Wrighster or Wrong - Discussing Jerry Jones 1957 Photo

George Wrighster isn't ready to give Jerry Jones a free pass for his appearance in the North Little Rock Six photo, but he does think the Dallas Cowboys owner can use the opportunity to help educate people about the challenges of the not-too-distant past. #fsrweekends

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're ready to check your feelings at the door. This
is am I Rice Ster or am I Row. We're
bringing new facts and only the truth. Now, am I
Rice Ster or am I Rock? We need to talk
about Jerry Jones again. The Washington Post recently published an

(00:22):
article chronicling Jerry jones history as an employer of black
men in a league that has been at the forefront
of debates in the relationship overs race and opportunity for
a decade now, and as the articles jumping off point,
the article used the nineteen fifty seven photo of then
a fourteen year old Jerry Jones standing in the background

(00:43):
while his white classmates attempted to intimidate six black students
as they became the first desegregated schools in Little Rock, Arkansas.
That photo has understandably ignited some furious debate online, and
it's been quite fascinating to watch people put fairly recent
historical events through the modern meat grinder of what some

(01:04):
would refer to as cancel culture and others maintain his
consequence culture. And I'm not here to talk about the
way we've come to conflate social justice and social media justice.
There's not anything you or I can do to stem
the tide of social media platforming everybody's feelings all at once.
The reality of the situation is that Jerry Jones isn't

(01:25):
losing the cowboys over this, and I'm asking you to
acknowledge the reality so that we can talk about one
way Jerry Jones could actually do some good here. Because
there are people who are missing the argument. They will say, oh,
Jerry Jones can't be racist, he employs black billionaires. What
the truth is, you can still be racist and allow
people to make millions while you collect billions on them

(01:48):
during their playing career and long after they're gone. I'm
not asserting that Jerry is racist. I'm just saying he
grew up in this time. Now. Tensions in this country
right now might feel like an all time high, but
the truth is this might not even be a top
five era for American division. And sometimes we get caught
up in the idea that because white people don't agree

(02:10):
on major issues along party lines, that that's the definition
of division. How about the division that existed in the
nineteen fifties, when it was everyday public debate whether melanized
people like myself were worthy of basic constitutional protections. There
wasn't a public consensus on whether or not we were
even human beings. Now, Jerry Jones cited curiosity as his

(02:34):
reason for making his way into the photo that day.
On some level, I believe them. After all, curiosity isn't
the absence of hate. It's often just the attraction to
the spectacle. And Cowboys Face should know better than anybody
else that the people who tuned in to see the
Boys in Blue on any given Sunday are active haters

(02:55):
attracted to the spectacle. And Jerry Jones likely spent his
child hood in a homogenized environment, surrounded by people that
carried the popular public sentiment of the time, which was
one that coming to grips with the idea that black
people weren't quite property, but they also weren't quite people.
And it's Jerry jones direct connection to that time period

(03:18):
that gives him an opportunity to talk about the exact
path he and others like him had to travel to
evolve out of that mindset. I know for some it's
not ever gonna be enough to repeatedly denounce the popular
sentiment of the era which they were raised in. They
have to be a leader in every facet of every

(03:38):
kind of social progressive movement, and perpetually atoned for the
sins of themselves and their ken My message isn't for
those people that carry that standard, but everyone else with
more realistic expectations of a billionaire born in the American
South at the heighter Jim Crow, what we really need

(03:58):
is honesty. We're living in a time when the very
idea of educating kids on the history of how dehumanization
of black people has shaped the experience of a nation
has become too bit a pill to swallow. In the
educational curriculum in some Southern states, we can't teach history.
It makes white kids feel bad. It's it's history. We

(04:21):
can spend a semester talking about the revolutionary spilling of
unjustly tax t but we can't spill the t on
subsequent injustice of an unfairly taxed race. Jerry Jones experience
as a still living, still thriving, white Southern American billionaire
whose boyhood friends gathered to hatefully block the path to

(04:42):
children whose only crime was desiring equal access to education,
it has value and encouraging Jerry Jones to slink away
into obscurity with billions of cash. Like Donald Sterling, isn't
going to bring society maximum value here. Forcing something that
happen been seven years before the Civil Rights Act was

(05:02):
passed and twenty years before Tom Brady was even born
isn't going to accomplish anything either. What we need from
Jerry Jones at this moment is for him to open
up about his time in the segregated South and use
his platform to put context to all facets of that photograph,
the visible anger, the fear, the spectacle, and the bravery

(05:25):
of the North Little Rock six. I'm not suggesting Jerry
Jones can solve racism, but I'm saying that there are
plenty of people curious who gathered around the spectacle of
this story. They're craning their next for a better view.
A story that added its root is one which is
triumph over hate, a story whose main character shouldn't be

(05:46):
Jerry Jones at all, but instead it should be about
Richard Lindsay, Gerald Persons, Harold Smith, Eugene Hall, Frank and
William Henderson who showed up to the North Little Rock
High School despite the school board telling them not to.
Jerry Jones has the opportunity here to make sure that
we know those names and we know how their courage

(06:09):
in the face of his curiosity helped push the country
forward a more just future for everybody. It's an opportunity.
I hope he's curious enough to take let that sink
in