♫ Then they let their hair hang down
Remember when after Obama’s election, pundits insisted we were living in a “post-racial” society?
“America’s struggle is to become not post-racial, but post-racist,” Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote years later. On the far right, “post-racial” was a prime, MAD magazine example of “What They Say and What it Really Means.” What some white people really meant was it was time for Black people to STFU about their treatment in white, by-God America.
It was wishful thinking. At best. ‘Cause when they get behind closed doors, Charlie Rich might have sung, they still let their hair hang down.
In Oklahoma, for example (The Oklahoman):
In southeast Oklahoma, the sheriff of McCurtain County, one of his investigators and a county commissioner are accused by a newspaper of discussing killing a local reporter and lamenting that modern justice no longer includes hanging Black people.
The explosive accusations were published this week in the McCurtain Gazette-News.
According to the newspaper, Sheriff Kevin Clardy, investigator Alicia Manning and District 2 Commissioner Mark Jennings were part of an impromptu discussion after the March 6 meeting of the county Board of Commissioners.
Bruce Willingham, the Gazette’s publisher, had left a voice-activated recorder in the meeting room. He suspected that officials meant to conduct official business after the meeting ended in violation of the state’s Open Meeting Act.
The Oklahoman states that it “could not identify who the speakers were in the recordings.”
“I talked on two different occasions to our attorneys to make sure I wasn’t doing anything illegal,” Willingham told NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth. Willingham’s son, Chris, is a reporter for the Gazette.
Willingham had that day filed a defamation lawsuit against the sheriff’s department. Manning, the investigator, spoke of what might or should happen to Willingham. The recording transcript is a doozy (The Oklahoman again):
“Yeah, I ain’t worried about what he’s gonna do to me. I’m worried about what I might do to him. My papaw would have whipped his ass, would have wiped him and used him for toilet paper … if my daddy hadn’t been run over by a vehicle, he would have been down there.”
Jennings replied that his 86-year-old father, in response to an opinion published in the newspaper, once “started to go down there and just kill him,” according to the Gazette.
“I know where two big, deep holes are here if you ever need them,” Jennings allegedly said.
Clardy, the sheriff, allegedly said he had the equipment.
“I’ve got an excavator,” Clardy is accused of saying during the discussion.
“Well, these are already pre-dug,” Jennings allegedly said.
Jennings allegedly talked about knowing hitmen in Louisiana who could “cut no (expletive) mercy.”
A brief discussion about assaulting local judges followed, according to the Gazette.
Jennings, the commissioner, then discussed how many people might run for sheriff, according to the newspaper story.
“They don’t have a goddamn clue what they’re getting into,” he said. “Not this day and age. I’m going to tell you something — if it was back in the day, when Alan Marston would take a damned Black guy and whoop their (expletive) and throw them in the cell, I’d run for (expletive) sheriff.”
Clardy responded by saying, “Yeah, it’s not like that no more,” the newspaper reported.
Jennings then said Black people have more rights than others, according to the Gazette.
“Take them down to Mud Creek and hang them up with damned rope,” he said. “But you can’t do that anymore. They’ve got more rights than we’ve got.”
Yup, it’s a violation of white rights and privileges when they can’t just go and lynch a Black man like in the Good Old Days.
Protests erupted on Monday outside the McCurtain County sheriff’s department.
NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth:
Gov. Kevin Stitt said Sunday he was seeking the resignations of McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy and three other county officials: sheriff’s Capt. Alicia Manning, District 2 Commissioner Mark Jennings and Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix.
“I am both appalled and disheartened to hear of the horrid comments made by officials in McCurtain County,” Stitt said in a statement. “There is simply no place for such hateful rhetoric in the state of Oklahoma, especially by those that serve to represent the community through their respective office.”
Want to get them really pissed off? Accuse them in public of being racist!
You’d think that in Donald Trump’s America, more people would let their hair hang down about it.