Mellman: America’s racial relapse continues from coast to coast

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, pundits and prognosticators seemed certain America was in store for a racial reckoning, that the next wave of civil rights legislation would be passed and that white Americans’ thinking would be transformed.  

Of course, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed the then-Democratic-controlled House twice, only to die an ignominious death in the Senate both times.  

The bill did not defund the police, though some advocates tainted it with that damaging slogan.

But disparate headlines this weekend, far afield from policing, demonstrate just how short a distance we’ve traveled toward that hoped-for reckoning.  

Alabama, whose population is 26 percent Black, appeared twice in the news.  

Channeling their former governor, George Wallace, who shouted, “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” and took his oath of office on the very spot where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederacy, Alabama’s state legislature openly defied a Supreme Court decision requiring them to give more congressional representation to African Americans.  

Wallace literally blocked the door when John F. Kennedy’s deputy attorney general came to desegregate the state’s schools, but even Wallace relented in the face of a Supreme Court decision.   

Not so for Alabama’s Legislature, which defied the nation’s highest court in a blatant effort to minimize the political representation of Black Alabamians.  

The town of Newbern, Ala., also made headlines.   

Although 85 percent of its residents are Black, the town elected its first Black mayor in 165 years. In response, some white leaders changed the locks on city hall and hid away basic information, including the town’s finances, effectively preventing the mayor from taking office.  

 It’s unimaginable that such things happen in America, but whites in Newbern are just echoing the racism they are hearing from the state’s legislature.  

Sadly, this-week-in-racism extends far beyond Alabama.   

In a story some details of which remain unclear, even to those intimately involved in creating them, the president of Texas A&M, the state’s second largest university, announced her departure over a botched hiring effort.  

For our purposes, the key point is that an offer to helm the university’s journalism program, extended to a Black Ph.D. who was an alumna, a professor at the University of Texas and had been an editor at The New York Times, was in effect rescinded because she had written about race and had, well, worked at the New York Times.  

By the way, Blacks comprise more than 13 percent of Texas’s population, but less than 3 percent of A&M’s students and faculty.  

An original offer of tenure with the position was apparently withdrawn, and an A&M dean explained the change to the prospective hire saying, “You’re a Black woman who was at The New York Times and, to these folks, that’s like working for Pravda.”  

Imagine how Texas would react if companies like the New York Times, Disney and Google announced they wouldn’t hire white A&M graduates.   

All three of these headlines come from former slave states. Political cultures, even racist ones, die hard.   

However, the fourth story in this set comes from where you might least expect it, supposedly progressive media and tech companies.  

The Wall Street Journal reported that “companies including Netflix, Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery have said that high profile diversity, equity and inclusion officers will be leaving their jobs. Thousands of diversity-focused workers have been laid off since last year and some companies are reducing racial-justice commitments.”  

In line with this broader pattern, the Journal quoted the leader of an executive search firm who maintained that demand for diversity executives is the lowest he’s seen in 30 years.  

I won’t even mention Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s slavery-helped-the-enslaved curriculum.   

Instead of benefiting from a racial reckoning, recent news seems to suggest America has suffered a racial relapse.   

Things everyone seemed to know should not be said or done are said and done daily. Academia and business have decided to pay less attention to it.   

When will the reckoning arrive?  

Mellman is president of The Mellman Group and has helped elect 30 U.S. senators, 12 governors and dozens of House members. Mellman served as pollster to Senate Democratic leaders for over 20 years, as president of the American Association of Political Consultants, a member of the Association’s Hall of Fame, and is president of Democratic Majority for Israel.