Did you hear the one about the guy who feeds 5000 people with two fish and five loaves of bread? Read all about it in Mark 6: 30-44. I know this opening line makes me sound like a religious zealot. So I will analogize by referring to a more secular character—the guy planning to provide health coverage to 32-million uninsured Americans without raising taxes on middle-class folks. Are Jesus and Obama socialists, liberals, progressives, miracle workers, or all of the above? Whatever the label, I would rather be like them than the Party of No Conscience and Compassion.

Before you criticizze, be assured that I’m certainly not comparing myself with Jesus or anyone of note. I leave those comparisons to Sarah Palin and her self-proclaimed links to William Shakespeare, who she cited as a justification for making up words like “refudiate.” My references to Jesus and Obama is a ?clever? way of arriving at the central point of this missive. I try to answer the question of how an under-educated redneck like me drifted from right to left. It has been a strange transformation and I sometimes wonder why my politics are so different from family and friends. 

In the beginning (don’t you love my use of phrases from the bible), my daddy was a “yellow dog Democrat.” The characterization stems from an old southern expression, “I’d vote for a yellow dog before I’d vote for a Republican.” However, voting for Democrats in daddy’s day was a far cry from being a “liberal.”

In Alabama where I grew up and in my family, racism was rampant. Black people were expected to stay in their place at the bottom of the economic and social ladder. My family was only a few rungs above, separated from the bottom by a class called “poor white trash.” Still, the “N” word was part of my vocabulary, as well as that of every kid in the low income projects and neighborhoods where I lived.

As I write in Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger and have mentioned in a previous blog post, my first memory of flinching at the word followed a brief encounter with Jackie Robinson.

I was thirteen years old and working as “roof boy” for the minor league Mobile Bears, retrieving foul balls that landed on top of the grandstand. A screen at the rear of the roof prevented them from going into the parking lot. Before and after games, I ran errands for players. I was paid fifty cents a night, plus tips, to watch baseball games and hang around professional athletes. It was great.

On trips north from Florida spring training in those days, major league teams played exhibition games in the cities of minor league farm clubs. The Bears were affiliated with the old Brooklyn Dodgers. And when the team bus arrived at Mobile’s Hartwell Field in 1949, I helped the Major League’s first black player carry his equipment bag to the clubhouse. When I excitedly told daddy, he was not impressed.

“Hey, Marie,” he called to mother. “Come and listen to Johnny brag about carrying a nigger’s suitcase.”  It was supposed to be a joke―a symptom of culturally ingrained Southern prejudices.

In dad’s defense, when I took up the civil rights banner years later, he bragged to friends about my support of the cause.

So what caused a radical change my in racial, societal and political attitudes? Actually, there was no sudden epiphany or single event that formed my views. Indeed, it was a gradual evolution that probably began in the military. For reasons I don’t recall, I became close friends while station in Okinawa with a young black airman from Washington D.C. In 1954, Jesse James White and I became the first mixed race roommates in our barracks. Although the military had been fully integrated for six years, we were considered oddballs—especially me, an 18 year old kid with southern redneck roots. J.J. and I didn’t hang around much outside the base, but we respected one another as equals and that was an important lesson for me.

I guess the next major step toward my enlightment occured in the early 1960’s during my tenure as a radio newsman in California at stations in the Sacramento Valley. Luckily, I have another opportunity to plug my book with an excerpt. 

I was influenced in large part by seeing societal ills first hand, such as migrant worker abuses and poverty. Nearby ghetto-like labor camps were the underbelly of agriculture. Already paid low wages, migrants were assessed outrageous rents for shacks with no running water or electricity.

I also saw first hand the gloom of farm workers in my daily stops at the Marysville Police Department. Because of the volume of arrests on skid row, a makeshift courtroom was set up inside the jail to avoid stinking up the courthouse. A judge conducted daily proceedings. He imposed sentences that were practical and compassionate. If a drunk showed symptoms of DT’s, he was sent to the county penal farm to get medical attention. If still able to navigate, he was usually cut loose after paying a small fine, which was determined by the amount of money in his pockets. Most were white male Americans, rather than blacks or Hispanics. Illegal immigration had not yet become a big issue in the country.

Simply seeing the plight of these people instilled in me a degree of compassion. I knew that they were victims of necessity and a lack of opportunity.

