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It wasn’t easy 50 years ago in the newspaper
business to fight for equal rights.
When I helped an A and T University professor in Greensboro start
the civil rights newspaper The Carolina Peacemaker, I wasn’t very
popular in some quarters. But
it was the right thing to do. It still is.
The color of a man’s skin should not enter into his ability or
inability to do a job. We
fought years ago to make the playing field level, to give equal
opportunity to all men and women. There is no place for racial bigotry. It is an over simplification to say bigotry is
always coming from one race toward another.
A bigot can be defined as anyone intolerantly following his or
own prejudices. A bigot can
be a bigot regardless of the color of skin, religion or creed. And it is no less poisonous. Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker is a successful
businessman. He makes
decisions quickly. Recently
Larry Wallace was his choice to be Chattanooga chief of police, he could
not have made a better choice. The
candidate had an impeccable record in law enforcement, including head of
the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.. The mayor could have been a bit more diplomatic
to sooth political agendas. Harsh
que3stioning caused the candidate to withdraw his name.
The city lost a good man. An
undercurrent of racial prejudice was felt.
Mr. Wallace is a white man. Chattanooga had three bad nominees from
headhunters paid to find candidates to fill city positions.
One man damaged the school system.
The second cost Erlanger $25-million.
And the third man’s administration destroyed the morale of the
police department as officers have left in droves.
These men were not hired because of race. Inability to do the job was individual shortcomings. One city official reportedly said the police
chief should have been black. If
we go back to selecting personnel by the color of skin, we haven’t
gotten very far fighting racial bias.
Any time we say a man with red hair must be named to office to
serve people with red hair, that no other color of hair is acceptable,
our thinking is contaminated. A
system is flawed when it hires, fires, promotes or demotes a person
based on the color of skin. Affirmative action and quotas is prejudice in
the guise of law and regulation. Who
has the right to say a man is inferior because of the color of his skin
and must have a crutch? Who
has the authority to say a man or woman has to be hired or not hired
because of ethnic origin? No one is more or less equal. Judge A Leon Higginbotham, Jr., a black jurist, wrote of the
legalities in 1978 book, “In the Matter of Color: Race and the
American Legal Process.” He
relates that in 1619, the first 20 blacks who reached Jamestown opened a
new legal definition. They
were on a captured Spanish slave ship.
Since Virginia, bound under English law, recognized the freedom
of Spanish subjects who had become Christians.
Their position was the same as indentured servants.
The abominable institution of slavery evolved later with the
demand for cheap labor in the South. More recently, John McWhorter, a black author,
published “Authentically Black” in 2003.
He suggests that blacks meeting alone are open and proud of their
successes, but downplay their advances to the outside world. We need a level playing field. We need everyone to have an equal opportunity regardless of
“race, creed or color.” Nearly 150 years ago, a wise man wrote: “Peace between races is not to be secured by
degrading one race and exalting another, by exalting another, by giving
power to one race and withholding it from another: but by maintaining a
state of equal justice between all classes.” That was written on February 7, 1865, to then President
Andrew Johnson by Frederick Douglass Those thoughts were true then. They are today. Let
us put race and religion aside and regard each other as people.
Anyone who has been in the military knows that all blood is red.
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