When you think of terrorist attacks during the month of September, at least in the past seven years, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Penatgon are the ones that jump to mind first.

But another kind of terrorist attack happened in the month of September, and it happened 45 years ago today, on a quiet Sunday morning, when several men connected to a Ku Klux Klan group planted sticks of dynamite outside the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church, a black church in Birmingham, Alabama.  Shortly after the sermon ended, as young children were walking towards the basement for closing prayers, the dynamite exploded, killing four young girls.

Sixteenth Street Baptist Church had been a rallying point in the civil rights movement, and the bombing was clearly meant to send a stern message.

A message that some, unfortunately, would still like to send today.  What does it take for some people to learn from tragedy and past mistakes?  And why does it sometimes take so long?

My friend Linda wrote a new column recently called, “Sexism, Racism, Politics and Double Standards,” in which she argued that this year’s election has bared all of our hypocrisy. She writes:

“We deny it, but there are plenty of us who just can’t get comfortable with the notion of a woman in the White House. She might be smart enough, but with PMS and menopause–well, you know. Women are too emotional. A man is a safer choice. Right? Wrong. Men get by with things that women don’t. A tough-talking man is bold. He’s assertive. A good thing. A tough-talking woman? She’s a b*tch. She’s aggressive. Not a good thing. A man who won’t keep his fly zipped? Honey, there’s a real man. He’s too much man for just one woman. ‘Boys will be boys…’ There’s your conventional wisdom at work. Boys are expected to be bad. There is no ‘Girls will be girls…’ mantra to hide behind. A woman with a yen to stray isn’t ‘too much woman for just one man.’ She’s a tramp. There are no words like “tramp” or “slut” for a promiscuous male.

“An equal number of us are skittish about electing an African American president. We white folks have been slow to accept the lofty idea that the color of a man’s skin has no bearing on his worth, his character or his intellectual capacity. We don’t like admitting to bigotry, but we’re guilty nonetheless.”

It goes further than this, too.

There are some women who are only supporting Hillary because they want to see a woman elected. There are some blacks supporting Obama only because he’s a man of color. I’ve seen black female voters talk about how conflicted they were about which of the two to side with, as if picking Obama makes them less of a woman and picking Clinton makes them less black.

And all along, what they should have been focusing on is which one more closely matches their political views.

There are even some blacks who secretly want Obama to win, but are hestitant to vote for him for fear that a crazy white will try to harm him and that they, the black voters, will somehow share in the responsibility. They’re letting generations of fear and racial targeting influence who they’ll cast a vote for in November.

There are Christians who are hiding behind those “rumors” about Obama being Muslim — and how anyone can believe that after all of the repeated blowups over Obama’s Christian minister, the wrong Rev. Jeremiah Wright is beyond me — and using those rumors as an excuse to vote for someone else. Some of these same people said they’d never be able to vote for a Mormon. Mitt Romney could have attended church ten times as much as these narrow-minded bible-thumpers, and could have lived a life a hundred times more moral, but he wasn’t in their sanctuary, so he wouldn’t have gotten their vote.

Recently, over at The Blue Voice, one of the contributors wrote a piece about her frustration about all the calls for Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race. This was before last Tuesday, when the nominee was all but decided once and for all. But this particular writer said something that really set me off: If Hillary were a man, there wouldn’t be this pressure to step down.

Really?

I get so tired of Clinton’s female supporters trying to play the gender card all the time. Tell Mike Huckabee that if Clinton were a man, no one would question why she was still holding on despite mathematical improbability. I bet he’d raise his eyebrows at you and then say something seemingly sweet but with a nice little bite, as we Southern Baptists have been known to do at times. Long before it became mathematically impossible for Huckabee to be the nominee, people were already looking at him like he was a lunatic for even bothering to show up at his own political rallies. And the selection for a nominee has gone swimmingly by comparison for Republicans.

I have been backing Obama, not because he’s black or because he’s a man; I have backed him because research indicates that he and Clinton’s positions are the closest to my own.  When I was able to narrow it down to the two of them, I selected Obama because I believe him more:  I think Hillary too often says what she thinks we want to hear.

