Last week, I noted
that Katon Dawson, the chairman of the South Carolina Republican
Party who is running for chairman of the RNC, had a 12-year
membership in a country club that excluded blacks from being
members. Today, a representative of Dawson emailed
this post from the Minority Report, which includes a letter
in defense of Dawson by Glenn McCall, a black RNC committeeman.
Blogger Brian Simpson concludes that it's absurd to call Dawson a
bigot because of "his friendship with McCall" and also notes that
Dawson attempted to change the club's whites-only policy. "This
should be touted as a lesson in how to act as a responsible
adult," Simpson writes. "When you are made aware of a policy that
you find morally objectionable, your first reaction should be to
attempt to change the policy. When, and only when, it appears
that your actions will be unsuccessful, you must leave the
organization. That is exactly what Chairman Dawson did."
The problem is, as the State reported,
Dawson only raised a fuss about the policy this August.
We're not talking about the segregationist South of the 1950s,
this is 2008. We're supposed to believe that in the 12 years that
Dawson was a member, he wasn't suspicious about the fact that
there were no black members, and it was mere coincidence that he
waited until a few months before he announced he's going to run
for RNC chairman to leave the club. And this is what makes him a
"responsible adult"? That's about as believable as Barack Obama's
contention that he never heard Jeremiah Wright's racist and
anti-American vitriol until it showed up on YouTube.
To put this in a larger context, I should note that I'm a big
believer in the right of free association. Even though I'm
Jewish, I think anti-Semites should have every right to hang up a
giant "No Jews Allowed" sign outside a private club, and exclude
me from walking through the doors. But I also think that people
who belong to such clubs should get a taste of their own
medicine, and be harshly criticized by the rest of society. I
have no idea whether Dawson himself is personally a bigot, so I
won't make such accusations. But what is clear is that Dawson
derived benefits from belonging to a club that excluded blacks as
members, whether in terms of prestige, business and political
contacts, or merely because he spent some pleasant time there.
The proper method to change the ways of these exclusive clubs is
not through the legal system, but by showing its members that
there are consequences to excluding minorities. The Republican
Party would be making a clear statement along these lines if they
were to deny him the chairmanship. At the very minimum,
Republicans should be seriously considering whether, after
America elected its first black president, the party wants to be
led by somebody who spent more than a decade as a member of a
whites-only club.
