By DAVE HAMRICK
Editor-at-large

It's no wonder that race relations don't progress any faster than they do.

No matter how hard we all try to get along, there are always areas where one group simply can't see the other group's point of view. And when we can't see and can't understand the other guy's viewpoint — it just doesn't make any sense to us — we tend to distrust motives.

We tend to believe the other group is prejudiced and narrow and doesn't want to get along. In other words, we tend to get prejudiced and narrow and increasingly we don't want to get along.

Two good examples in the news these days: the John Rocker incident and the South Carolina state flag controversy.

I'm sure our African-American readers will correct me if I'm off base, but I am guessing that the average black person living everyday life and dealing with its ups and downs is not losing a lot of sleep over what happens to the Atlanta Braves' relief pitcher.

But there is a hue and cry from civil rights leaders calling for Rocker to be sent to the showers permanently because he believed his own media image too much, shot off his mouth and said some things that were racially divisive.

To those who are calling for his firing, there is no way he can redeem himself. What he said came from the heart, they reason, and you can make him quit saying it, but you can't make him quit feeling that way.

To them, there is no way to interpret the insult “fat monkey” (or the humorous locker room jab if you believe Rocker) other than as a racially loaded term that is indicative of a deep-seated disdain for the targeted race.

Allowing him to continue as a Brave constitutes a tacit endorsement of that attitude, the reasoning goes. And white people who call up radio talk shows, write letters to the editor or engage in water cooler chat defending Rocker are immediately suspect as closet racists themselves.

He must be fired — not traded — fired.

I think most white people were shocked and dismayed when the Sports Illustrated magazine came out with Rocker's statements. But they're just as shocked by the vehemence of the lynch mob.

There's a growing fear among whites, and I think many people of other ethnic backgrounds, that we're becoming so politically correct in this society that people will face inquisition at the hands of the thought police for the most innocently intended words or phrases. A world in which people can be destroyed economically for mere words is a bit frightening to contemplate.

People in government, maybe. People who have control over other people's lives, sure. But a 24-year-old baseball pitcher who said a bunch of stuff because he thought it was fun to uphold a “bad boy” image as part of his stage persona?

Then there are those who rally `round the flag... the Confederate battle flag.

I'm a Southern boy, born and bred. But think, folks. Can you put yourself in the other guy's place for just a minute and imagine how black people feel when they see that symbol.

It's one thing in the back window of a pickup truck, but it's another entirely when it's displayed prominently on the state flag.

Of course, we in Georgia can't point any fingers. Protesting civil rights leaders are turning their attention here as well. With the Super Bowl coming up, they're using the extra media presence to push Georgia to drop the battle flag as well. Heritage is a weak argument, by the way. Our flag didn't take on the stars and bars until the 1950s, when the legislature decided to change the flag in defiance of the federal courts' integration orders.

I agree with presidential candidate John McCain that South Carolina's flag debate is no business of the federal government. But I do hope that visionaries in that state, and this one, will eventually figure out that there are other ways to preserve our heritage... ways that don't bring pain and fear to a third or more of the population.

As for Rocker, well, I hope he learned something. I hope through the incident he gained some sensitivity. I hope I'm right and most people of all races have more important things to worry about.

And I hope the whole stupid saga doesn't mess up his fast ball.

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