If you haven’t selected a candidate, and are secretly wrestling with some kind of bias, I’ll wrap this post up with Linda’s ending:

“How should these simple truths impact our votes? We vote for the candidate who’s smart enough, whose positions on the war, the economy, education, health care and the environment most closely represent our own priorities. If you’re a bit sexist, but like Clinton’s political stance, vote for her tough male half. If you’re a tad racist, but you like Obama’s vision, remember his mama. Vote for the white half.”

Sometimes the truth can sting a little.

On Friday, Barack Obama said, “It has been a rough couple of weeks.” Truer words have rarely been spoken by a politician.

Religion and politics shouldn’t mix. You need look no further than the campaigns of John McCain or Barack Obama recently for classic examples of why. By now, surely everyone has heard about Barack Obama’s pastor, the very wrong Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the fiery soundbites from a 2003 sermon that have made their way across all media platforms and the blogosphere.

You have probably also heard of the controversy with John McCain caused by the also-wrong Rev. John Hagee, who made eyebrow-raising remarks about Hurricane Katrina’s real purpose in the grand scheme of things.

One of my closest friends, my “adopted mom,” Linda, whom I have mentioned and linked before, wrote an article over at Huffington Post about the double standard in the coverage of the Obama-Wright and McCain-Hagee stories.

Back in 2006, Hagee had this to say about Hurricane Katrina:

“I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are — were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know that there are people who demur from that, but I believe that the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment. And I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.”

Here’s what Linda had to say about Hagee’s train (wreck) of thought:

“In the Gospel According to John Hagee, God got fed up and hurled Hurricane Katrina at New Orleans in a raging fit of divine retribution.

“Trouble is, thousands of folks along the entire Gulf Coast suffered and died. Whole towns, innocent communities, were wiped out; folks who had nothing to do with Sin City, had never been there and never intended to go. Thousands of them lost their homes, their schools, their jobs. Their families. Many of them are still suffering, still displaced.

“If Hagee’s right about God’s direct and purposeful involvement, we have another problem. God’s aim is not so good. He hit the Ninth Ward, home of the city’s poorest citizens. Hit ‘em hard. Nothing much was left of it but debris and dead bodies. God got middle class neighborhoods, too. But He missed the French Quarter; the black heart of Louisiana’s Sodom (or Gomorrah, take your pick) was left unscathed. And that makes no sense at all.

“Unless John Hagee’s a hate-mongering hot-head who uses the pulpit badly…and God had nothing to do with the disaster that struck the Gulf Coast. Sometimes you just can’t go along with every word you hear on Sunday morning. Pastors are human, they’re flawed like the rest of us–and sometimes they’re wrong.”

Linda goes on to criticize the media for giving McCain what she says amounts to a free pass on his association with Hagee. Hagee endorsed McCain, but McCain does not attend Hagee’s church. As Linda points out, McCain sought Hagee’s endorsement to impress the religious right, and even more importantly, to get their votes.

But since McCain himself says he doesn’t agree with everything Hagee says, it’s all supposed to be okay, right?

Wrong. Continue reading “Four Wrongs Don’t Make Anyone Right”

Actors Van Hansis and Jake Silbermann aren’t a gay couple, but they play one on TV. Actress Cate Blanchett isn’t male, but she played one in a movie. Actor Robert Downey, Jr., isn’t black…

Can you guess where this is going?

Yes, Downey is now portraying a black man in a new motion picture directed by Ben Stiller. The film, Tropic Thunder, is about a group of actors hired for a movie about Vietnam who find themselves dropped in a real jungle in the middle of a battle they don’t realize is real. Downey plays a black actor.

But it isn’t the same scenario as the 1980s flick Soul Man, in which C. Thomas Howell’s character made himself up as a black man to be able to attend college on a black scholarship; the audience is supposed to assume from the beginning that the character — and presumably the actor portraying him — is indeed black.

A still released ahead of the movie shows the successful make-up job and I suspect that the casual observer would never recognize Downey if they didn’t know who he really was. But fancy disguises aside, the casting is already causing controversy, and Downey has prepared himself for more, according to The Daily Mail, which reports some initial reactions:

“I’m not black and I find it offensive; are there not any talented enough black actors out in the world that they feel the need to hire a white guy to do a black guy?”

“They are infering that there are no good enough black actors to play a black person.”