After leaving California in the mid-sixties to become News Director 0f a Baton Rouge radio station, my politics were already moving to the left of center. In Louisiana, I moved farther left during the civil rights era, especially after becoming a radio talk show host. For three years, race and poverty were regular topics on the show. My guests included civil rights leaders like John Lewis, then head of Voter Education Project and desciple of Martin Luther King. At the other extreme were the hate-mongers like David Duke and the late Judge Leander Perez. In addition to the talk show, I was covering civil rights, poverty and other societal ills on the street and becoming convinced of the need for radical changes in the country.

Adding an exclamation point to my political transformation was an “opportunity” to spend a year in a mostly black workplace—though it was not by choice. In 1971, my broadcast career almost ended as a result of booze. After landing on skid row in New Orleans, I was jobless and seemingly unemployable. My career was salvaged by a black programmed radio station in Baton Rouge that hired me to start its first news department.

Being a shameless self-promoter, I will add another excerpt to describe experiences that had a significant impact in shaping my politics.

It didn’t take me long at WXOK to realize that my “enlightened” understanding of discrimination was superficial at best. I had never been the victim of blatant bigotry. Nor had I experienced the humiliation of being turned away from a segregated school, public facility, or denied a job because of my skin color. I came close―an experience that was more comical than sinister.

In the course of building a news department, I had an ongoing dialogue with a black-owned syndicated news service that provided the station with national material for our newscasts. In turn, we fed Louisiana stories to the network. Since Louisiana was then a civil rights hotspot, there were plenty of stories to pass along. Indeed, my feeds became so frequent that the New York based company made a job overture.

“You realize I’m white,” I asked the recruiter. There was a long pause. I heard him take a deep breath. “Yes, of course,” he said unconvincingly. “We’ll be getting back to you real soon.” I’m still waiting.

Sadly, many young blacks faced the same wait from white-owned companies. Also disheartening was the ignorance and bigotry of friends. My barber once asked if the body odor of co-workers bothered me. Such misconceptions were deep-rooted in Baton Rouge and most parts of the South. Working at WXOK taught me lessons that I could only learn in predominately African-American surroundings.

It also helped me later on to empathize with a black high school girl I interviewed while producing a documentary on poverty in Baton Rouge. Breaking into tears, she told of missing the senior prom at her integrated school because her mother couldn’t afford a nice dress. In the same program, a teen-aged boy said his most memorable meals were leftovers momma brought home from her job as a maid at an LSU sorority house.

More tragic were the struggles of poor and elderly blacks in getting medical care. “I don’t know how I gonna breathe if the welfare don’t get me my medicine,” an asthmatic woman cried in the documentary. Six hours after the interview, she died of heart failure while waiting for a welfare worker to deliver the prescription. 

But despite my self-proclaimed empathy for those deprived of the American dream, I was a phony. My outsized ego had been severely damaged by the tumble from News Director, ace reporter and talk show host at Baton Rouge’s leading radio station to my job as WXOK’s token white boy. And instead of feeling gratitude for a career reprieve, I began fabricating an excuse for my presence at the station. I would tell former colleagues that the job was an assertion of my commitment to civil rights―foisting myself off as a self-sacrificing Peace Corps journalist.

The opportunity to promulgate the fiction presented itself at an NAACP news conference. For the first time since my failed attempt to succeed as a skid row bum I was about to come face-to-face with reporters that I had avoided since my day of reckoning. The prospect of seeing them at a Baton Rouge hotel was so unnerving that I sat in the parking lot for several minutes trying to summon the courage to go inside. Entering the lobby, I immediately ran into Louisiana’s Associated Press bureau chief, Charles Layton. He greeted me with a smile and a handshake.

“Where have you been, John?” he asked. “I haven’t seen you for awhile.” My answer was so stunning I thought it was the voice of another person.

“WJBO fired me for being a drunk,” I blurted out. “I’m working at WXOK, trying to get things back together.” Had I actually made this humbling admission to someone? I could not believe my own words. Charlie took the sting out of my confession.

“That’s great. I knew you were having problems. I hope things work out.” It was no big deal to him. Like most Baton Rouge reporters, he knew about my drinking. Acknowledging my alcoholism outside of AA meetings was an important step in maintaining sobriety. 

It was significant in seeing my deep-rooted hypocrisy and seeing myself as others saw me. For anyone who has read this far, my apologies for the length of the post. At least you will know the experiences that are the basis of my political views and opinions.

