Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Back to the bad old days?

Or did we ever even leave them?
If you saw this lede to a newspaper story, what would you think?

The city that became a post-civil rights movement emblem of the political power held by Caucasian-Americans could have a black mayor for the first time in a generation — a possibility that has some in the white community scrambling to hold on to City Hall.

Let me guess. You'd probably think the locals in that town were stuck in, say, 1955. If you were not a particularly charitable sort, you might even think the town comprised a great deal of folks with hoods and white sheets in their closets. Well, reverse the races in the above-quoted graf and you have the exact lead paragraph of a story about the mayoral election in Atlanta. Why is that sort of thing okay for blacks and Hispanics to engage in but not whites? If it's wrong for one it should be wrong for all. I really do wonder what MLK would think. I'd like to think he'd be outraged.