There were similar reactions in 2006 when producers of CBS’s soap As The World Turns introduced a storyline in which Hansis’s character, Luke, came out to his parents, longtime characters Lily and Holden. And as the storyline has heated up, including the appearance of a love interest in the form of Silbermann, who plays Noah, so has the controversy.

But in this case, time has changed the direction of the talk, from questioning why the 52-year-old soap couldn’t hire actors who are actually gay to why the show hasn’t allowed the couple more than a single attention-getting kiss. It seems that not only gay fans of the show, but women as well, want to see more sparks between the characters, whom they have nicknamed “Nuke.” (That detail provides men with the answer to a question they’ve wondered for years: apparently there are some women for whom the thought of guy-on-guy action is as appealing as girl-on-girl action is to some men…but I digress.)

Then there was Blanchett, who revealed last year that she strapped down her breasts and “went for it” to portray rock icon Bob Dylan in the biopic I’m Not Here. She was one of seven to play Dylan in the film, and was the only female.

I don’t recall any men complaining about that casting. If anything, I heard that people actually were looking forward to seeing the performance, though I suspect many anticipated it the way a Nascar fan goes to a race anticipating a major pile-up.

Is it reasonable that only black actors should play black characters? Or that only gay actors portray homosexuals? Or even that men can’t play women and vice versa?

I don’t think so. I think different performers can bring different things to the table in a roll. And firsthand familiarity isn’t a necessity for other aspects of an actor. An actor need not kill someone before he can play a murderer on CSI:. An actress isn’t required to cheat on her real-life husband just so she can play an adulterous vixen on Days of Our Lives.

It’s supposed to be about what an actor brings to a role, even when that roll might be a bit of a stretch.  It’s so ridiculous to suggest that a situation like Downey’s is an admission that there are no black actors “good enough” to play a black man that I am amazed anyone would make the argument; how does a black actor “play” black?

The question should be about how a white actor would “play” a black man: I can understand the potential for offense if he were to portray a black man as a jive-talking “brotha” right out of 1970s stereotypes.  It doesn’t appear from what has been said so far that this was the intent in Downey’s case.  But I wonder how many who are protesting will actually go see the film to find out for themselves.

Are any of these scenarios — gender-bending, race-bending or orientation-bending — particularly offensive to you?

Recently, I wrote a post about Fred Thompson’s appearance on NBC’s Today show, during which he complained about the media running with a story that he was rumored to be on the verge of dropping out of the race — of course, he has dropped out, but let’s ignore that little part — then said that the media ought to check with him before reporting what someone else had to say. He then made claims against an unnamed campaign, and when Lester Holt asked for elaboration, Thompson was oddly mum, actually refusing to provide any facts or substantiation, demonstrating that his position about the media “checking their facts” only applied when something bad was said about him, not anyone else.

Bill Clinton demonstrated this week in South Carolina that he is capable of pulling the same kind of “I’m going to blame the media then make myself part of the problem” double standard.

Responding to reporter questions about Dick Harpootlian (former head of SC’s Democratic Party) who called the former president’s comments about the Obama campaign “reprehensible,” Clinton went into a long, drawn-out tirade during which his advisers were probably secretly wishing he’d be struck with sudden laryngitis.

His almost five-minute-long finger-pointing diatribe included this:

“This rhetoric is getting a little carried away here. … And the final thing I would like to say is, you’re asking me about this, and you sat through this whole meeting. Not one single, solitary soul asked about any of this. And they never do. They are feeding you this because they know this is what you want to cover. This is what you live for. But this hurts the people of South Carolina, because the people of South Carolina are coming to these meetings and asking questions about what they care about. And what they care about is not going to be in the news coverage tonight because you don’t care about it. What you care about is this. And the Obama people know that. So they just spin you up on this and you happily go along.”

On the surface, it’s a valid point. The people in the crowd aren’t asking Bill or Hillary what they think about a former Democratic party head accusing them of playing the race card against Barack Obama. But take that with a grain of salt: the people who attend such meetings are generally people who support Bill and Hillary — make that Hillary and Bill — so there’s no reason for them to ask anything pointed. That’s what reporters are supposed to do.