I wish I could say my rants fall within the realm of WWJD. But I’m certain that is not the case. By the same token, observing the actions of the Party of No Conscience and Compassion—aka Republicans and tea partiers—I have a strong sense they represent what Jesus would not do.   

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

Since the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous 75 years ago and the beginning of Alanon for spouses and families of alcoholics shortly thereafter, the “anonymous” label has been attached to a multitude of 12-step recovery programs. Spin-offs are designed to deal with an array chemical, physical and emotional problems—gambling, sex, eating disorders, addictions to illegal and/or prescription drugs, and an array of struggles that part of the human condition.

Regardless of the ailments, the underlying principles of all the different 12-step programs are pretty much the same. The steps put into practice a value system that is unknown to many—the basics of which include universal tenets of faith, trust, honesty, courage and humility. In AA lingo, incorporating the principles in one’s life leads to a “spiritual awakening.” Not to be confused with a sudden epiphany that is often described as a ”spiritual experience.” Twelve step programs gradually bring about a level of self-honesty. That is why so-called tea partiers need to form a recovery program called, ”Deniers Anonymous.”

From inception, Tea Party members and its candidates have been in a state of denial in responding to any and all criticism. The most recent instance of self-deception is the refusal to acknowledge the NAACP’s claim that the loosely formed organization have been invaded by racists, bigots and hate groups. The denials must be coming from blind and deaf spokespersons. How could they miss an inflammatory road sign in Iowa comparing the President to Hitler and Lenin, or fail to see placards at rallies that are clearly racist, or not accept the word of credible sources that epithets were directed at black congressmen as they walked through a crowd of Tea Party demonstrators? That is the equivalent of my years of denial that alcoholism caused my drunken episodes, delirum tremens, nights in jail, an emotionally abused broken family and eventually led me a failed skid-row audition. 

Vice President Biden refused yesterday to label the Tea Party as racist. And I agree. However, that does not mean the absence of racism among many of its members—a subtle form of which is sometimes more sinister than outward bigotry. Indeed, it is often difficult for people—me included—to detect underlying prejudices. Our failure to see deep-rooted personal bias is troublesome for African Americans. At least they know where they stand with the Klan mentality.

Deniers Anonymous would be particularly helpful for Tea Party candidates, some of whom have denied saying or believing they made statements in radio, television and newspaper interviews. Sharron Angle is an exception. The Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Nevada simply avoids mainstream media interviews. She answers only to God, Fox “News” and right-wing reporters in her home state. God apparently is not satisfied with her answers. Senate Majority leader Harry Reid has been resurrected from the graveyard of politically dead incumbents.

Meantime, God has smiled down on Democrats in Kentucky by delivering a Tea Party-supported candidate whose mouth has gotten him in so much trouble that he is no longer a a sure-fire Republican successor to slightly deranged incumbent Jim Bunning. Dr. Rand Paul stumbled in the race coming out of the gate by making 1960’s era comments about civil rights. Like Sharron Angle, he now avoids interviews that could expose him as under-qualified to occupy Bunning’s Senate seat—a level of incompetence that is probably impossible to achieve. Nonetheless, Dr. Paul’s gaffes have made the Kentucky race competitive. Given his explanations that previous statements are not a real reflection of his position on civil rights, Deniers Anonymous would be helpful in allowing Paul to get in touch with his true views.

Former Presidential candidate Ross Perot is the best example of my own experience of encountering political candidates living in a state of denial. Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger provides all of the gritty details. If interested, buy the book and be entertained by my journey to a vast fantasy land. In short, my one hour in-depth confrontation with Perot during the 1992 Presidential campaign was his final sit-down interview with an investigative reporter .

I had flashbacks of the Perot debacle sixteen years later while watching Katie Couric interview Sarah Palin—another political figure who defines accountability as being a personal attack. She has become a role model for refusing to do interviews with anyone but the Fox “News” bunch and their ilk. She and all her cohorts at the Republican propaganda networks are excellent candidates for Deniers Anonymous. Especially Glenn Beck.

