Pressured by Black Lives Matter, the Democrat Party of Orange County has moved quickly to have iconic actor John Wayne dropped from his namesake, John Wayne International Airport. Wayne gave one interview in the late Hugh Hefner’s “Playboy Magazine” in 1971 expressing controversial views. “I believe in white supremacy,” Wayne told Playboy. “I don’t believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people,” Wayne said, using a “homophobic” slur, saying he had no regret taking land from Native Americans. Orange County Democrat Party officials want Wayne’s name removed from the Irvine-based airport that’s carried his name since 1979, the year Wayne died from cancer. Wayne’s estate spent his fortune promoting the John Wayne Cancer Institute at Providence St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. Wayne’s good name has been besmirched.
Wayne played the rugged American cowboy in countless movies spanning about 60 years, often depicting how the West was won, battling Indians, now called Native Americans, over the nation’s Westward-bound frontier movement. If Wayne said anything about “white supremacy,” it was purely in the American context of carving a nation out of an untamed wilderness, not some affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan, John Birch Society or any other racist group. Bashing Wayne’s name because of a 50-year-old Playboy interview is outrageous, pandering to the mob mentality now sweeping the nation, destroying statues, monuments and historical artifacts mirroring the nation’s long glorious history. Wayne was not referring to “white supremacy” in the way it’s used today by Black Lives Matter or other civil rights groups. In today’s Black Lives Matter culture, all whites are racists.
Stretching the meaning of racist to the breaking point, authors like Robin DiAngelo, whose book, “White Fragility,” has become an instant bestseller, labels all whites as racists by definition. Anyone not black, even those of other colors, to Di-Angelo are racists because they did not grow up black. DiAngelo identifies herself, the author of White Fragility” as a racist, because in her definition anyone not growing up black is a racist. Since definitions used by DiAngelo and Black Lives Matter redefine commonly used terms, like racist, the words no longer have meaning. Wayne lived his life as the best possible model reflecting the American character, courageous, big-hearted and generous but, once challenged, true to the conviction of promoting America’s brand of freedom. Black Lives Matter now defines anyone not black as racist, something racist in reverse.
John Wayne’s son Ethan took umbrage at accusations of racism now leveled at his deceased father. Ethan said his father would “be at the forefront demanding fairness and justice for all people. He would have pulled those officers off Gorge Floyd, because that was the right thing to do.” Ethan knew his father’s legacy was that of a hero for his work on and off the stage. President Ronald Reagan awarded Wayne posthumously the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981, after Wayne’s death June 11, 1979 at age 72. Citing Wayne’s “white supremacist, anti-LGBT and anti indigenous people,” the Democrat Party of Orange County petitioned the Board of Supervisors to rename John Wayne Airport back to Orange County International Airport. Today’s atmosphere redefines common words, takes everything out of context to justify vandalism and desecration of historic statues and monuments.
When Black Lives Matter protesters-turned-rioters, looters and vandals tagged the Lincoln Memorial June 9 you knew nothing was sacred again in the United States. There’s nothing the Founding Fathers and every American patriot can do to change U.S. history, or more importantly, the history in the British colonies that preceded the United States. So often, Black Lives Matters, who demands reparations for all African Americans, whether or not they were descendants of slaves, rejects American history, good, bad or indifferent. Many versions of U.S. history, like Howard Zinn’s 1971 “The People’s History of the United States, a more critical view of U.S. history, would not agree with Black Lives Matter’s definition of racism. Zinn, who refused to whitewash the U.S. treatment of Native Americans, blacks and other minorities, would not agree that all whites are racists because they are not black.
Tearing down monuments, statues and other American treasures around the country won’t change the long pre-colonial, colonial and eventual U.S. history, including the French Indian Wars [1754-1763], the American Revolutionary War [1775-1783], Civil War [1861-1865] and War of 1812 [1812-1815], all to forge a new nation, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Whether Thomas Jefferson’s immortal words rang true or not, there’s more to American history than fighting to end racism, bigotry, promoting equal justice and liberty for all. Removing John Wayne’s name or tearing down statues of George Washington, Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln doesn’t change one thing about the plight of blacks or people of color in the United States. Defining all whites as racists because of their skin color is a racist as it gets.