I’m sure Hillary and Bill wouldn’t get even a little upset if a reporter asked a similar question of another candidate or candidate’s spouse accused of playing the gender card. I’m quite sure that they would probably be cheering at the television set.

I’m also quite sure that Clinton is bright enough to know that by becoming so animated and getting somewhat “fired up,” he was pretty much guaranteeing that his comments would end up on the media he was so clearly accusing of focusing on the wrong thing.

To put it another way, he complained about a burning fire by throwing gasoline on it.

A deadpan “That’s not even worth a response” would have been so much better suited to accomplishing the goal he seemed to want everyone to believe he had: to kill the “non-story” once and for all. I’m sure I’m not telling you anything he didn’t know all too well.

Who’s trying to fool who, Bill?

America paused to honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. today.  Here are a few words of King’s wisdom, every bit as applicable and important today as when he first delivered them.

“When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.”

“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.”

“Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.”

“Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.”

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

“Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

“Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars… Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” 

If you watched certain episodes of the 1970s hit sitcom Sanford & Son on TV Land, then watched the same episode on Canada’s TVTropolis, you might or might not notice some subtle differences between the two showings.

Notably, the “N-word” has been removed from the reruns in the United States, while Canada still airs them.

For example, in the episode, “Fred Sanford, Legal Eagle,” Sanford’s son receives a traffic ticket. Arguing his son’s case before a judge, Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx) plays the race card:

Fred: Why don’t you arrest some white drivers?

Policeman: I do.

Fred: You do? Well, where are they? Look at all these n*****s in here. There’s enough n*****s in here to make a Tarzan movie.

The TV Land version cuts Fred’s remark at the “Well, where are they?” line.

In another episode, called “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe,” an old friend visits Fred Sanford’s home claiming to be his son’s real father. Upon telling Fred’s sister-in-law, Esther, of the claim, she stands up, gives the friend a glare and says, “What did you say, n****r?” A careful edit in the US syndie version changes his line to, “What did you say, sucka?”

It is interesting that these lines were quietly removed without any fanfare. Do you think it’s a good idea, or should the classic shows have been left alone?

And if you believe that in light of the effort to cleanse culture of the “N-word,” a word of hate that cannot be “reclaimed” or “redefined,” should the original lines have been kept in the DVD releases, which still contain them?

Imagine the scene: two news videographers trying to get the shot from nearly the same position, one bumping the other, and during the jostling for position, one smarts off to the other, calling him an “[expletive deleted] n—–r.”

Even in the heat of the moment, some would say, the “n-word” is never appropriate.

The second videographer, who turns his camera toward the first during the verbal assault, captures his remark on tape. Apparently offended, he takes the tape to his station’s management, who calls the other station. That station, shocked by the remark, suspends the first videographer for a week without pay.

Does that sound like a reasonable punishment in this day and age of growing intolerance for the dreaded “n-word?”

Before you answer, there’s one more little detail that might change the whole picture: Continue reading “Suspended for the ‘N-word’”

There is news — long-awaited news, in fact — that the 17-year-old at the center of the “Jena 6” controversy in Lousiana, has finally been released from jail on a $45,000 bond after ten months.

Mychal Bell’s release came a week after 20,000 protesters from across the country, including well-known civil rights activists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, converged on the tiny Louisiana town of Jena.

USA Today reports that the $45,000 bail was posted by a Lake Charles, Louisiana man who doesn’t know Mychael Bell.

Moments after his release, Bell appeared at a news conference in front of the courthouse, flanked by his parents, attorneys, Shapton, Martin Luther King III and supporters.

Here’s what I don’t understand:  why did it take a complete stranger from Lake Charles, at this late date, to post Bell’s bail?  Where were Jackson and Sharpton’s checkbooks?  If you’re going to lead protests about what you describe as a blatant injustice, why do you allow that injustice to continue by letting Bell sit in jail while you do television appearances?  Isn’t that, in the most generous terms, allowing a bad situation to continue?

Back in January, Joe Biden was caught on tape referring to Barack Obama as a “clean” candidate, raising the eyebrows of those who felt he was being racist. Obama said he understood what Biden was trying to say, and because he knows Biden personally, didn’t assume that the intent was racism.

