Count James Edwards, host of the Memphis-based white nationalist, anti-Semitic radio show called “Political Cesspool”, as among those likely celebrating Phil Mickelson’s victory at the Masters golf tournament on Sunday. Not because Mickelson is a feel-good story, winning the green jacket as his cancer-stricken wife watched, but because Mickelson is not Tiger Woods. That is to say, Mickelson is not black. Edwards, 29, continually pines for a return to the Confederate South he never knew. The Masters — held at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Ga. — fanned those longings and Edwards’ racist rhetoric to depths unprecedented even for him. “Golf is the ultimate European sport,” he wrote on Friday, when the tournament outcome was in doubt. (By European, Edwards meant white, of course.) With its strict decorum, the Masters “is the closest picture we have of what the modern world might be like had the old South survived,” he gushed.
You know, it’s not easy being a White male these days. Being a member of the oppressing class is not at all what all y’all think it’s supposed to be. Treasuring the things that have historically been your birthright is a recipe for being accused of bigotry these days…and in the case of James Edwards, you’d be spot on. Edwards not only misses the way things used to be in the Good Old Days, he’s not afraid to hold forth on how much he misses the perks that used to accrue to those fortunate enough to be born White.
I understand that there are those who still feel that Augusta National Golf Club is a bastion of sanity and order in a world turned upside down by racial sensitivity and political correctness. Thankfully, most of these people don’t have radio shows, and most aren’t willing to blithely air their bigotry over the airwaves. Edwards, apparently still mentally stuck in a time when colored water fountains were generally accepted as they way things should be, sees nothing wrong with advocating for a return to a time when African-Americans were still considered second-class citizens.
Lauding Augusta National as a beacon of Southern correctness and gentility is a recipe for alienating a majority of the population (woman and African-Americans). The club, which still doesn’t welcome women as members and didn’t allow African-Americans to join until 1990 (and even then it was under duress), may serve as a symbol of The Way Things Oughta Be for some in the South. Nonetheless, Augusta National still represents a time in our history when equal rights and opportunities were concepts that applied only to White Males. It’s an anachronism, pure and simple, one designed to maintain the privileges and perks of wealthy White males at the expense of those not blessed to be born White.
And don’t even get Edwards started on Tiger Woods….
“He’s got the sexual mores of the most stereotypical ‘nigger’ that even the most hardened, bigoted cracker could imagine,” wrote Edwards, who opposes “primitivism,” homosexuality, loveless sex, feminism and abortion. “Oh, and he apparently only wants white women. From his Nordic model wife to the dumpiest diner waitress, all of his trysts are with white women.”
“Segregation in the old South was all about maintaining racial integrity and civilization,” Edwards continued. “About keeping our wives and daughters safe from sexual animals like Tiger. About building up and maintaining what is noble and good. If the ‘black messiahs’ like Tiger Woods and Martin Luther King Jr. are such animals, what about the mere mortals among them? Do we want to find out?”
Edwards problem, of course, is that he was born about 200 years too late. Put him in the early 19th or late 18th century, and he’d be right at home keeping his darkies and his women in their places. Sadly for him, we live in the 21st century, a time when (nominally, at least) women and African-Americans are considered equal partners in the American experience. African-Americans are no longer considered 3/5 of a person, and women have the right to vote. Edwards, for his part, seems neither to recognize nor care that his views are both offensive and horribly out of touch. Yet I’ll wager that if you called him on his bigotry, he’d deny that he’s a racist or a bigot. Nope, he’d no doubt hold forth on how he’s just a good ol’ boy and a Southern patriot…and how’s actually the one being oppressed for his views.
Call it what you will…but Edwards is still a bigot and a racist who’s views deserve to be roundly ridiculed. Despite what he and those like him might think, White does not make right. Welcome to the 21st century.
