Now We Have Worms That Don't Exist

I must say that I am very disappointed in this editorial.

I was at this meeting, and I will tell you that the editorial does not accurately reflect what happened there.  Read my post below for some details.  No one called the Mayor and Commission racist.  No reasonable person would believe the Commission voted to remove funds because they don't like black people.  No one has said that to me and no one said that at the meeting.  What is strange is that the news article that this editorial is based on specified that the prevailing sentiment was that no one was accusing the Mayor and Commission of racism.

Blake's article specifies that "The six commissioners who voted to cut the funding are not racists, but the decision was paternalistic, said moderator Janice Mathis, vice president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition."  Ms. Mathis said this in response  to the Mayor's belief that the "race card" had been played.  I thought that cleared it up well.

If the meeting HAD degraded into angry accusations of personal racism, I would agree with the editorial 100%!!!  That would have been a tired and not constructive dialogue.  But, again, that is not what happened.  One speaker said essentially, hey, we all make mistakes.  You guys made a mistake.  But it is nothing we can't fix and move forward with together.  It was a POSITIVE meeting.  Ms. Neely was not calling the Mayor a racist.  I have spoken with her on this topic on more than one occasion and my strong impression is that she is deeply concerned about the disparate treatment of the black community by our process.  But she has never expressed the opinion to me that she believes our elected officials are "racist."

So, for the umpteenth time, this is about PROCESS, PROCESS, PROCESS.  We violated the public trust, and people (even those who are not big fans of EADC or HCDC) are mad about it.

Finally, the editorial seems to imply that race is not something we should talk about because it might unrail OneAthens. This is very very wrong.  OneAthens will never get on the rails UNLESS we have a healthy dialogue about race.  

Rick Dunn put it to me very well.  He said this is like a marriage.  Sometimes you have to say things that are uncomfortable and deal with things you don't want to, but that is how a marriage maintains its trust.  And in the end, you know you love each other and want the same things.  You just have to work out the kinks so you can get there hand-in-hand as equal partners.