A Defense (Of Sorts) Of Paula Deen

I don't know if Paula Deen is a racist.

At least, I don't know if she is one today. I do know that by her own admission, she has said racially insensitive things in the past, but she's also said that those were comments she made "a long time ago."

But the release of her deposition had ignited a firestorm of self-righteous snark online and on cable news channels that seem genetically incapable of actually having a conversation about anything of substance without resorting to predictable and tired cliches about Deen, the South, her cooking and the state of racism in America.

I've read probably two dozen pieces about Deen in the past couple of days and it's remarkable how few people criticize her or complain that working at her restaurant was somehow the horror show portrayed in the lawsuit against Deen and her brother.

For instance, buried under the heaping helping of snark in Winston Ross's piece in The Daily Beast are these paragraphs:

Another former Lady and Sons employee said his experience at the restaurant was nothing but positive, and if Deen or her brother are racists, they sure didn’t let it stop them from promoting a Filipino who started out bussing tables in 1995 to managing the restaurant at night.

“They treated me very well over there,” Erick Pineda told The Daily Beast. “The woman I know, the family I know, she would never speak that way [with racist epithets]. I’m an Asian guy working in a southern restaurant, even in a joke it was never brought up. I know what racism feels like. I never experienced that at her restaurant.”

Contrary to the claims made in Jackson’s lawsuit, both former employees we interviewed said they never saw blacks treated differently from whites, forced to use different bathrooms, or different entrances. “We all used the same door, we all came in the same way, we all used the same bathroom,” Pineda said.

The server said the kitchen staff was exclusively black, but that the “front of house” staff was about half black, half white. Jobs in the kitchen never stayed open for long and never needed to be advertised, she said. People did get fired for “the littlest things,” and Deen’s sons were known to ask some of the female servers on dates back when they were single, but nobody thought much of it, she said. As for racism, she didn’t hear it at Lady and Sons.

“When you’re in Georgia, there are some things you don’t do and say and not just for political correctness,” she said. “Say the wrong thing and someone will probably turn around and kick your ass.”

I could pull similar passages from a dozen other stories about Deen written since the deposition transcript was made public and it's remarkable how few people are critical of her. And from what I can tell, no one else has come forward and claimed that they ever heard Deen tell a racist joke or use the N-word in conversation.

In fact, even in Deen's deposition she admitted that she had used the word, but the incident she references happened in her late twenties:

Lawyer: Have you ever used the N-word yourself?
Deen: Yes, of course.

Lawyer: Okay. In what context?
Deen: Well, it was probably when a black man burst into the bank that I was working at and put a gun to my head.

Lawyer: Okay. And what did you say?
Deen: Well, I don't remember, but the gun was dancing all around my temple ... I didn't -- I didn't feel real favorable towards him.

Lawyer: Okay. Well, did you use the N-word to him as he pointed a gun in your head at your face?
Deen: Absolutely not.

Lawyer: Well, then, when did you use it?
Deen: Probably in telling my husband.

Lawyer: Okay. Have you used it since then?
Deen: I'm sure I have, but it's been a very long time.

The lawyer then presses her to recall another occasion when she might have used the word and the best that she can come up with is some point in the past when she might have repeated a joke that had the word in it. But even then it was a very long time ago.

And that is my problem with these public flailing of Deen and attempts by some commentators to argue that forgiving Deen would somehow be the moral equivalent of forgiving slavery or Jim Crow laws. Yes, Deen has apparently said some racist things in the past and her desire to have an old-style plantation wedding is more than a bit unsettling. But let's have a bit of perspective about the consequences of her actions. She used a loathsome word and there's no excuse for it. But it's large jump between doing that and arguing that slavery was a good thing.

And by all accounts, the Paula Deen of 2013 is not the same woman she was when she was robbed as bank teller. She's not the same woman she was when she was struggling to start her own business was by all accounts suffering from agoraphobia. She seems to have changed for the better and in the end isn't that what we want from anyone who starts out as a racist? Don't we want them to be a better person and move past their prejudices? That's the essence of forgiveness, the ability to look at someone, take them at their word that they've changed and believe in that change until proven wrong.

I'm willing to forgive Deen if she has moved past her early racism, in the same way I would forgive someone who was homophobic at an earlier point in their lives. Whether or not you're religious, most people live under a set of moral rules that permit people to make mistakes and learn from them without suffering the consequences the remainder of their lives.

While Deen is probably limited on the scope of what she can say until the lawsuit is over, the best thing she could do would be to talk about her personal evolution and the ways her beliefs have changed over the past forty years. Despite all of the internet snark, Deen has a lot of built-up goodwill because fans sense in her an honesty and realness that is endearing.

Assuming Deen is honest in what she says, I'm willing to defend her right to have the life and career she wants. We've all made mistakes and some of us have done terrible things in our lives. But while those terrible things do have consequences, we can also move past them if we have an open mind and a forgiving heart.