Wait, It Is the 21st Century, Right?

A while ago, I blogged about how the residents of my hometown elected the town's first black mayor. Since then, one long term employee of town hall has resigned and one police officer has decided to go work in another parish. They are both white. While the police officer claims the other parish will pay more and and pay his mileage, the town hall employee has been pretty honest about the fact that she doesn't want to work for a black man. I know you're thinking, "that's two people, elle," but remember I come from a town in which we have three police cars, a volunteer fire department, and about four town hall employees. So this is significant. And no, these aren't throwbacks to another age--the town hall employee is a year younger than I am. And when I see her, she will smile and speak and I will once again be blown away about how some people just don't get it.

For a number of people in my hometown, "it" isn't racism if "it" doesn't entail some violent act. Sort of like the white girl who confided to me years ago, when my cousin J was dating a white boy, that she just didn't understand why he would date J when he could have a white girl. Or how my high school let black cheerleaders ride the bus with the all-black boy's basketball team, but the white cheerleaders had to be chauffered to games because "it wouldn't look right." I could regale you with stories like that all night, but I digress.

The reason I'm thinking about my hometown mayor, is because I read this: Louisiana Mayor's Death Sparks Controversy. Gerald Washington, the new black mayor of a mostly-white town, was found shot to death and the coroner has ruled it a suicide.

But the coroner and the sheriff have offered no reason for why Washington would have killed himself. No suicide note was found. And there is no evidence he bade farewell to anyone, put his financial affairs in order, or gave any other indication he was about to kill himself, authorities said.

In fact, Washington seemed to be readying himself for his new job:

About noon, he set City Hall's alarm system for the first time. He got instructions on how to raise and lower the U.S. flag. He had already ordered a new mayoral letterhead with his name on it and a button-down shirt embroidered "Gerald Washington, Mayor."
A few hours later he indulged in a hobby, placing a $4 bet at a nearby horse racing track.

Apparently, the coroner wishes people would just get over these damned unfounded conspiracy theories!

"This is the South, so of course everybody's going to say it was some white guy shooting a black guy," said Dr. Terry Welke, the Calcasieu Parish coroner who ruled that Washington killed himself.

Now why in the world would we think something like that?