It was an ironic twist of timing
that the racial-discrimination
lawsuit targeting celebrity chef Paula Deen, the milestone execution in Texas of convicted killer Kimberly McCarthy and the U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down parts of the Voting Rights Act all were in the headlines this week.
All three cases have a racial component, and the varying perspective is a good example of what’s most wrong with special-interest influence on government and society.
Reported comments from depositions in Deen’s case don’t reveal her using racist language with the plaintiff, Lisa Jackson, who is white. Instead, the controversy that has enveloped her is the result of the revelation that at some point decades ago (Deen is 66) she used the “n-word.”
Deen specifically remembered uttering the epithet in conjunction with a robbery 30 years ago in which a black man pointed a gun-“a shakin’ gun,” she remembered-to her head.
Most of the lawsuit’s allegations involve Deen’s brother’s actions and attitudes, but it is Deen who has borne the brunt of bad publicity.
In a deplorable example of corporate cowardice, Food Network decided not to renew Deen’s contract.
That kind of rolling over, before allegations are resolved as either true or false, is what encourages “race-card” bullying. A more courageous outfit might have sided with logic first.
Deen’s family, friends, close associates and her pastor (her reputation as a devout Baptist is well-established) consider any charges of racism against her to be absurd.
Even Rev. Al Sharpton expressed doubt over the scant evidence that had come out since the complaint was filed more than two years ago.
Besides, the chances are good that most sexagenarians from the South would have used the n-word a few times because it was part of common language a half-century ago.
The standard for discrimination today is today’s behavior. How many banks would be guilty of usury if 1950s law were applied? How many filmmakers would face obscenity charges if bound by legal definitions from 50 years earlier?
The basis for Ms. Jackson’s 33-page lawsuit is that she suffered everything from distress to humiliation to embarrassment and other related “injuries,” merely from observing alleged racist discrimination against black employees, who would be the real victims.
Let’s compare those injuries with those inflicted by Kimberly McCarthy, who is black, on 71-year-old Dorothy Booth. McCarthy was 36 back in 1997, and associated with the New Black Panther Party (her former husband was its founder), an organization identified by the Southern Law Poverty Center as a black racist hate group.
McCarthy went to the home of Booth, who was white, on the pretense of borrowing some sugar. Once inside, McCarthy stabbed Booth repeatedly with a 10-inch butcher knife, beat her with a candelabrum and then cut off Booth’s ring finger to steal her diamond ring.
McCarthy, an admitted crack cocaine addict at the time, claimed she had been framed. But evidence showed she used Booth’s credit cards, stole Booth’s Mercedes-Benz automobile, and was found in possession of Booth’s driver’s license. Booth’s DNA was also found on the butcher knife recovered in McCarthy’s home.
The evidence was so strong that after her 1998 conviction was overturned on a technicality, she was retried, re-convicted and sentenced to death in 2002.
New Black Panther Party leaders are on record for numerous virulent anti-white statements, including this soliloquy from the head of the party’s Philadelphia chapter during a National Geographic documentary: “We keep begging white people for freedom! No wonder we not free! Your enemy cannot make you free, fool! You want freedom? You going to have to kill some crackers! You going to have to kill some of their babies!”
There is no record that McCarthy was ever asked, during her appeals, if she had ever used the c-word.
Still, it wouldn’t be a stretch for a casual observer to conclude that race might have played a factor in McCarthy’s attack on Booth. But no, McCarthy has claimed she is the victim of racism because the jury that convicted her was mostly white.
Following that convoluted logic, Deen would be less guilty of racism had she robbed and stabbed one of her black employees.
It’s evident now that too many special-interest, advocacy and watchdog groups have become hair-trigger quick to weaponize racism claims based on facts not as they exist today, but as they did 40, 50 or 100 years ago.
This point was the crux of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelby County, Ala. v. Holder. The Court said that section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (which permitted federal supervision of certain states’ election laws) was unconstitutional because it was based on 40-year-old disparities with “no logical relation to the present day.”
Illogical because the most recent Census data revealed that black voter turnout now exceeds white in five of the six states originally covered by the statute, when the stated purpose for the law was disparate voter turnout.
As long as so many organizations are willing to put race ahead of logic and truth, it’s no surprise racial tensions get strained.
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Dana Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.
Editorial, Pages 17 on 06/28/2013