I’ve got your racial discussion right here

By GRAHAM OSTEEN
Item Editor-At-Large
graham@theitem.com

If you get HBO, then you’ve probably been watching “John Adams.” The dialogue is worth the monthly subscription price.

Thanks to great modern historians like David McCullough and Walter Isaacson, there has been a resurgence of interest in the Founders and the unparalleled complexities involved in birthing America. The thorny question of race always lingers and that’s where I’m headed, so please bear with me.

There was an article in The New Yorker recently by Jill Lepore titled, “Prior Convictions: Did the Founders want us to be faithful to their faith?”

“The Founders believed that to defer without examination to what your forefathers believed was to become a slave to the tyranny of the past,” she writes.

She also noted that Thomas Jefferson (T.J. as I call him) said: “Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of a preceding age a wisdom more than human.”

A source in her article says, “The culture wars have so warped our sense of history that we typically have a very limited understanding of how we came to have religious liberty.”

I would add that people my age (46) and younger have only a limited (books and television) understanding of how and why we even needed The Civil Rights Act. My children’s generation (and mine, for that matter) has little actual experience or sensory understanding of how bad some whites were to blacks throughout much of our modern history, particularly in the Jim Crow South. I was a toddler in 1964, so adult racial problems weren’t my concern. I was just trying to have some fun and not get caught.

Fortunately, my kids don’t see color the same way I do, my parents do, or my grandparents did. Neither do our black counterparts in each of these generations. We’re all products of our times. We hope this means we’re becoming more tolerant and enlightened as time passes, and that we’re steadily learning how to overcome our nation’s horrifying racial past and pass on a colorblind society to our children.

But then you read a column in The New York Times and realize how misguided some people still are.

The column I’m referring to appeared Jan. 22, 2008, and it was written by the famous nationally syndicated columnist Bob Herbert. I was so irritated that I tore it out and put it in my briefcase so I could think about it for a while.

Here’s what Mr. Herbert said about our state right after the South Carolina Republican primary, and right before the South Carolina Democratic primary, which Barack Obama won handily:

The political mantra this year is “change.” But South Carolina, where the Confederate flag still flies on the grounds of the State Capitol, is a disturbing example of how difficult it is for people of good will to dispose of the toxic layers of bigotry that have accumulated over several long centuries.

It gets worse.

They still honor Benjamin Tillman down here, which is very much like honoring a malignant tumor. A statue of Tillman, who was known as Pitchfork Ben, is on prominent display outside the statehouse.

Real change is more than problematic in a state so warped by its past that it can continue to officially admire a figure like Tillman.

He talks about how horrible South Carolina schools are, citing the “Corridor of Shame” project, and concludes with this:

Despite big and important advances over the past several decades, including Senator Obama’s crossover campaign, racism remains alive and well in much of the country. And yet no one — not Bill Clinton, the man touted (absurdly) as the first black president; or Hillary Clinton, who’s running for president; or Barack Obama, the first black person with a real shot at the White House — is willing to talk honestly and openly about it.

I just got back from covering the annual “Pitchfork Ben Tillman Memorial Barbecue Prayer Group,” and I’m willing to talk openly about race. Maybe I should be running for president.

I’m sick of seeing Confederate flags on vehicles, T-shirts and in front of trailers. Try an American flag, Festus, so people won’t think something’s seriously wrong with you. I’m sick of seeing black men who dress like they’re training for state prison. Pull up your pants, lose the nasty music and take off that oversized baseball cap. I’m sick of people – usually Northerners – who hide smugly behind political correctness when it comes to race. I’m sick of journalists who openly fawn over Obama and are scared to offend him with difficult questions. The fallout from the recent ABC News debate said it all.

I’m sick of the Clintons in general. As I heard someone say recently, “Can you imagine Bill back in the White House with nothing to do?”

Mr. Herbert is an esteemed journalist and veteran of the Civil Rights battles of the 1960s, yet he comes off in that column as just a bitter black liberal racist. I’m sick of such broad condemnations of Southerners, but I also recognize that he misunderstood South Carolina because he was reporting from a rich man’s dinner party in Columbia. He has an otherwise exceptional body of work, so he gets a pass. Come back and see us.

I’m proud that Obama represents my generation, and I like the whole “audacity of hope” concept. But I’m a taxpaying citizen and independent business owner, and his economics aren’t black or white, they’re just scary.

I’m confident we will continue to move this country steadily away from the sins of our forefathers and improve the world for all people. In an age of unlimited information, we’ve seen that it’s not wise to “ascribe to the men of a preceding age a wisdom more than human,” as T.J. said, and this uniquely American vision continues to carry us forward.

Graham Osteen is co-president of Osteen Publishing Co. and Editor-At-Large of The Item. Contact him at The Item, 20 North Magnolia St., Sumter, S.C., 29150; graham@theitem.com, or call 803-774-1352.