Dan Cathy — shine this

OPINION:

Dan Cathy, former CEO of now-woke diversity, equity, inclusion-loving Chick-fil-A, was captured on video chastising White America for racism and saying the way forward was to find a Black person with dusty shoes and bend down and shine them. And then he did. He bent down, on camera, and shined a Black man’s shoes.

What a tool.

Cathy can take that brush and shine this.

How many times must the truthful history of slavery be told before it’s accepted that hey now, White people aren’t the only devils in the universe; Black people the only angels; and that America is not inherently racist?

The video’s three years old. And Cathy, the son of Chick-fil-A founder S. Truett Cathy, is no longer the restaurant chain’s CEO. But still. He still speaks for Chick-fil-A. And if that’s how Chick-fil-A thinks about a large portion of its customer base who came out in droves to support the fast food spot when it was being attacked, back in 2012 and later years, by LGBTQ activists — well then, there’s always Popeye’s. Or Kentucky Fried Chicken. Or any number of competing restaurant chains that aren’t going to go on video and try to shame customers into bowing down to some imaginary god called “inherent racism,” or “systemic racism,” and pretend as if one race ought to live in subservience and apology to another.

Remember when Dan Cathy was asked by Baptist Press in 2012 about his views of family values and gay marriage and he responded that “We are very much supportive of the family, the biblical definition of the family unit,” and for that, faced calls to boycott from LGBTQ crowds? Cathy’s Christian, conservative, traditionally minded and biblically educated consumer base rose in outrage, lining the streets at lunchtime to buy sandwich after sandwich after sandwich, all in support of Chick-fil-A’s moral stance.

Well, screw that.

Cathy, according to this video, actually wants Caucasians to all bend the knee to the race card and pretend humility and humbleness about an evil that, yes, did exist in America — but that existed elsewhere, at the same time, and was even a trade of choice by, get this, Blacks?

“One of the most vexing questions in African-American history is whether free African Americans themselves owned slaves,” The Root wrote. “The short answer to this question, as you might suspect, is yes, of course; some free black people in [America] bought and sold other black people, and did so at least since 1654, continuing to do so right through the Civil War.”

And let’s not forget Mansa Musa, the devout Muslim ruler of the 14th century Mali Empire and the richest man in human history, wealth he accumulated in large part through slave trades.

“Mansa Musa Owned 12 Times More Slaves Than The US’s Largest Slaveowner,” Medium wrote in 2022.

That’s called History That Makes The Left Uncomfortable 101.

It’s Christianity that bucked against slavery; it’s biblical principles that put a stop, in Western culture, in America, to its spread.

“Christianity,” America in Class wrote in a piece, “The Religious Roots of Abolition,” posted online, “was a central feature of nineteenth-century American life for both slaveholders and anti-slavery activists. To argue persuasively against slavery, abolitionists had to find ways to use the Bible and Christian tradition, along with American patriotic and domestic ideals, to make their case.”

And so they did.

Not all Founders were hard-charging, Bible-thumping Christians, of course. But they were all educated on biblical principles and though their views of Jesus differed, their understanding of rights as rooted in a Creator were similar. It’s that concept of individuality — of the importance of the individual, no matter the skin color, and of God’s granting of rights to each individual — that ultimately led many of America’s framers and early influencers to resist slavery and its expansion throughout the New World.

John Quincy Adams was called the “hell-hound of abolition,” for his vociferous fights against slavery. Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush established the country’s first anti-slavery group, ultimately named the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. Roger Sherman called the slave trade “iniquitous” and led the passage of several acts that ended slavery in Connecticut. Alexander Hamilton is remembered by historian Ron Chernow as an “unwavering abolitionist who saw emancipation of the slaves as an inseparable part of the struggle for freedom.”

Whose shoes should be shined now, Mr. Cathy?

The problem with taking such a theatrical approach to smoothing history’s offenses is that it’s, well, stupid and theatrical. History isn’t a neatly packaged box tied with a pretty pink bow. It’s complex. It’s messy. It’s rabbit hole after rabbit hole of subplots and mysterious missing links and fill-in-the-blanks and myths that must be separated from oft-elusive facts. Offenses must be seen in the context of what was taking place at the time of the actual offense, and then and only then, held to a light of judgment.

Shining Black people’s shoes doesn’t exactly accomplish anything of substance. It doesn’t bridge racial divides. It doesn’t present truths or advance truthful discussions. It doesn’t bring unity or joy or healing or warmth or anything other than ugly faked emotions. For the shoe shiner, it’s humiliating, and a show of false modesty. For the shoe shine recipient, it’s a puff of patronizing egoism.

It’s all show. All theater. All fake. 

It leads nowhere.

That Cathy, a supposed Christian, would engage in such drama — and expect all his fellow Caucasians to do the same — is a tell of his own adrift moral compass.

Chick-fil-A has fallen and fallen hard to the woke culture.

Good thing it’s not difficult to make a chicken sandwich from scratch. If Cathy wants to keep on shining shoes, so be it. But maybe he could expand his efforts and shine the shoes of others who were treated poorly, who suffered the loss of freedom, who were pulled from lives of what could have been greatness and stuffed instead into pits of despair and despondency and forced labor and fabricated roles that had nothing to do with what God wanted and planned and intended — hmm. 

Come to think of it, maybe there are some women’s shoes out there that need shining. After all, historically speaking, the Constitution awarded Blacks the right to vote before women. Ain’t truth grand.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE  or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.