OT: Political courage
This thread's not exactly about political courage since it's focus is on strategy and that generally means trying to find out where the electorate is and following them, ala Rove. Interesting remark in the Lemann piece that in those young Rep fights, Rove was the pragmatic one, that is, power for power's sake, the others were the ideological ones.
But back to political courage and Al Hunt's column today. Superb stuff. And it's about a Republican legislator.
POLITICS & PEOPLE
By AL HUNT
A Courageous Profile
online.wsj.com
Dan Ponder, growing up in segregated Cottonwood, Ala., as president of his all-white fraternity at Auburn or as a Republican representing a rural conservative constituency in the Georgia legislature, never expected to be feted at the majestic John F. Kennedy library.
But Monday morning Mr. Ponder, a South Georgia businessman who owns Hardee's fast-food franchises, will receive a JFK Profile in Courage award. It grows out of an extraordinary speech he made to Georgia lawmakers on a measure to impose extra penalties for "hate crimes" attacks on minorities, gays and others.
"I was totally stunned," he recalls in an interview, when he got back from walking the dog and his wife told him that Caroline Kennedy, JFK's daughter, called. Also being honored are former governors, Republican David Beasley of South Carolina and Democrat Roy Barnes of Georgia for their opposition to the confederate flag in those states; both then were defeated for reelection.
The Profile in Courage award is given to public figures who put principle ahead of political expediency, like the politicians in the late President Kennedy's book who risked their careers to do what they felt was right. Previous winners have included civil-rights hero John Lewis and Gerald Ford, who won for his pardon of Richard Nixon.
As a member of the selection committee, I, and probably most of the others, initially paid little heed to a recommendation of an obscure former Georgia politician. Then we read Mr. Ponder's speech.
The context was consideration several years ago in the Georgia legislature of the controversial hate-crimes bill. In an early test, opponents won and the bill looked like it was going down. Then Mr. Ponder rose to speak. Here are edited excerpts:
* * *
"I am probably the last person, the most unlikely person that you would expect to be speaking from the well about Hate Crime Legislation . . . I am a White Republican, who lives in the very Southwest corner of the most ultra-conservative part of this state. I have agricultural roots. I grew up hunting and fishing. I had guns when I was a kid. On my 12th birthday I was given that thing that so many southern boys receive, that shotgun from my dad that somehow marked me as a man.
I was raised in a conservative Baptist church. I went to a large, mostly white Southern university. I lived in and was the President of the largest, totally white fraternity on that campus. I had nine separate Great-Great-Great Grandfathers that fought for the Confederacy. I don't have a single ancestor on all of my family lines that lived north of the Mason-Dixon line going back to the Revolutionary War. And it is not something that I am terribly proud of, but it is just part of my heritage, that not one, but several of those lines actually owned slaves.
There was one woman in my life that made a huge difference and her name was Mary Ward. She began working for my family before I was born. She was a young black woman whose own grandmother raised my mother. Mary, or May-Mar as I called her, came every morning before I was awake to cook breakfast so it would be on the table. She cooked our lunch. She washed our clothes.
But she was much more than that. She read books to me. When I was playing Little League she would go out and catch ball with me. She was never, ever afraid to discipline me or spank me. She expected the absolute best out of me, perhaps, and I am sure, even more than she did her own children.
One day, when I was about 12 or 13 I was leaving for school. As I was walking out the door she turned to kiss me goodbye. And for some reason, I turned my head. She stopped me and she looked into my eyes with a look that absolutely burns in my memory right now and she said, "You didn't kiss me because I am black." At that instant, I knew that she was right.
I denied it. I made some lame excuse about it. But I was forced at that age to confront a small dark part of myself. I don't even know where it came from. This lady, who was devoting her whole life to me and my brother and sister, who loved me unconditionally, who had changed my diapers and fed me, and who was truly my second mother, that somehow she wasn't worthy of a goodbye kiss simply because of the color of her skin. Hate is all around us. It takes shape and form in ways that are somehow so small that we don't even recognize them to begin with, until they somehow become acceptable to us.
I have lived with the shame and memory of my betrayal of Mary Ward's love for me. I pledged to myself then and I re-pledged to myself the day I buried her that never, ever again would I look in the mirror and know that I had kept silent, and let hate or prejudice or indifference negatively impact a person's life . . . even if I didn't know them. Likewise, my wife and I promised to each other on the day that our oldest daughter was born that we would raise our children to be tolerant. That we would raise them to accept diversity and to celebrate it. In our home, someone's difference would never be a reason for injustice.
Hate crimes are about sending a message. The cross that was burned in a black person's yard not so many years ago was a message to black people. The gay person that is bashed walking down the sidewalk in midtown is a message to gay people. And the Jews that have endured thousands of years of persecution were all being sent messages over and over again.
I am not a lawyer, I don't know how difficult it would be to prosecute this or even care. I don't really care that anyone is ever prosecuted under this bill. But I do care that we take this moment in time, in history, to say that we are going to send a message. We must send a message to people that are filled with hate in this world, that Georgia has no room for hatred within its borders." |