Rev. Jesse Jackson said pretty much the same thing about Biden, adding that he did call Biden just to make sure.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean it as off-color, but it is certainly highly suggestive,” Jackson said in an interview with CNN.

On Tuesday, according to The State newspaper in Columbia, Jackson’s latest comment about Barack Obama was far beyond “highly suggestive.” The paper reports that Jackson accused Obama of “acting like he’s white” about the Jena 6 story.

Surely you know by now to what the Jena 6 refers, unless you’ve been so busy circulating those chain emails asking why “the media” isn’t covering the story that you’ve actually missed the coverage. Apparently, that’s happening a good bit. So if you’re of that opinion, I might suggest that you start visiting the websites of media outlets like ABC News, CBS News, MSNBC, CNN and Fox News to read up on the story that some people still seem to think no one is touching.

Essentially, in case you still don’t understand what has happened so far, the story comes to us from the small town of Jena, Louisiana, a predominantly white community of about 3,000. Back on August 31, 2006, a few black students sat under a large tree that happens to be a spot where white students typically congregate. The day after this event, which shouldn’t have mattered to anyone, several small nooses were found hung in the tree, an obvious reference to lynchings, and presumably a threat to make it clear to any “bold” black students who might be eyeing a spot under that “whites only” tree.

No, in case you were wondering, we haven’t entered some kind of time warp; it’s still 2007.

The three white students who were found to be responsible for the placement of the nooses were recommended for expulsion from school, but the school board deemed in-school suspension a reasonable punishment.

On September 4, 2006, a white student was allegedly beaten unconscious by six black students. The white student was treated and released from the hospital, and the black students were arrested and five of the six faced attempted murder charges, leading many to suggest that their potential punishment didn’t fit the crime and was a far cry from the minor punishment the white students who had hung the nooses received.

More details about the case can be found here.

Regardless of how you feel about the case, it appears that in Jackson’s world, there really are two kinds of people: everything always is black or white. Never black and white. If you’re white, you can find nothing to be concerned about in Jena. If you’re black, you can only find things to be concerned about. And never shall common ground occur.

The only thing more ridiculous about his remarks is the news that Obama’s response to Jena — the very response that Jackson so clearly disapproves of — seems to have been the product of great discussion and counseling, and some of that came from Jackson’s own son, Jesse Jackson, Jr.! Maybe Jackson, Sr., should have talked one-on-one with Obama before trying to smear him (and unknowingly, Jackson’s own son) to a reporter.

If he could place a call to Biden, after all, it seems reasonable that he could have placed a call to Obama.

Merv Griffin was gay.  Or he wasn’t.

I’m not sure why it matters to anyone at this point, since the 82-year-old impresario is no longer with us.  But there are some people who are certain that he was.

Some of them are angry and feel justified in their anger because Griffin never came right out and said he was a homosexual. He never campaigned for gay rights. He never tried to make homophobics believe that there is nothing wrong with being gay.

(If Griffin really was gay.)

Now that I have given you this piece of information, I’d like for you to set it completely aside for a moment. Instead, I’d like for you to focus your attention on a scene from a December afternoon in 1955. Continue reading “There’s No Draft For Social War”

The procession was led by two horses pulling a pine box topped with a boquet of fake black roses. Funeral-goers weren’t crying.

They were cheering.  Continue reading “Laid to Rest?”

Sometimes, I’ll take a long virtual jog through the blogosphere. I’ll start off at a blog from my sidebar, for example, read some recent entries, then click on a title in that blog’s sidebar. Then I’ll continue that process for a while and see where I end up.

While I still lived in Richmond, I found a local blogger there who once worked in television. His name is Kelly, and his blog, Rambling along in life…with a Stern point of view, chronicles his life with his partner, Jeff.

Kelly points out that June is Gay Pride Month, and he has posted a photo of a rainbow he captured at Richmond’s Byrd Park and is challenging others to post the same image as a way to celebrate diversity.

Diversity comes in many forms. There is the diversity of political views, the diversity of religion, the diversity of race and culture, and the diversity of sexual orientation.

Some of those qualities are easier for many of us to accept than others. I’m not sure why that is; if we are willing to accept the idea that no two people are alike, we should be able to accept those basic qualities that make us different.

