ONE CHAD Everett Watkins, previously of Harrison, Arkansas, U.S.A., now has been convicted of a crime in an Arkansas court. He’s been sentenced and his case duly adjudicated. His crime wasn’t exactly national news, or even front-page stuff here in Arkansas. Nor was it harmful to anybody’s physical person, thank goodness. No, his target was something else: an idea. An idea he-and a lot of other folks-didn’t like. So what he did was spray-paint a billboard.
Chad Everett Watkins, 47, now of Fayetteville, Ark., was scheduled to go to trial last week for painting over an offensive sign in Harrison last fall. The sign had said, “Anti-Racist is a Code Word for Anti-White.”
Maybe if our copy editors could have gotten ahold of a can of spray paint themselves, they might have been tempted to do even more damage to the sign. Because what’s really offensive about it is its typography. What’s with all those capital letters? In this Age of Texting have we forgotten our fifth-grade English? Maybe we should be happy the thing wasn’t written IN ALL CAPS, like so many of the emails in our in-box.
So what was the point of Defendant Watkins’ vandalism? It seems he wanted to change the sign so it would read: “Anti-Racist is a Code Word for Love.” Some people, it seems, can’t resist putting their own words in other people’s mouths, or rather on other people’s billboards. Quite aside from that practice being criminal, it’s bad manners. Rude. Bossy. In short, it violates not just the criminal code but the South’s. Now that’s serious.
BEFORE the trial could proceed very far, Mr. Watkins pleaded No Contest, was fined $340, and ordered to pay another $160 in court costs and fees. Plus almost $800 in restitution to the Harrison Sign Co.
Case closed.
Doubtless the defendant has friends-known and unknown to him-who’ll nod their approval at his deed. For this is one of those times when breaking the law could win a pat on the back in some circles. It happens.
At one time the whole state seemed ready to rise up and applaud one Orval E. Faubus when he took it upon himself to defy the law of the land-to Arkansas’ still echoing shame.
Yes, there are times when a lot of folks, including civilized, gentle folks, will condone lawlessness, whether on a grand scale or-in Chad Watkins’ misguided case-a smaller one.
Who hasn’t thought that it’s just fine,even commendable, to slug the bully in the schoolyard? Your friends will rally around. Why, you might even win the affection of the girl he pushed to the ground. But you’ll still be suspended from school. And need to be.
Harrison, Ark., has been dogged by a history of racial ugliness since at least the 1905 and 1909 riots there that sent black folks looking for some place to live besides Boone County, Arkansas, and even today the scars remain. And need tending to. Which is why it’s so nice to see the rallies and vigils and marches going on there this week in a general display of good will to right the balance of history in favor of doing the right thing.
After all, when we were told to love our neighbor as ourselves, there was no small print attached saying that the commandment applied only if said neighbors were of an acceptable race, creed, color or nationality.
BUT THERE’S another principle involved here and it’s simple enough: People should not be allowed to go around defacing the property of others-or messing with their red-white-and-blue, all-American right to free speech. Even if said speech might offend. And when these self-appointed censors act up, they should be treated like the lawbreakers they are.
In this case, the defendant should be grateful he got away without doing jail time-or even being given probation. Some of us would have preferred a stiffer sentence. Just to show more respect for the law. And others’ rights.
But our vandal didn’t get away with his unseemly conduct entirely. And for that, let us be grateful. For freedom of speech isn’t limited, as an oft-quoted justice of the U.S. Supreme Court put it, to the speech we agree with.
It is when we are most sure that we are right and others wrong, that our cause is just and theirs so unjust it must not be expressed but should be censored or even defaced, that we should be most on guard-against ourselves. For it may not be others’ views that are the most dangerous, but our own certainty. Their errors should be exposed and opposed openly and confidently; to suppress them is only to pay them tribute, and express less than confidence in our own ideas.
Learned Hand, who used to be known as the greatest American jurist never to have sat on the U.S. Supreme Court before Arkansas’ own Richard Arnold came along, said it:
“The spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not too sure it is right.”
Editorial, Pages 12 on 04/03/2014