In AA, we sometimes classify a category of alcoholics as “low bottom drunks.” Having spent time with my feet planted in a gutter, I fit the label. Glenn Beck is a low bottom denier. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he consistently denies his racially charged and anti-semitic rants. Washington Post poltical reporter Dana Milbank wrote a column last week that provided astonishing statistics about Beck’s hate-filled lunacy and his influence as a self-proclaimed leader of the Tea Party movement.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/16/AR2010071602855.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

If the day comes that someone decides to start a Deniers Anonymous program, Glenn Beck should be among the first recruits. He should have some vague knowledge of recovery based on his past disclosure that he joined AA many years ago. I presume he is still sober today. Outwardly, though, he does not fulfill AA’s promise of restoring its members to sanity. 

That is not surprising. Anyone listening to Beck can easily discern that he knows nothing about the principles that form the basis of 12-step recovery.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

Yesterday, I intended to post my very last comments about demonstrations that preceded Sunday’s health care vote. In fact, I gave Tea Partiers the benefit of the doubt in blaming the worst of the abuses on a small number of racist and malcontented cowards hiding under the cover of more reasonable protesters—the folks who truly believed in the legitimacy of their opposition to the health care reform bill. I still believe that is the case. However, there were a lot more “Klanners” in the crowd than I imagined.

My revised opinion is based on the number of people coming to the defense of card-carrying idiots. Defending them falls under the cliche of “Who are you going to believe? Me, or your lying eyes.” Fox News and several right-wing publications are like holocaust deniers. They demand to see video and audio evidence of racial slurs, as well as an incident in which a U.S. Congressman was spat upon. His account of what happened and his reaction when it occured is rejected by wing-nuts as a far-fetched allegation.  

“Preponderance of evidence” is a legal term applied in civil lawsuits—meaning that if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it must be a duck. The threshold in civil cases is different than ”beyond a reasonable doubt,” the standard for conviction in criminal trials. In my opinion, there was certainly a preponderance of evidence Sunday that some of the folks among the demonstrators were capable, if not damn likely, to scream racial slurs, epithets and try to intimidate Democrats with physical threats.

Consider the placards referring to the election of Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, a vote that denied Democrats the super majority that blocked GOP filibusters. ”If Brown can’t do it, a Browning can,” read the signs. Then, of course, there were the placards depicting the President, among other things, as a Socialist, a Nazi and an illegal immigrant. And let us not forget the display cartoonish black-face signs that can only be interpreted as racist. Indeed, the “preponderance of evidence” supports claims of race-baiting and homophobia. In fact, it reached the level of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

In the past, I’ve been there and witnessed these kinds of irrational demonstrations by both extremes of the political spectrum. In 1968, I covered the Democratic National Convention, when thousands of anti-war protestors caused chaos in Chicago. During the sixties and early seventies, I reported on a multitude of civil rights demonstrations. So I’m aware that emotions get out of control in such circumstances, sometimes resulting in bloodshed. In these kinds of volatile events, it would seem that members of Congress would counsel calm instead of inciting the crowd as several Republican Representatives did Sunday. But what else can be expected of a party led by John Boehner, who was nearly hysterical his closing argument in opposition of the bill.

Consequently, I believe there is a ”preponderance of evidence” that the incivility of protesters including racial and sexual slurs. Also let me add that I’m quite familiar with the “preponderance of evidence” threshold. By and large, it is the same standard that applies to investigative reporting. Journalists have not been granted subpoena powers. Hence, we often reach conclusions based on a preponderence of evidence, and defend ourselves in libel cases using the same criteria. In the ten or so lawsuits filed against me during a 30-year career, the standard withstood the scrutiny of plaintiff lawyers. That’s why I lasted so long in a business with a short shelf-life.

Anyway, I will move along tomorrow to other issues in posting my little essays. Maybe the Tea Party can get rid of the few (hopefully, very few) Klanners cloaked under their organizations banner, and try to cool the tempers of others for awhile. Only time will tell if their worst fears about health care will come to pass. Which I doubt. Then again, I don’t listen to Rush, Glenn and Sean.

Meantime, I recommend that Tea Partiers buy my book in order to relax. They need to have a few laughs. 

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. It is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career. 

Yesterday’s blog post, The First Black Whatever,  really pinched a few nerves. I’m not surprised. Race is one of the most sensitive subjects in America. And perhaps the most important. The portion of my post that stirred the kettle was a suggestion of subtle and sometimes overt racism exhibited by a lot of folks involved in the Tea Party movement. I was accused of race-baiting in comments that ranged from “Democrats do it” to “What difference does it make the color they (the tea partiers) are?” Indeed, there were even Google searches of Tea Party demonstrations to find a black face in the sea of white and prove me wrong. Sure enough, one was found.

