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April 17th / 19th

"Klansman's Apology Rings Hollow"

Today’s news media are suckers for feel-good stories. Last week we were treated to two of them. First, there was the dog who fell overboard from its master’s boat, then managed to swim five miles to an island, and was later reunited with his family.

Then there was the precious story about a lovable 72 year old Ku Klux Klansman who, after forty five years, was reunited with one of the victims of his racist violence. As far as I’m concerned, the wrong dog fell overboard.

Unbelievably, Elwin Wilson has become a media darling, much like Joe the Plumber, except that Joe never savagely beat black people.

Nevertheless, good old Elwin made a trip to Washington D.C. to visit with Congressman John Lewis, and apologized for his Klan activities, which included smashing Lewis’ face during a 1961 Freedom Ride. ABC’s Good Morning America was there to chronicle the landmark meeting, and so were journalists from throughout the country who wrote of Wilson in heroic terms.

Pardon me for a moment while I throw up.

Hey folks, this is the guy who hung a black doll from his driveway to intimidate African Americans. He also brutally beat a seminary student, routinely threw cantelopes at passing black children, and severely injured a little African American child with a jack handle.

So why the hell is everyone buying into Wilson’s high-profile apology?

Perhaps because we are living in the Age of Obama, where some African-Americans believe it’s OK to turn the other cheek when it comes to past violence by whites. But one black legislator told me privately that apologies such as Wilson’s are merely cosmetic. In his mind, they are neither genuine nor substantive. I’m also surprised that we as a nation, and the media in particular, have such short memories, because we’ve seen it all before. After a lifetime of spewing hate speech and defying federal court orders to integrate his state’s schools, Alabama Governor George Wallace finally made peace with those he had treated so badly. It didn’t hurt his cause any that he had been the victim of an assassin’s bullet while once running for the Presidency, so his wheelchair-bound apology gained him sympathy among black voters, many of whom supported his bid for another term as Governor.

Wallace is the man who once proclaimed, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.” His fiery rhetoric sparked violence, including bombing of the 16th Street Baptist church in Birmingham, which killed four little black girls. It’s no wonder that, in 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King referred to Wallace as “the most dangerous racist in America”. Even John Lewis, the man who recently forgave Elwin Wilson, said of Wallace, “George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun. But he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their Constitutional rights”.

Senator Strom Thurmond was also dangerous. In 1948 when President Truman was on the verge of moving the nation toward integration, Thurmond ran as a third party candidate under the Dixiecrat banner. Though he lost the election, he accomplished his goal, which was to forestall the civil rights movement. Thurmond’s hold over Southern legislators hamstrung Congress and the President for nearly two more decades. Time lost. Lives lost. Thanks Strom.

And thanks for softening your image on race relations when you reached your 80’s and 90’s. You became the poster child for good old boy contrition, and the media bought into your act.

And then there was Senator Robert Byrd who waited until he was old and entrenched in power to apologize for his support of the Klan. Said Byrd, “I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I can’t erase what happened.” That’s true, you jerk, but you could have come clean about your past, and then resigned from the Senate. That would have been an apology of substance. Instead, you orchestrated an atonement that helped you get re-elected, and endeared you to the Washington press corps.

And that brings us back to the esteemed Elwin Wilson. During last week’s media circus, Wilson explained his racist acts of violence, by saying, “I guess it was just the crowd I ran with”. The crowd? Wilson was a grown man when he was beating up on defenseless children, not some teenager who liked to roll the neighbor’s yard at Halloween. True enough, Wilson was born into hate. His grandfather, father, and brother were all active in the KKK, but that still doesn’t excuse him from having made bad choices. Some things a man just knows are wrong, and throwing jack handles at black children is wrong at any age, on any planet, in any era. Still, Congressman Lewis and other African Americans accepted Wilson’s better-late-than-never apology. Men like Lewis are rare.

I just couldn’t be that generous with my forgiveness.

I recall interviewing Darryl Hunt shortly after he was released from prison after having served nearly twenty years for a crime he didn’t commit. I told him that if I were he, I would be filled with hate for the whites who rushed to judgment.

But Darryl explained that he had found God and was blessed with the love of a good woman. He was at peace with those who had perpetrated his wrongful arrest, prosecution, and incarceration. Darryl accepted monetary reparations, but he also accepted some cosmetic apologies. I would have accepted the former, and rejected the latter.

Following his savage beating at the hands of the Los Angeles police, Rodney King asked the public, ”Can’t we all get along?” I’m sure that’s why Darryl Hunt didn’t go on a shooting spree following his release from prison. And I’m sure that’s why John Lewis accepted Elwin Wilson’s disgusting overture.

So if brave black men like Hunt and Lewis are too diplomatic to say the right thing, let me say something for them, and on behalf of Southern white males who despise racism. To you Thurmonds, Byrds, Wallaces, and Wilsons of the world, let me just say from the bottom of my heart, “Screw you guys and the horses you rode in on!”

My words for the media are almost as harsh. You guys who make sympathetic characters out of old racist crackers, are irresponsible, and I’m ashamed to share the same profession with you. Stick to glorifying dogs who swim back to their families, and resist the urge to do human interest stories about men who are anything but human.