Take Heart, People – The Racists are Only Hurting Themselves

By: Tonyaa Weathersbee

Scott Gordon and Toni Delong, take heart. Men like Darren Sumner can’t hurt you anymore.

Sumner, who publishes The Sapulpa Daily Herald in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, recently allowed bias to overrule any journalistic or business sense that might have been rattling around in his brain.

He decided that Barack Obama’s historic presidential win had no place in his newspaper.

Sumner told a local television station – in a story that was widely reported on CNN – that his 5,000 circulation paper had too much local stuff to cover than to be fixated on the presidential election, and that people had already learned about Obama’s victory on cable and over the Internet.

Yet Sumner managed to squeeze in a front-page story about how John McCain carried Oklahoma.

I guess he figured his readers couldn’t have learned that bit of news the same way that he claimed everyone else found out about Obama’s win – by looking at the CNN electoral map.

But Gordon, Delong and a number of other black Sapulpa residents were outraged that the Herald snubbed Obama’s victory. They protested outside the newspaper’s office and denounced the decision as one that was grounded in racism and in poor journalism.

And they‘re right.

But as I said, they should take heart.

Take Heart, People – The Racists are Only Hurting Themselves....