Cowardly hearts, little minds spray forth venom

OFF/BEAT GLIDEWELL E-mail: Click here Archive

© St. Petersburg Times,
published December 11, 2001

Iwish I could tell Shanika Williams that we have come a long way in the past several decades.

But, after seeing racist epithets spray-painted on the walls of the Holiday house into which she is moving, she might have a little trouble buying that.

Nearly 30 years ago, before there was any public housing in Pasco County, I heard a then-member of the Pasco County Housing Authority say on different occasions that he was opposed to building single-site public housing because it would create "instant ghettos."

On another occasion, he said he was opposed to scattered-site public housing because it would "lower property values."

He voted against one site because it was too expensive. He voted against a less-expensive site because it was too low.

When I finally confronted him and said it sure sounded like he didn't mean for any public housing to be built in Pasco County, he just smiled.

Public housing back then, more so than it is today, was almost a code word for African-American housing. The board member, now deceased, was a racist, and it rapidly became obvious that he thought the best place for African-Americans to live was no place.

Ms. Williams is receiving some public assistance to pay rent for the house into which she and her three children plan on moving while she pursues her education and works toward taking her bite of the American pie.

And she is African-American.

Apparently that was enough for some morons (they almost always run in packs, lacking courage among other things) to break into her home and spray-paint racial epithets on the walls.

Interestingly, just about the only thing they managed to spell correctly was KKK, although I imagine that took a group consultation to be sure that all the pointy lines on the Ks were pointing in the right directions.

White power, they painted, "ruls."

They also misspelled a commonly used racial epithet, spelling it as what is actually the name of a principal West African river and an African nation. Either that, or when you are writing in 6-foot-high letters with a spray can and working under the cowardly cover of darkness, there is no space for geographical or philosophical footnotes and explanations.

One would have to have a firm grasp of the obvious to make much more of the fact that there is almost always a correlation between stupidity, ignorance and bigotry.

I have been called both a "trader" (he meant traitor, I think) and a "comanist," in recent e-mails from people whose verbal skills and grasp of the human condition are Neanderthal but who, somehow, have acquired sufficient computer skills to spread their venom.

I guess I should write them back and congratulate them on having graduated from spray cans.

If I could offer any comfort to Ms. Williams at all, it would be to tell her that stupid and cowardly racists and bigots aren't nearly as much of a threat as those who have acquired a gloss of intelligence and even managed to get themselves into public office. People who spray-paint misspelled epithets do it because they don't have the courage to face a 23-year-old woman and three little kids and proclaim who they are and what they believe in public -- unless they can put sheets over their heads and do it in large groups.

But it doesn't mean that we can discount that disturbing salient of the underlying mind-set that speaks, or rather barks, every time someone poor or someone disadvantaged or disabled wants a place in the sunshine that we in Florida so proudly proclaim as our most salable asset.

An apartment complex for the poor, proposed for not too far from where Ms. Williams lives, met opposition from people waving banners of population density and traffic congestion when most of them meant something else, and a group home for adults with Down's syndrome -- also not far away -- ran into a petition drive organized by someone whose credentials as a neighbor turned out to be worse than those who are actually trying to make their way in a tough world.

For what it's worth, Ms. Williams, have a happy holiday and please understand that although the morons among us sometimes speak the loudest, they don't necessarily speak for most of us.

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