Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
A disheveled white stranger once stopped me on the street to ask if I had “a good recipe for cooking crack.” My junior high football coach gave up weekends cosplaying as a Civil War soldier when he married a confederate enthusiast who was also my AP U.S. history teacher. During a freshman-level college chemistry class, my lab partner revealed that his Caucasian dreadlocks were held together with mayonnaise.
But when it comes to the whitest thing I’ve ever heard, these fantastical examples of caucasity pale in comparison to the radical racial declarations of wealthy white man Jim Irsay.
In 1984, at the tender age of 24, James Irsay left his job in the Indianapolis Colts ticket booth when his father named him general manager of the team. After leading his team to zero playoff wins and a .366 winning percentage over the next decade, the younger Irsay inherited the team following his father’s death and became the principal owner and CEO.
In 2014, the privileged heir became a victim of the racist war on drugs when police in Carmel, Ind., arrested Irsay after a routine traffic stop. Officers say Irsay had trouble reciting the alphabet and failed a slate of field sobriety tests. A toxicology report found three…
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