H. Walker Being Used By GOP To Protect White Supremacy

 

The following is part of an essay in The New York Times by writer Dante Stewart:

Mr. Walker is part of a long tradition of Black people willing to distance themselves from the humanity and dreams of their community in exchange for white praise and white power. Black people betraying Black people has a legacy stretching from the plantation to today. Mr. Walker has willingly, as he did in the N.F.L., taken the handoff from the likes of Mr. Trump, Ron DeSantis and Lindsey Graham, shucked and juked and jived over Black people’s real needs, just to hit the end zone and win at the white man’s game. . . .

No matter how perfect or upstanding we are or how well Black people lead our state, white people seem to always become indifferent when we shout: This is not good for us! Once again Black people have to prove that we are trustworthy and that Senator Warnock is the best choice not just for us, but for America.

Politics aside, positions aside, I have to wonder: what is it that so many white people see as desirable in Herschel? A recent letter to the editor in the Los Angeles Times suggested that it was the power of “celebrity” — that there was something alluring about Mr. Walker dancing his way to the end zone before winning a Heisman Trophy. For others, Mr. Walker is someone who represents Republican exhaustion with what Democrats have to offer. But it is not just celebrity or exhaustion. The race and runoff is a reflection of who white people believe is best for Black people and the nation. Herschel Walker is a very visible and violent symbol of just how far many white people in America will go to preserve a dying world of whiteness they refuse to let go of.

What a sad thing it is to watch a man’s and a people’s desire to destroy even themselves in an attempt to control what America is, means and can become. It is not just white supremacy. It is not just white hatred. It is white ingratitude.

White ingratitude is bent on breaking people’s hearts. It is white ingratitude that refuses to appreciate what Senator Warnock means to Georgia and this country and forces him to prove himself once again. It is white ingratitude that desires the stereotype of the ignorant charismatic Black athlete. It is white ingratitude that disrespects and disregards the Black tradition of faith that wants to both heal the soul and save society. It is white ingratitude that refuses to acknowledge just how deeply racist a vote for Mr. Walker actually is. White ingratitude is not just about open hatred and violence, it is also the everyday ways many white people make life so much harder for those who don’t look like them.

White ingratitude is very real and it is the heart of white power and white supremacy. If you are ungrateful for another person’s humanity and freedom, then you will do all types of things to devalue and disrupt it. Many white people are ungrateful for what Black people mean to America, what we have been, what we have done, what we have given them and what we have endured.

It seems that Reinhold Niebuhr’s words from “Moral Man and Immoral Society,” published in 1932, still ring true: “However large the number of individual white men who do and who will identify themselves completely with the Negro cause, the white race in America will not admit the Negro to equal rights if it is not forced to do so.”

We have done the forcing, again and again. And now what we are left with is not just rage, but the sadness associated with exhaustion. An exhaustion that none of us deserves.

Senator Warnock just might win. The celebration will ensue. A sigh of relief will be had. People will dance and declare how this country “works.” And yet, he just might lose. That is life, American life, American fragility.

No matter what happens the ingratitude and grief will still remain.

And I want America free of both.

Herschel Walker Did Not Practice What He Preached

The following op-ed is by Steve Benen at MSNBC.com: 

Candidates for powerful elected offices face all kinds of questions, but as a rule, there’s no reason to ask, “Exactly many children do you actually have?”

With Herschel Walker, however, it’s become unexpectedly relevant.

As of a few days ago, the public knew that the Georgia Republican had an adult son, Christian Walker, who maintains a relatively notable public profile through social media, and who the U.S. Senate candidate frequently mentions. On Tuesday night, Walker’s family grew a little more: The Daily Beast reported on “secret son” whom Walker hadn’t publicly acknowledged, and who “has apparently been estranged from his biological father since his birth a decade ago.”

The Republican acknowledged the accuracy of the report. His campaign’s statement specifically said that Walker “had a child years ago when he wasn’t married.” The statement went on to dismiss the idea that “Herschel is ‘hiding’ the child.”

As it turns out, the use of the phrases “a child” and “the child” apparently understated the case. The Daily Beast published a follow-up report this morning.

A day after The Daily Beast broke the news that Herschel Walker had a secret 10-year-old son he fathered out of wedlock, the football star-turned-politician confirmed late Wednesday night that he has yet another son with a different woman that the public doesn’t know about — as well as a daughter that he had in college.

In a statement, the Republican acknowledged his children and said he disclosed their existence in 2018 paperwork when he was appointed to a White House fitness council. That's apparently true.

By all appearances, however, Walker did not share this information with the public. Indeed, it was literally two days ago when his campaign team suggested he only had one out-of-wedlock child, instead of three.

I’m not unsympathetic to the argument that Walker’s family life is a private matter. But as the Daily Beast’s original report noted, the problem is that Walker, who has no political record, has spent years making public condemnations “against fatherless households and deadbeat dads — specifically in the Black community.”

The New York Times highlighted several such examples, each of which will now be seen in an uncomfortable new light.

In a 2020 interview with the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, he called the absence of fathers “a major, major problem” in Black households and boasted of having been “like a father” to many young people in his hometown in Georgia. And in a 2021 interview with the Black conservative media personalities Diamond and Silk, Mr. Walker lamented that “the father leaves in the Black family. He leaves the boys alone so they’ll be raised by their mom,” comparing the dynamic to family separations during slavery.

“If you have a child with a woman,” Walker continued in that interview, “even if you have to leave that woman — even if you have to leave that woman — you don’t leave that child.”

This is has been a central message of Walker’s public persona for years, and it now appears he didn’t practice what he preached.