H. Brandt Ayers: Slyly Playing Race Card - the Anniston Star: Opinion
I came across this editorial via Richard Prince at The Root. The author is the publisher of the paper. Jaw dropping.
As the whole imbroglio of the Confederate battle flag played out with acres of shallow TV commentary, political poses and rather passionless celebrations, I felt profoundly sad and experienced spasms of fist-tightening anger.
Anger at the Klansmen, other thugs and bullet-headed cops with Rebel license tags who kidnapped and cheapened an emblem of loss with honor and turned it into a symbol of hate and fear.
Apparently no one found it “a symbol of hate and fear” during the Civil War. Unless you count the black folks around at the time.
Today, blacks have powerful friends in the Democratic Party, a caucus in Congress, an interest group in the NAACP to advocate for their causes and media sensitive to their conditions — even a monument in Washington from which to draw pride.
As always, when fate distributes rewards and punishments, it is the little man who gets less than his share of glory and rewards.
The white Southerner has no powerful friend to bolster his self-esteem and advocate for him. The Republicans take him for granted and the Democrats pretend he doesn’t exist. He has no caucus or monument in Washington.
Southern whites have no advocates. You learn something new everyday.
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