KLRU
Not Even Borderline
RECEIVED Mon., Oct. 30, 2017
Dear Editor,
I just got back from a road trip through North Carolina with my girlfriend, who is African-American and a self-identifying bleeding heart liberal. So of course one of the stops on the trip was at the International Civil Rights museum in Greensboro, N.C., where they've preserved the Woolworth's lunch counter where four young black men started the sit down movement to protest the "whites only" seating policy backed up by Jim Crow law. The amazing tour showed how the racism was so embedded in the Southern culture of the time that the white citizens were largely oblivious to the immorality of the injustices they were perpetrating.
And then we arrived back in Austin and picked up a copy of the Chron. With a cover featuring an "Armed White Male" Halloween mask. Which I looked at uneasily and finally asked my girlfriend, "Would this be borderline racist if it instead featured a black man pointing the gun at the readers?"
"Not even borderline," she said. "That'd be straight up racist."
"Does it make any difference that they put a white man instead?"
"Nope," she said. "Still racist."
Thought y'all would like to get a heads-up. I'm sure y'all had good intentions, as many of the citizens in Greensboro in 1960 no doubt had, not knowing any better, until it was politely pointed out to them.
I just got back from a road trip through North Carolina with my girlfriend, who is African-American and a self-identifying bleeding heart liberal. So of course one of the stops on the trip was at the International Civil Rights museum in Greensboro, N.C., where they've preserved the Woolworth's lunch counter where four young black men started the sit down movement to protest the "whites only" seating policy backed up by Jim Crow law. The amazing tour showed how the racism was so embedded in the Southern culture of the time that the white citizens were largely oblivious to the immorality of the injustices they were perpetrating.
And then we arrived back in Austin and picked up a copy of the Chron. With a cover featuring an "Armed White Male" Halloween mask. Which I looked at uneasily and finally asked my girlfriend, "Would this be borderline racist if it instead featured a black man pointing the gun at the readers?"
"Not even borderline," she said. "That'd be straight up racist."
"Does it make any difference that they put a white man instead?"
"Nope," she said. "Still racist."
Thought y'all would like to get a heads-up. I'm sure y'all had good intentions, as many of the citizens in Greensboro in 1960 no doubt had, not knowing any better, until it was politely pointed out to them.
Jim Henshaw
