Considering Coons and the GOP's Future

Following the election for a new Young Republican leader gave me flashbacks.

Fresh out of college and a tad naive on my first reporting job, a small-town politician invited me to go “coon hunting.”

I had NO idea what he was talking about.

Though I attended majority white schools in the South, my parents kept me pretty protected from a lot of that stuff, and I mainly traveled in a circle of academic achievers, friends from orchestra and band class, and those who attended church with me. My upbringing didn’t prepare me to talk about hunting of any kind with the Milledgeville, Ga., city attorney.

The official's invitation struck me as a little off — he was chuckling as we talked — but I was eager to develop sources so I agreed to join him on his next outing. Back at the office, I asked my white, male editor about killing raccoons, something I wasn’t keen on witnessing. Exactly what would it involve?

The editor, Don Schanche, turned red.

He banged his fist on the desk.

He let loose with ungentlemanly expletives, cursing loud enough to startle everyone in the newsroom. Then he stalked out.

Later, still angry but in a much-lowered voice, he explained that “coon hunting” had nothing to do with raccoons. He apologized, asked whether I was comfortable enough to continue working my city government beat, and cautioned me to keep my distance from City Attorney J.W. Morgan. (Of course I still remember the guy’s name,)

Morgan died three years ago, according to an obituary I found online. But he was vividly brought back to mind by the election of Audra Shays to head the Young Republican National Federation — an election in which the word “coon” played a part.

This being 2009, Shays has a Facebook page. On it, one of her online friends labeled President Obama a “terrorist” and expressed a need to take back the country from “all these mad coons.” To see her reply, zoom in on this screen shot. “You tell ‘em,” she wrote. Where she typed “lol,” that’s shorthand for “laugh out loud.”

Laugh out loud? She found that entertaining?

And now she is one of the elected faces of the party of Lincoln, the party with a national chairman, Michael Steele, who is black.

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