Jackson Free Press

"If I'm not mistaken, white Republican northeast Jackson voted overwhelmingly for the blacker of the two candidates. So exactly how can this be about race?"

—Wyatt Emmerich, publisher of the Northside Sun, in a May 30 editorial titled "It's not race, it's the ideology we don't like."

Why it stinks: Wyatt Emmerich, whose (white) grandfather stood up for civil rights when he held an editor's pen, has proclaimed himself up as the arbiter of "all things black." Surely, he implies, the deeper the color of one's skin, the deeper the "blackness" of an African American. By his twisted logic, the choice between the light-skinned Chokwe Lumumba and the "blacker" Jonathan Lee can't possibly be racial, because if race was the issue, Lee's darker skin would make him the obvious choice for black voters (despite his "liability" of holding a 
master's degree).

"Conflict," Emmerich opines, is the raison d'etre of Mississippi's (and Lumumba's) "older order," whereas "reconciliation" defines Lee's "newer order." And "kush" (as in the Jackson-Kush plan) is actually a code word for marijuana, which prompted the Jackson pothead vote. Good grief.

Then again, it's not surprising coming from a guy who gave an award to a columnist who wrote that "Every black in this country ought to give thanks every day that their ancestors were brought to this country where they were ultimately given every opportunity that everyone else has."

Emmerich might want to check himself before he so arrogantly and ignorantly declares himself an expert on what makes a black person in Jackson vote the way he or she does. That face staring back in the mirror? It's not black.