Let me be clear, I don’t know shit about what it is like to be an African-American in this country, which is the case with most so-called enlightened white liberals. One has to be black, to live black and have the experiences of blacks to understand what it is like. Over the years, I’ve had opportunities to learn just a little bit about the black experience. Most recently, I attended a six week Racial Dialogue workshop in Baton Rouge. It taught me again how much I don’t know. Learning anything requires willingness. The point of my essays is to share experiences have made me the person Readers who don’t care can tune out, or take me to task when they disagree. I have thick skin and a sense of humor that allows me to laugh while standing at fresh graves.

Excerpts from Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger provides insight into the early lessons I learned about race and I pass my perceptions along free of charge. Apologies about my repetiveness to those who read the book.

Like a majority of native born Southerners, I grew up in a family that used the “N” word. My parents denied being bigots. They just wanted “blacks to stay in their place.” I have a lasting memory of daddy’s reaction following my encounter with baseball star, Jackie Robinson.

I was thirteen years old and working as “roof boy” for the minor league Mobile Bears. The job entailed retrieving foul balls that landed on top of the grandstand. A screen at the rear of the roof prevented the balls from going into the parking lot. Before and after games, I ran errands for players and was paid fifty cents a night, plus tips, to watch baseball and spend time around professional athletes. It was great.

On trips north from Florida spring training in those days, major league teams played exhibitions against minor league farm clubs. The Bears were affiliated with the old Brooklyn Dodgers. And when the team bus arrived at Mobile’s Hartwell Field in 1949, I helped the Major League’s first black player carry his equipment bag to the clubhouse. Daddy was not impressed. “Hey, Marie,” he called to mother. “Come and listen to Johnny brag about carrying a nigger’s suitcase.”  It was supposed to be a joke―a symptom of culturally ingrained Southern prejudices. In dad’s defense, when I took up the civil rights banner years later, he bragged to friends about my support of the cause.

It is important to know that in later years my dad was later willing to re-consider ever so slightly the racial attitudes that were part of his upbringing. To me, that is a key to gaining knowledge and growing spiritually. Yes, I said spiritual. Read the New Testament. 

As I wrote yesterday, the only radio station willing to hire me after I plugged the jug in 1971 was Baton Rouge’s black programmed station, WXOK. Before getting fired by the city’s most prestigious station for being a drunk I was a talk show host for three years—a liberal voice of sorts during a time of racial discord in Louisiana. I thought I knew some stuff.  After all, I was the first airman in my barracks on Okinawa in 1954 to choose a black roommate. But after listening to African-American guests on my talk show, I began to recognize that I knew so litte about the black experience.

It didn’t take me long at WXOK to realize that my “enlightened” understanding of discrimination was superficial at best. I had never been the victim of blatant bigotry. Nor had I experienced the humiliation of being turned away from a segregated school, public facility, or denied a job because of my skin color. Working at WXOK taught me lessons that I could only learn in predominately African-American surroundings.

But despite a self-proclaimed empathy for those deprived of the American dream, I was a phony. My outsized ego had been severely damaged by the tumble from News Director, ace reporter and talk show host at Baton Rouge’s leading radio station to my job as WXOK’s token white boy. Instead of feeling gratitude for a career reprieve, I began fabricating an excuse for my presence at the station. I would tell former colleagues that the job was an assertion of my commitment to civil rights―foisting myself off as a self-sacrificing Peace Corps journalist.

The opportunity to promulgate the fiction presented itself at an NAACP news conference. For the first time since my failed attempt to succeed as a skid row bum, I was about to come face-to-face with reporters I had avoided since my day of reckoning. The prospect of seeing them at a Baton Rouge hotel was so unnerving that I sat in the parking lot for several minutes summoning up the courage to go inside. Entering the lobby, I immediately ran into Louisiana’s United Press bureau chief, Charles Layton. He greeted me with a smile and a handshake.

“Where have you been, John?” he asked. “I haven’t seen you for awhile.” My answer was so stunning I thought it was the voice of another person. “WJBO fired me for being a drunk,” I blurted out. “I’m working at WXOK, trying to get things back together.”

