Hey Y'All, Don't Read This Column! I Have Used The 'N' Word

As my six year old granddaughter is given to exclaim when something displeases her, “SERIOUSLY?”  Seriously, this country needs a reality check on our obsession with celebrities.  It seems the only thing we like more than idolizing them is ripping them to shreds.

 

 

The swift judgment and public sentencing of Paula Deen has truly been astonishing.  It amazes me what an incredibly harsh, vicious and mean-spirited pack of animals we are as a society as displayed by the media which pushes the envelope every day as it pertains to decency, common sense and bad taste.  The only thing lacking in this lopsided travesty is a burning at the stake.

 

I am not necessarily a fan of some of Paula Deen’s food.  I, like many of you, have watched her show and she comes across as a pretty, plump purveyor of rich, southern foods.  She looks south, talks south and, guess what, she is south.  In short, she has always impressed me as pretty much a ‘what you see is what you get’ type of person.  Now, of course, we all know that TV personalities take on certain personas that may be somewhat different from reality, but it is all acting anyway, ain’t it?  You do not get to where Paul Deen is/was without incredible hard work and being nice to a lot of people.  You certainly don’t as a racist.

 

I was so curious and, frankly, intrigued by this precipitous fall from grace that I took a few minutes to look on the internet to try to understand how something like this could happen.  Apparently, it all began with a civil lawsuit by a former adoring white employee by the name of Lisa T. Jackson who is suing Ms. Deen and her brother, “Bubba”, for discrimination and sexual harassment.  OK, the merits of the case will stand on their own, even though the plaintiff in question, Ms. Jackson, apparently wrote a letter to the two just a few months previous telling them how working for them had changed her life for the better.  She also admitted in her own deposition that she had never seen or heard Paula discriminate or harass anyone. 

 

I guess more of this will come out over time but it seems as if, for some reason, she became disaffected and was suing a rich person for big bucks.  Anyway, her attorney, in a deposition with Ms. Deen, asked if she had ever used the “N” word, to which she truthfully replied, “Yes.”  She explained the circumstances of being a bank teller in 1987 and being robbed by one Eugene Thomas King, Jr., a black man who nervously put a gun to her head for an extended period demanding money be placed into a paper sack.  She went on to explain she probably used the “N” word in describing Mr. King to her husband in the privacy of their home.  She could have lied.  She probably should have lied.  Had she lied, the consequences she is now enduring would never have happened.  Does anyone for a nanosecond think you can become an iconic TV personality with your face on every grocery store magazine and be an overt racist?

 

Now for the big bombshell.  Ms. Deen is 66 and I am 65. She was born in 1947 and I was born in 1948.  She was born in Albany, Georgia and I was born in Miami, Florida.  We both grew up in an era, and I can remember this vividly, where bathrooms and drinking fountains were labeled “Whites Only” and conversely, “Colored Only”.  Schools were segregated.  These were the circumstances and realities in which we both grew up and although both my parents were from Pennsylvania, everyone around us was a long-term south Florida resident and were, for want of a better word, “crackers”.  The “N” word was thrown about casually in front of children without any regard for what that might mean in the future.  They said it, so we said it.  Was it wrong?  Of course!  This is not a defense of the word, but  when you grow up in this atmosphere, ignorance will prevail and injustice will be done.  That is what the civil rights movement was (and is) about and, blessedly, most of us have moved on. 

 

I find nigger to be just as offensive as wop, spic and heimy, along with the entire lexicon of pejorative terms.  For that matter, I don’t like honky, either, although I am a little proud of being a first generation cracker.  I don’t use these terms.  In fact this is the first time I have really had reason to think about them for as long as I can remember and only the second time I have put it in writing (Key West Citizen January 17, 2010 story on Martin Luther King Day).  Maybe we are making progress?  At the same time, it amazes me that Paula Deen can tell the truth about using this word after a traumatic event over 30 years ago, in the privacy of her home, and be pillaried for her honesty, when this word can be heard ubiquitously in the music currently in vogue with our youth, in films and, oddly, by many African Americans themselves in addressing one another in the common course of conversation. 

