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DEL.ICIO.USThe trees are leafing, and the Legislature’s re-assembling, which must mean it’s time to talk about Robert E. Lee
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
But if the Legislature is down to its last few scripted hours, if crisis after crisis is bearing down on Georgia, then it also must be time to talk about the Confederacy and segregation.
Perhaps it was a deficiency of Wilson Pickett in their diets when they were young. Or a simple lack of practice. Either way, our ruling Republicans have displayed a tin ear when it comes to politics and race in Georgia.
Two springs ago, they devoted an entire day in the Legislature to sweeping ancient - and unenforced - Jim Crow laws from the Georgia Code. It was a wasted gesture.
The day before, they had unleashed a bill to require photo IDs at the voting booth, a measure that a federal judge would ultimately condemn as a poll tax that would have the effect of dampening turnout among black and elderly voters.
Weeks ago, Republican leaders dismissed an effort to squeeze an apology for slavery out of the state and its current GOP management. Republicans rallied around a single talking point: We’re about the future, they said, not the past.
The comments rang hollow, betrayed by a resolution to declare April a month to honor the Confederate attempt at “Southern independence.” The bill shot through a Senate committee, toward a vote by the entire Senate that will come in the next several days.
It was another opportunity lost, a failure by this party of Lincoln to recognize the other people in the room. In fact, the legislation was a splendid example of how the South continues to segregate its history as efficiently as it once segregated its people.
A deliberate slap? Probably not, but white Republican sponsors recognized the volatile ground they walked on. S.B. 283 is intended to encourage instruction about the Confederacy in schools, but allows that principals need not tolerate “behavior that disrupts or involves substantial disorder or the invasion of the rights of others.”
Which brings us to Senate President pro tem Eric Johnson of Savannah, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate. He’s formed an alliance with state Rep. Al Williams, an African-American Democrat from coastal Georgia.
Johnson will spend the rest of this year’s session on a resolution that - if not apologizing for slavery and segregation - might express regret.
“I’ve been arguing privately for a while that Georgia ought to be in the lead, and not forced into anything, on the slavery issue,” Johnson said Friday.
The senator broadly hinted that whatever he proposes will focus on how the state should publicly approach the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. Success in the hectic, last days of the session is possible, but distant.
House Speaker Glenn Richardson has said he’s not interested. Democrats, he said, had 130 years to make their apologies, and did not. Which is true, but only half the point.
Democrats lost their hold on power because, after decades of papering over the past, they failed in their efforts to - through a new state flag - rally behind a single history that satisfied both black and white Democrats.
In the next few days, and perhaps next year as well, Johnson will warn Republicans not to build on the same sand.
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March 19, 2007 3:24 PM | Link to this
i think the lieutenant governor is the most moderate republican i’ve seen in a while. i totally intend to vote for him for governor and i’m a democrat. its time someebody.