Had I actually made this humbling admission to someone? I could not believe my own words. Charlie took the sting out of my confession. “That’s great. I knew you were having problems. I hope things work out.” It was no big deal to him. Like most other reporters, he knew about my drinking. 

So there it is—a combination of claiming to have knowledge of the black experience, fooling myself into believing I understood racism from the perspective of African-Americans, and a dose of attempted hypocrisy in trying to conceal my embarrassment I felt of being relegated to an all black environment—even though ten months at WXOK saved my career and very possibly, my life.

I admit my shortcomings when it comes to underlying prejudices. But I continue to have a willingness to acknowledge my ignorance. It is a step toward brotherhood.

Am I hokey, or what?

This past weekend, the New York Times Magazine did a feature story on the Reverend James Fields—a black preacher and retired state employee, who was elected in 2008 to the Alabama legislature. He represents Cullman County, in which only 401 of the 81,000 registered voters are African-American. Fields falls into the well known category of “the first ever.” In his case, the first black to win a county-wide election in Cullman.

The election is significant. As late as the 1970’s, the town of Cullman was among the infamous southern communities where signs were posted at the city limits by the KKK and other racists groups warning, “Nigger, don’t let the sun go down.” Ironically, Cullman has another distinctive first that is quite the opposite of the road sign and parallels the breakthrough of Fields.

Sixty years ago, then Governor (Big) Jim Folsum—a Cullman resident—was the first southern governor to explicitly voice support for racial integration. Other governors like Louisiana’s Long brothers, Huey and Earl, were moderately supportive of blacks. But they kept their views quiet. This was not the case with Big Jim. In his 1949 Christmas Day address, he stated, ”As long as the Negroes are held down by deprivation and lack of opportunity, the other poor people will be held down alongside them.”

It was a radical statement given the time and mood of Alabama. I’m well aware of the ingrained racism that existed in the state since it is where I spent most of my childhood and adolescence. I grew up hearing the “n” word. The only thing I recall about Cullman, other than it being the hometown of Jim Folsum, is that on trips through north Alabama, my parents usually planned to eat at a steakhouse in the town that was well-known throughout the state.

Governor Folsum politically survived his break with Dixie racism. He was reelected after a one term absence from office as required then by state law. A quarter of a century after Big Jim’s death, the election of James Fields creates a bit of symmetry for Cullman.

Reading the Times article brought back memories of more than forty years ago when I was a radio talk show host in Baton Rouge and regularly introduced “the first black ever.” Among the guests was New Orleans political figure Ernest (Dutch) Morial. In 1967, he was the first African-American elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives since post-Civil War Reconstruction. After leaving the legislature, he became the first black juvenile court judge and then the first black Mayor of New Orleans. His son, Marc, followed in Dutch’s footsteps. He was the city’s Mayor for eight years.

Fried chicken entrpreneur Joe Delpit broke the racial barrier in Baton Rouge in 1969, becoming the city’s first African-American councilman. He was later elected to the Louisiana legislature and became Speaker Pro Tem, then the highest state government position of any black since reconstruction. In many respects, Joe Delpit paved the way for present Baton Rouge Mayor, Kip Holden, again a first ever African-American elected to the office.

Kip and I have our own “first ever” symmetry. Many years ago, he followed in my footsteps as a news reporter at WXOK radio, Baton Rouge’s only black programmed station. I was the ”first ever” fulltime white on-air newsman. In fact, WXOK saved my career. After a failed skid row audition in 1971, the station hired me to set-up its news department.  No other radio station in Louisiana was willing to take a chance on me because of my reputation as a drunk. But during my ten month tenure at WXOK, I stopped drinking. It has been 39 years and I’m still counting.

Anyway, four decades-plus have rolled by since my “first black ever” talk shows. And it seems to me that the  term, “first ever” in reference to African-Americans, should have been retired by now—especially with the election of a black President. It was a leap forward that many of us could not envision in the 1960’s and early seventies.

Even so, progress in race relations remains gradual. Sometimes when it seems that giant steps forward are being made, there are reminders that racism is still alive, but in more subtle forms. Indeed, groups that are not so subtle have found refuge in Tea Party organizations that have been recently established around the country.

Watching the tea partiers at protest demonstrations and other gatherings, I can’t help but wonder, “Why are there no black faces in the crowd? None, zilch.”

Are the tea partiers and other white-only protest groups a true face of America? It’s worth pondering.