 

I kind of like Paula Deen but I probably won’t be eating her recipes for fried chicken or peanut butter cheesecake, simply because it is not the kind of food I prefer, but  I have to say that her treatment has been unduly harsh, unfair and out of proportion.  I can tell you one thing.  I believe those companies (Smithfield, Walmart, Target and the Food Network) who have made money based on her hard work, reputation and personality, but bailed on her for this momentary but understandable lapse so many years ago, ought to be ashamed of themselves.  I think, too, the racemongers who are so quick to jump on personalities, such as in this case, had better watch out for this may very well backfire on them in ways they don’t anticipate.  Of course, this is just my opinion.  I may be wrong.

 

Certainly, all of us should remember the wisdom of other words spoken so long ago, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

 

Stumbling Our Way To Liberty, Equality And Justice For All - Happy Fourth Of July

I, like most of you probably, don’t think about it very much.  Maybe because we don’t have to.  I get up in the morning having had a typical night’s sleep without having to worry that some authority figure was going to burst into my house and arrest me without due process.  When I flick on a light switch or turn on the faucet for a shower, I am vaguely confident the light will come on and the water will come out.  I eat my breakfast without a care in the world that it may have been produced with some unknown poisons that will make me sick.  I get in my car, put on my seatbelt and drive safely to my place of business without ever being worried that I will be randomly pulled over to “show my papers”.  In short, as long as I follow some very rudimentary rules, laws and common courtesies, my days are worry free from crime, negligence, unwarranted search and seizure or arrest by an authority power and I can pretty much go, do and eat whenever and whatever I please.  If I really think about it, I am free and enjoy, without a doubt in my mind, an unprecedented sense of independence that probably no other population of any nation before us has achieved. 

 

This freedom and independence is, upon further reflection, certainly one of the things, if not THE thing, that has made our people great in terms of the freedom of thought and expression that has fostered great inventions, literature, art and a collective sense of justice that we have felt compelled to spread around the world, sometimes to our national pride and other times to a deep sense of shame and regret.  We are not perfect.

 

This coming week marks the 237^th celebration of July 4^th, 1776, a day on which some extraordinarily brave people risked everything they owned and their lives in the prescient belief that they would prevail.  The extraordinary experiment conceived in the renaissance mentality of perhaps the wisest and most learned group of individuals of all time, came together at one moment to create a framework for, perhaps, the greatest untried system of community, society and political organization of any other time in history.  Time will tell.

 

On the eve of this annual remembrance, I am bound and a bit ashamed to say that I, probably like most of you, tend not to think very much about the significance of it all.  It is dangerous for us not to remember the horror of our Civil War, the precipice upon which we found ourselves in World War II or the consequences in meddling in other people’s business in more recent conflicts.  In my own very short existence, there have been five wars including Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq.  There have also been moments that, while they cannot be categorized as war, certainly came close and involved boots on the ground, risks and consequences, including the Berlin Crisis, Grenada, the Bay of Pigs, Nicaragua and probably others that happened without our knowledge.  Liberty and freedom, to coin a phrase, are not free and require constant vigilance as well as paying attention to our own government at voting time in order to remember they were elected to serve and protect, not to posture, pontificate or profit.

 

This past week was an extraordinary moment in time to observe how we are still evolving as a nation and a people.  Momentous decisions were made by our supreme legal authority to manifest equality to some who have long been denied it, justice to many who are living without it and to chastise those who feel they are above it all. 

 

This is a great and good nation whose actions, many times, are self-serving, meddlesome and tragic but, on the whole, most of what we do is guided by the invisible hand of a structure and system that was devised almost 250 years ago and still seems to work in all its imperfections today.  There are many in our community who live quietly and do not talk about their service, but each of us knows who they are.  Perhaps the best way to observe the Fourth of July is to thank them for their service and their sacrifice.

 

Best wishes for a happy, safe Fourth of July and may God continue to bless America.