‘Niggerhead’: Washington Post Publishes Racially Charged Front Page Hit Piece on Rick Perry
In 2006, the Washington Post lead a racially charged smear campaign against former Senator George Allen (R-Va.) involving the previously unknown word “macaca.” On Sunday, the Post prominently featured a 3000-word, racially charged, front page hit piece involving Texas governor Rick Perry and a decades old bit of graffiti reading “Niggerhead”: In the early years of his political career, Rick Perry began hosting fellow lawmakers, friends and supporters at his family’s secluded West Texas hunting camp, a place known by the name painted in block letters across a large, flat rock standing upright at its gated entrance. “Niggerhead,” it read. Ranchers who once grazed cattle on the 1,070-acre parcel on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River called it by that name well before Perry and his father, Ray, began hunting there in the early 1980s. There is no definitive account of when the rock first appeared on the property. In an earlier time, the name on the rock was often given to mountains and creeks and rock outcroppings across the country. Over the years, civil rights groups and government agencies have had some success changing those and other racially offensive names that dotted the nation’s maps. But the name of this particular parcel did not change for years after it became associated with Rick Perry, first as a private citizen, then as a state official and finally as Texas governor. Some locals still call it that. As recently as this summer, the slablike rock — lying flat, the name still faintly visible beneath a coat of white paint — remained by the gated entrance to the camp. “There is no definitive account of when the rock first appeared on the property.” Which means the Perrys were not responsible for placing it there. Quite the contrary, as author Stephanie McCrummen relays over 3000 words, Perry and his family routinely painted over the offensive graffiti and eventually turned the rock it was painted on over so that it was completely hidden from view. So why would the Post give so much print space to such an article? He grew up in a segregated era whose history has defined and complicated the careers of many Southern politicians. Perry has spoken often about how his upbringing in this sparsely populated farming community influenced his conservatism. He has rarely, if ever, discussed what it was like growing up amid segregation in an area where blacks were a tiny fraction of the population.
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on October 2, 2011. Filed under