Katon Dawson felt working for the GOP was necessary given
what happened to him early on:
I've always been involved in politics. And I guess it goes all
the way back to my school career and education. I, in the 1960s
was a product of school segregation, where we took our schools
and completely disbanded them, and made racial equality.
Fifty-Fifty. And the kids had no choices. They closed Booker T.
Washington, Blease, down here. A pretty good school. Closed it
and sent the students to A. C. Flora, across town. And they did
it over the summer because the laws had been changed by the
politicians. And, the day that school opened, we were on CBS
news with the busses turned upside down, and one of them lit on
fire. By folks who didn't want to go to school there. Not folks
who did.
The end of that story was, I was standing in a bathroom in
public school... This scar over here [pointing to his forehead]
was from a baseball bat. I will tell you it was a pretty harsh
environment. Government reached into my life and
grabbed me and shook me at the age of fifteen. I
remember how blatant it was that government just thought that
they knew better, that government just thought they knew better
what to do in my school. And I can't say it was so much racial.
I can say that people had a lot of stuff thrust on them because
politicians thought they knew better.
Emphasis mine. Notwithstanding whether there might have been
better ways to integrate schools than federal fiat (I've heard
arguments to that end, but I'm not convinced), why is Katon
Dawson on record saying this? That government reaching into his
life during this time was something terrible. Is that something
the GOP is going to want to defend if Dawson is elected?
UPDATE: David Weigel
says, "To be fair to Dawson, he has been endorsed by two of
the three black members of the RNC, and getting brained by a
baseball bat is no fun."
When has "Some of my best friends are Black" ever resonated in a
debate?
