Black writer Wil Haygood on Richard Spencer, Charlottesville and the NFL

An African-American writer who grew up in the turbulent 1960s in Ohio has plenty to say about today's turbulence over racial issues.

Wil Haygood graduated from Miami University in 1976 and had a long newspaper career at the Washington Post and Boston Globe before going on to become a premier biographer. His subjects have included entertainer Sammy Davis Jr., boxer Sugar Ray Robinson and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Haygood, on sabbatical from Miami, is 2017-18 Patrick Henry Writing Fellow at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland.

He spoke to The Enquirer last week in advance of a Cincinnati event Saturday in which he and Jeff Pegues, CBS News' justice and homeland security correspondent, will discuss the current state of race relations.

Here are some highlights of that interview:

Enquirer: White supremacist Richard Spencer will be speaking at the University of Cincinnati later this year or early next. What is your position on the issue of hate speech on college campuses?

Haygood: Speech is a very powerful magnet in this country. And it has led the way to freedom. Unfortunately, this is also a country that has had slavery and legal segregation and their aftereffects. Over the decades, there have popped up many figures — George Wallace among them — who have fostered a dangerous racist agenda. 

What we have to do, as writers, professors and scholars on college campuses, is impart to students the very racist history of this country and how it is very much infected with racism. 

Enquirer: So yes or no, should Spencer be allowed to speak on campuses?

Haygood: Yes. What is truly the beauty of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights is freedom of speech. We learn from dictators the value and preciousness of free of speech as something we value and prize as sacred. ... Students who study history will get to know the contours of hate speech and how it so vividly stands in contrast to the contours of healing speech.

Enquirer: What was your reaction to events this summer in Charlottesville, Virginia?

Haygood: It was the culmination of a very racially divisive presidential campaign, where one candidate augmented racial strife and was given 24/7 news coverage to espouse many hurtful and painful things against racial minorities. It filters down and gives people who are so inclined a call to arms. ...

After Charlottesville, it was said that both sides had good people. No, they did not. Good people do not use words, threats of violence and a car to kill someone. There is no good angle to that philosophy.

Enquirer: What are your thoughts on the NFL players' protest against police brutality started by Colin Kaepernick?

Haygood: We have almost monthly shootings of blacks by law enforcement. ... What Colin Kaepernick did was very courageous, and I have no doubt he loves this country, and the flag belongs to him as much as it does people who work in law enforcement. And there are many, many lovely people who work in law enforcement who put the uniform on in the morning and do much good. No one but a person with the hardest of hearts would say that the criminal justice system is not skewed and unfair. It's where injustice and pain happen. 

This protest will be regarded in history as one of the most righteous ever staged.

Enquirer: Why the great backlash against Kaepernick, the players and the NFL as a whole?

Haygood: I was working at the Boston Globe when Professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested trying to get into his home in Cambridge. There is a terrible double standard in this country. President Obama was not supposed to speak the truth about race about Professor Gates and Trayvon Martin and other incidents in which white law enforcement was involved.

When President Obama tried to explain in very patient language about race and law enforcement, many whites took it as he didn't care for them. He was saying that a professor at Harvard University had no business getting arrested for trying to get into his own house. A white scholar would likely not have been arrested. It is the "twoness" that W.E.B. Du Bois said blacks must live with in this country. When the president tried to untangle that he was excoriated by many white. 

Enquirer: Where are we now racially?

Haygood: We are going to have to choose going forward what kind of country we want to be and how it wants to be viewed by the rest of the world. White nationalist movements in Europe have led to mayhem. That formula is very dangerous. Right-wing zealots are out there in this country espousing hate and putting hangman's nooses on college campuses and trying to intimidate non-white students.

But this country is more powerful than all of the hate groups put together. This country will come through this and will find its better angels. The arc of moral righteousness and good will prevail. That is when we soar. We showed the world that an African-American man can be elected to the highest office in the land. We can show the world the majesty of that again. But we have to put race at the top of the agenda again. It does no good to send men and women to explore space when we are festering hate on the ground. It's going to take as much effort now as it did to advance civil rights in the 1960s.

IF YOU GO

Spirit of ’64: Miami University and the Enduring Legacy of Freedom Summer will be Saturday, Oct. 28, from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, 50 E. Freedom Way. Registration and refreshments begin at 9:30 a.m.

Cost is $20. Each attendee will receive a copy of the most recent books written by featured speakers Wil Haygood and Jeff Pegues, respectively “Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America” and “Black and Blue: Inside the Divide Between Police and Black America.”

Registration is open through Wednesday, Oct. 25, at MiamiAlum.org/Spirit64Cincy