joseph N. Welch again. |
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