I can imagine my Dad picking up his Washington Post, getting his magnifying glass, closing one eye, and devouring the latest in Virginia politics, while interjecting an exasperated, “Well look-a here! Umph, umph umph. See? They say they want the governor to resign, but they don’t want THIS boy to be the new governor. No indeed! Who’s in line after him, ‘cause they gonna make SURE it’s not HIM”. You ever heard of Emmitt Till?”
Dad, a man who was born in the Deep South in the 1920’s, used to say that “Sam”, (his term for random Black men), always thinks he can play by the same rules, and gets comfortable, but he forgets—he didn’t make up the game.
The rules don’t apply to Sam. The rules change randomly.
“If you gonna be on the team, learn the game. Learn how to say “nice doggie” until you can get you a big stick”, he would say.
Dad had a lifetime of experiences with overt, and covert racism. He shared those stories.
Now I can’t help wondering, in this “Me too” climate, if the prospect of a second Black governor, of a state with an ugly human rights history, is so unbearable; so much worse than having a recovering racist governor, that allegations of sexual assault— the historic go-to crime, for which so many innocent boys and men have been lynched or imprisoned— have suddenly surfaced?
Who dropped the vetting ball during the campaigns, or is the new trick to hold on to incriminating information and only trot it out when it’s convenient?
In the words of old grandmothers, “There’s a dead cat on the line.”
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