RALEIGH — Readers outside the Triad area may be entirely unaware of one of the biggest political stories the region has seen in years. I suppose congratulations are in order, given the subject matter, but on the other hand I’m about to weigh in on the issue so continue reading at your own risk.
Billy Yow is a conservative Republican serving on the board of commissioners of Guilford County. He represents District 5, a sprawling and conservative-leaning jurisdiction in the southeastern part of North Carolina’s third most-populous county. For more than a year now, Yow has been waging a war of words with the local chapter of the NAACP — and, in a sense, with the state chapter, as well, since its leader Skip Alston happens to be a fellow Guilford county commissioner.
Yow has spoken out against what he contended was undue influence by Alston and other NAACP members in the affairs of the county. The issue came to a head in February 2003, during the search for a new county manager, when Yow proclaimed that he would not support any candidate for the job affiliated with the NAACP unless he or she “was very overly qualified.” While this may have been an attempt on Yow’s part to eschew racial preferences in favor of merit in hiring public employees, it was at best a clumsy and counterproductive one: “very overly qualified” connotes not a commitment to color-blind decisionmaking but very nearly the opposite.
Calling Yow clumsy was the charitable explanation. Another one, advanced by the NAACP and other Yow critics, was that he was a blatant racist. In the current political discourse, rife with incessant wolf-crying about racism, such charges have lost their ability to shock or persuade. But given Yow’s latest antics, there is no longer reason for charity.
It seems that he thought it would be funny to make up a T-shirt with the following image: a young boy is urinating on the letters “NAACP,” while a Confederate battle flag flies over his head. Apparently lacking friends or acquaintances with the required manners or mental capacity, Yow was encouraged to pursue the venture. Eventually, a company called Free Speak Inc. copyrighted the design and began producing and selling the shirts for $15 each. Yow says he’s not involved with the oddly named company (what, Free Speech Inc. was taken?) but has unabashedly been hawking its wares.
Naturally, the NAACP was upset about the disgusting image, but its members were hardly alone in their outrage. People of good faith and good sense, regardless of party or ideology, have expressed stern disapproval of Yow and regrets about how the stunt has divided a community already struggling with one of North Carolina’s most dysfunctional political cultures. Bloggers from the Right and Left have also played critical roles in the excoriation of this P-shirt maven, thank goodness.
Local Republicans have for the most part been critical but not vociferously so. Yow does have a GOP primary challenger in Bill Wright, a former mayor of the town of Pleasant Garden. Some of Yow’s supporters claim that his vulgarity accurately reflects the sentiments of most of his constituents, and thus won’t keep him from being re-elected. I’m inclined to consider this an insult to the voters of Guilford County, and a misreading of a community that is not trapped in 1960 like a cockroach in amber.
Make no mistake: I think that the NAACP as an organization is fair game for criticism. Indeed, I have rarely been as outraged as I was in 2000 when the national NAACP ran a despicable TV ad questioning the adequacy of then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s response to a grotesque hate crime in his state. As the perpetrators had been sentenced to death, I was as confused as the governor was about what exactly an additional “hate-crime” conviction would have added to the mix. A fine? And how could self-styled opponents of capital punishment pretend to be tougher on such a crime than someone quite willing to exact the ultimate and just penalty?
But the image on Yow’s t-shirt isn’t within the bounds of fair criticism, even of the cartoonish kind. It is designed to provoke and humiliate. It is indefensible. Obviously, he has the right to free speech, but so does everyone else. It’s time to exercise it.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.