Though the rainbow has been most often associated with the LGBT community, game show host Richard Dawson used it in his farewell message to viewers on the final episode of the original run of Family Feud. Addressing those viewers who had spent the previous nine years being “outraged” because he kissed people of different races, he told this story:

“The first time I saw people of any color was when D-Day left from my hometown in England to go and free Europe in the war and there was every color you could imagine, and I’d not seen that in England. And I asked my mother, I said, ‘Is something wrong?’ She said, ‘God, God makes people. You understand that, don’t you?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ She said, ‘Who makes a rainbow?’ I said, ‘God.’ She said, ‘I’d never presume to tell anyone who could make a rainbow, what colour to make children.’ And she changed my life with that statement.”

As Kelly points out in his blog entry:

“[This challenge] is about societies around the world learning to accept people for being themselves… diversity. Gay, straight, Christian, Muslim, skinny or fat… we need to be a little more accepting these days.”

One doesn’t have to be gay to accept people who are gay. One doesn’t have to be black to accept people of color. I could go on and on…but you get the idea.

Will you take his challenge?

So let me get this straight: self-appointed monitor of morality Rev. Al Sharpton — perhaps I should write it with “Rev.” in italics: Rev. Al Sharpton — pitched a hissy fit over Don Imus’s moronic, insensitive racial remark over a ladies college basketball team and helped get him fired.

Then, this same Rev. Sharpton decided to level a religious insult against a political opponent, one so broad and general that it really is an insult against everyone of that religion itself.

Debating the topic, “Is God great?” were Sharpton (representing the “Yes” side) and author Christopher Hitchens, who has written that “religion poisons everything.” At one point in the debate, Hitchens criticized the Mormon religion for once having endorsed racial segregation. In response, Rev. Sharpton took a swipe at Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney, a Mormon:

“As for the one Mormon running for office, those that really believe in God will defeat him anyway, so don’t worry about that, that’s a temporary – that’s a temporary situation.”

So Mormons don’t believe in God? I don’t think you’ll find many Mormons who’d agree with that statement. The Mormon religion’s official church is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Perhaps the “Jesus Christ” part might have rung a bell with Rev. Sharpton. Right there on their website’s “Basic Beliefs” section, it says that Jesus is the way to an eternal life. I’m not a Mormon, but it sure sounds like they believe to me.

Rev. Sharpton, a Pentecostal minister, likely believes the same thing about Jesus and God.

So why does he get riled if someone makes a racial insult against someone else, but seems to think it’s fine to ridicule someone else’s religion? If Rev. Sharpton is practicing what he preaches, one might wonder if the title of his sermon is “Hypocracy.”

In the Charleston City Paper, columnist Barney Blakeney wrote an article about a black Charleston native, Dudley Gregorie, who is challenging longtime Mayor Joe Riley in the November, 2008 election.

Blakeney, who is also black, points out that Riley spent almost one million bucks on his last campaign, and that his challenger, Dudley Gergorie, admits that he doesn’t have pockets that deep. He points out that Gregorie is the third black candidate to run against Riley in the past dozen years and is expecting support from the local black community. He then says this:

“And after some 330 years, the city is certainly due a black mayor.”

Due?

It is statements like this that make me shake my head in frustration when it comes to racism. I have no problem voting for a black man for mayor. Or for Congress. Or for the White House.

But before I vote for anyone, I’m going to listen to the candidates and find out what they want to do. I will back wholeheartedly the person whose plans best mesh with that I’d like to see happen. What will be missing from the equation when I step into the voting booth will be concern over what color he or she happens to be.

It’s outrageous to take on the mindset that because we haven’t had a black mayor, we should vote for this person to correct that “wrong.” I think there’s something wrong with allowing race to be the determining factor. What happened to picking the best man or woman for the job? What happened to treating people equally regardless of their race?

Blakeney points out the lack of affordable housing in the Charleston peninsula, one of several problems that he says has ticked off voters during the Riley years, as a reason black voters should consider one of their own. He then looks back at the past two black candidates whose total votes indicate that not all black voters voted black. Are they supposed to?

I wouldn’t vote for Mayor Riley because he’s white. Am I supposed to?

The city is “due” a mayor who the voters feel presents the best platform for everyone in Charleston.

I think it’s going to be a long road to next November.