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Tag: hunting camp

Perry’s Rock And What It Says About Us

A few words about Rick Perry’s rock.

This would be the one at the entrance to a remote Texas hunting ground used by Perry for decades, the one painted with the name of the camp: “N—-rhead.” The Texas governor says his father painted over the ugly name almost 30 years ago, though some locals interviewed by the Washington Post in a story that ran Sunday claimed to have seen it there much more recently.

That same day, Herman Cain, who is competing with Perry for the GOP presidential nomination, called the word on the rock “vile,” and accused Perry of being “insensitive.” He was pretty much the only candidate to go after Perry about the rock, though he was backpedaling a day later.

“I really don’t care about that word,” he said, after being accused of playing the so-called “race card.”

It was difficult to escape a suspicion that, though he is African-American, he never cared about the perceived insult as much as he cared about the opportunity to inflict damage on Perry. Cain thus managed to make both his attack and retreat feel calculated and cynical.

Meanwhile, the rock becomes the latest outrage du jour, meaning the momentary controversies through which what passes for discussion of race and privilege in this country are carried. Think Bill O’Reilly and Don Imus shooting their mouths off. Think Andrew Breitbart sliming Shirley Sherrod. Periodically, the news delivers these neatly packaged, self-contained dustups that allow political leaders and others to line up on the side of the angels, harrumphing the necessary condemnations, while never venturing too deeply into what the dustups tell us about us.

Where race is concerned, people sometimes act as if the past is a distant country, a far, forgotten place we ought never revisit, unless it be for the occasional purpose of congratulating ourselves on how far we have come.

But the past has this way of crashing the party. Usually, it does so with the relative subtlety of statistics quantifying ongoing racial bias in hiring, education and criminal justice. Occasionally, it does so with the bluntness of a sign reading “N—-rhead.”

The name is not unique. To the contrary, the map of the United States was once dotted with similar words. For example, there is still a Negrohead Point in Florida and a Negro Cove in Maryland, both changed from the original slur in a fig leaf of decency. There is also Dago Peak in Idaho, Jew Hill in Pennsylvania and Redskin Mountain in Colorado.

Not to let the Texas governor off too easily, then, but to make this all about Perry is to miss the point. It is also about us. What does it say about America, about fairness in hiring, education, justice, that such place names were ever acceptable — or that some people don’t understand why they no longer are?

“It’s just a name,” a man named David Davis told the Post. He is a Texas judge, a man to whom, we may suppose, African-Americans periodically come seeking justice. “Like those are vertical blinds,” he said, looking at a window in his courtroom. “It’s just what it was called.”

That rationalization ought to tell you that that rock is not the political football Cain sought to make it. Rather, it is a reproach to the unearned smugness of modern days. And a reminder that the past is closer than we think.

(Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.)

(c) 2011 The Miami Herald Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Rick Perry’s Hunting Camp Embarrasssment

Rick Perry is attracting heated criticism over the controversial former name of his family’s hunting camp. The West Texas retreat, which the Perry family began leasing in 1983, was long known by the controversial name “Niggerhead.” The pejorative name is painted on a rock standing at the entrance of the property; although it has since been painted over, the name is still visible under the thin coat of paint.

Perry claims that the rock has been painted over since he and a friend complained about the offensive name to Perry’s father in 1983 or 1984; he’s also argued that the “offensive name that has no place in the modern world.”

Perry’s account has been disputed, however; seven people told the Washington Post that they recalled seeing the rock with the name unobscured during the years that Perry has been associated with the ranch. One retired game warden claims that the name was visible through at least 1990, and one former ranch worker believes that the name was displayed as recently as 2008.

Perry’s rivals have been quick to jump on this embarrassing revelation. Herman Cain, the only black candidate vying for the Republican Presidential nomination, has accused Perry of racial insensitivity.

“Since Gov. Perry has been going there for years to hunt, I think that it shows a lack of sensitivity for a long time of not taking that word off of that rock and renaming the place,” [Cain] told ABC’s “This Week.

“Yes, it was painted over,” he said. “But how long ago was it painted over? So I’m still saying that it is a sign of insensitivity.”

At the end of the day, no matter how eager some critics are to paint Perry as a bigot, this embarrassing incident does not prove that Rick Perry is a racist. The simple fact of the matter is that Texas has a checkered past with regard to racism. It’s not necessarily Perry’s fault that his family’s hunting camp was a part of that troubled history.

What it does prove is that Perry’s political handlers made a huge error in allowing the sign to remain at the ranch, only partially covered by a thin layer of paint. Given that every miniscule detail of a presidential candidate’s private life is examined under a magnifying glass during a campaign, someone should have seen this coming.

It also suggests — perhaps unsurprisingly — that Governor Perry doesn’t have a lot of diversity in his inner circle. Something tells me that, if Perry had ever brought a black friend hunting with him in the past two decades, a sign emblazoned “Niggerhead” wouldn’t still be standing by the entrance of the family ranch.