Time Warped American Daily by Jonathan Pait
The recent revelation of Essie Mae Washington-Williams that she is the daughter of the late Senator Strom Thrumond of South Carolina has caught the attention of the national press. All around the country reporters took what the AP fed them, changed a few words, added a local connection and passed it on to the public. The responses to the media hype are interesting, not so much for what they illuminate about the man or his daughter, but for what they reveal about us.
First the facts. Essie Mae Washington-Williams was brought into the world as the illegitimate daughter of 22-year-old Strom Thurmond and young 16-year-old, Carrie Butler. Strom was the son of a prominent family. Carrie was the young, black maid who worked in his parents’ home.
What we don’t know is the nature of the relationship. Was it consensual? Did the young Thrumond force himself upon the young girl? The bottom line is that we do not know the answer to those questions. Speculation doesn’t shed much light on that unknown aspect of the story, but it certainly turns the spotlight onto our own prejudices.
I am pleased to see this piece. The author, Jonathan Pait, was also the PR director at Bob Jones University (BJU) when, in the fall of 1998, I started taking them to task over their "interracial" dating/marriage ban. For the record, even though BJU was talking out of both sides of its institutional mouth while making excuses and lying about the origins of its "racialist" nonsense, I never held any personal animosity towards Pait in the exercise of his official duties. That said, he did publicly defend a policy built on prejudice, deliberate distortion of Scripture and lies. I am happy, nonetheless, to see him tackling this topic with regards to Thurmond. Pait also has a weblog available here.