I fully intended to write a column ripping Dick Donovan, the district attorney of Paulding County.
That is, until I drove out there and actually talked to him.
On Election Day, Donovan posted on Facebook a diatribe supposedly written by Rev. Franklin Graham (Billy’s son) about how non-whites and troublesome whites have ruined this great nation.o
It read:
The American dream ended on November 6th, 2012 in Ohio. The second term of Barack Obama has been the final nail in the coffin for the legacy of the white Judeo-Christian males who discovered, explored, pioneered, settled and developed the greatest republic in the history of mankind.
A coalition of blacks, Latinos, feminists, gays, government workers, union members, environmental extremists, the media, Hollywood, uninformed young people, the “forever needy,” the chronically unemployed, illegal aliens and other “fellow travelers” have ended Norman Rockwell’s America.
You will never again out-vote these people. It will take individual acts of defiance and massive displays of civil disobedience to get back the rights we have allowed them to take away. It will take zealots, not moderates and shy, reach-across-the-aisle RINOs to right this ship and restore our beloved country to its former status….
Wow, I thought, I’d hate to be a black, a Latino, a gay or a “forever needy” sitting in a Paulding courtroom and awaiting arraignment.
A person entrusted with the solemn duty of dispensing justice shouldn’t also be dispensing a dyspeptic view that everyone but strong, straight, white, male Judeo-Cs is screwing it all up. Comments like that can get you elected president but aren’t good for a prosecutor.
So I drove to Paulding, a county northwest of Atlanta that is still semi-rural but has consistently been one of the nation’s fastest-growing counties.
When I moved to Atlanta in July 1990, Paulding embodied Norman Rockwell’s America. One of the first stories I wrote for the AJC was Paulding got its first four-lane road. People then were coming to grips with the county’s wild growth — it had 42,000 people.
In later years, I wrote about the county’s last logging horse, the closing of a dry goods store and even cattle rustlers. Now, there are 155,000 residents, more than a quarter of them minority.
I expected Donovan to be irritable and he was — initially. He received a call from a TV station and complained about having to defend himself as not being a racist.
The DA says he didn’t endorse the Facebook post. He says he found it surprising that the son of Billy Graham, “the premier preacher of the last half century,” would print something so “radical.” (It turns out Franklin Graham did not originate the tirade. It was some other cranky white guy.)
“I thought it was interesting,” he said. “I thought it was a good topic for discussion.”
So, Donovan said he put it up for public consumption. He did not, however, write any preamble or disclaimer explaining these weren’t his thoughts and that he didn’t agree with them.
Then came complaints, phone calls and blog posts calling him a danger to justice. I, too, thought it was outrageous a prosecutor would post these thoughts as if they mirrored his own.
But before I fired off a strong condemnation, I talked with him, and listened. Funny how a face-to-face can supplant strong opinion.
A couple years ago after Ferguson there were calls for “an honest discussion about race.” But hardly anyone wants to delve too deeply into their inner feelings and spill them out there publicly. Things get messy, you get caught in the crossfire.
Donovan complained about “political correctness,” saying the left is quick to yell “racist,” or “hate speech.”
I noted the right hasn’t been exactly tongue-tied recently.
Later, he conceded, “it’s very difficult to talk because of the radicals on both sides.”
Invective not discussion, wins the day. People talk at each other when they're not shouting at each other, usually at their keyboards, but increasingly in the streets. Few listen, especially to those with opposing opinions. In fact, we increasingly know less people with differing opinions.
Donovan is a former cop who met his wife on the beat. He was a newspaper writer at UGA. He doesn’t want a return to the past. At least not all the way.
He does not oppose gay marriage and certainly doesn’t want to return to segregation. He was a classmate of the first black students at Brown High School in Atlanta in 1961 and then the first black students at UGA.
He wasn’t for Trump in the primary but later voted for him. He had the “R” after his name.
“I am not a revisionist,” he said, leaning forward in his office chair. “I am not a throwback or want the world to move backwards.”
He would like to see TV and movies move backwards and not be as vulgar. And the protesters in the streets last week bother him. He said he licked his wounds after losing an election and then returned four years later to win.
Outside the courthouse on a walking track was a Lawrence Williams, a black Paulding resident whose Hillary vote canceled out Donovan’s Trump vote.
To continue Donovan’s “discussion,” I showed him the fading white country tirade.
“There is a racial divide, I guess that’s just who we are as human beings,” he said. “We don’t know each other. We can’t get over it. Everyone has their own prejudices and biases.”
Williams, a retired auditor cranking out a couple miles, conceded he has a conservative streak. He does not like abortion, nor gay marriage. But he believed Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan meant “Make America White Again.”
“At some point they say whites will be a minority,” he said, “and from some whites’ perspective that’s a fearful thing.”
But what really seemed to bug Williams was group-think in race, in class and in politics. He did not like how we’re stuck with either/or.
“You’re stuck with a party,” he said. “I have to be in one group or another. Someone else has defined those for me.”
The discussion continues.
