Jim Schutze - The Accommodation: The Politics of Race in an American City

Foreword

Politics has no permanent enemies and no permanent friends, only permanent interests.

Former United States Representative William Clay Sr.

I believe that d magazines peter simek summed up my feelings about The Accommodation in his May 2015 article entitled, The Most Dangerous Book in Dallas:

In his book, Schutze argues that the civil rights movement largely passed over Dallas, resulting in a kind of tacit political arrangement that has ensured Black leaders remain reliant on Dallass white leadership. Just before the books scheduled publication, in 1986, Schutzes publisher abruptly dropped it, citing poor pre-sales. But a New York Times article connected the decision to pressure from white leadership and a city with a historical antipathy toward self-criticism.

Simek hit on the essence of Dallass best-known or worst-kept secret. The city with more raw potential and possibilities than any other in America suppresses any semblance of truth that could tarnish its self-acclaimed reputation as a World-Class City.

Dallass wealthy and elite leaders excel at hiring The Spook Who Sat by the Door. They have a knack for selecting the right minority to validate their inclusion efforts. Meanwhile, the masses of Black and Brown people who make up most of our population remain locked out of the vault of opportunity.

The Accommodation reaches from the boardrooms of the White Citizens Councils of the South to Dallas city hall and from the courthouse to the church house. The Accommodation wasand isan accurate accounting of Dallas from the 1930s through the 1980s though, sadly, damages to this oppressive structure have been minimal. Today, Dallas is what it has been, and it shows in a recent analysis that crossed my desk.

For example, the life expectancy for citizens who live north of Interstate 30 is twenty-two years longer than those who live south of this arbitrary dividing line. Jim Schutze spent the lions share of his time and energy in crafting The Accommodation painstakingly pointing at the chasma chasm as wide in 2021 as it was in 1986, as it was in 1966. He was removed from socially impressive guest lists that his talent would otherwise afford him.

Jims book was a windfall for me in many ways. The outright lie that I had a tenuous relationship with Dallass Black clergy had spread. My confrontations with some of that tainted clergy were deemed an attack against all of it. This untruth was used as a cudgel against my political future. It didnt work.

As someone who is sandwiched in the Gospel ministry, I have significant respect for Black preachers. My late father was a pastor, and my son, John, is a pastor, too.

The Accommodation pointed out how the White power structure schemed to control our communities by using the Black pulpit as a conduit. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to Dallas in 1959, it is told that some of those so-called leaders headed him off at the airport.

These fellow preachers allegedly tried to let King know that all was well in Dallas. A White Citizens Council didnt have to shoo him away because their hired Negroes did the dirty work.

To this day, African Americans across the nation are stunned to know that Dallas is among the few cities in America to avoid major protests and race riots during the height of the civil rights struggle. That sums up the Dallas Way in a nutshell. There is a historical and unspoken agreement between the White folks in control and the handpicked Negroes that assuage the masses.

There were no Black elected or appointed officials of note until after Dr. Kings movement. Once the lever of power was passed from the Black pulpit to Black politicians, the White Citizens Councils of the South adapted. They have co-opted or created usable Black leaders in our communities ever since.

Jim Schutze told a truth about Dallas that the citys leaders had worked hard to keep from being heard and handed Dallas another black eye to match its bruises from the Kennedy assassination a generation prior. I applauded and lauded him, and I continue to. Sadly, we still need respectable White folks to validate our story before it finally becomes something other than fake news.

In 1914, Walter Williams, a master of his art, created a litany of virtues he called the Journalists Creed. One of the creeds core values exalts Jim Schutze as a journalist and writer above most of those Dallas has known in the fifty-plus years that I have been intimate with the lot of themrule number five, posited in the middle of the Creed, describes the whole of Jims career for as long as I have been acquainted with him: I believe that suppression of the news, for any consideration other than the welfare of society, is indefensible. Jim tells it all, and tells it well, without fear or favor.

Jim is a rare breed and hybrid of old school and the new. He has persisted in four roles that keep him wedded to his training and a viable asset to this community. Jim is a RASSH! (Reporter, Analyst, Satirical Scholar, and Hustler!)

He has the ethical muscle to walk the beat like real reporters used to do. Jim visits or calls on the principals involved in his stories. Jim continues to reject the cut-and-paste journalism that creates the cookie-cutter culture dominating journalism today.

Meanwhile, he stays abreast of the gossip and the rancor as a means of finding and assessing the whole truth. Jim is the Clark Kent of our day.

Jim is an analyst, as well as an annalist. Jim loves history, which causes him to produce the scoop and the subsequent narrative. Hes like a dog with a bone. An annalist will stay on the story until the fleshy meat of it is devoured. When Jim gets through, there is nothing left to see or say.

Jim didnt visit one council sessions or a board meeting in Dallas and call it quits; he chronicles events from their sunup to their sundown. I am a living witness to his laser focus and commitment to a story that interests him.

A Jim Schutze story is no 30-minute sitcom. His stories turn into complete miniseries like Alex Haleys 1977 classic Roots. He develops each character and their predicaments well enough that readers clamor to see a final outcome.

Jim is a scholar and a satirist. Professor Jim, who had a stint in SMUs journalism department, is masterful at his craft. There are plenty of wordsmiths, but none can parse words and deliver the proverbial pun as he does, teaching all who read him along the way.

Among his 1,200 word puzzles are intermittent threads of caustic jest and frivolity. Historically, Dallas County churns out one-of-a-kind headlines and subplots. Jim injects enough humor to make his columns, articles, and missives readable.

Jim is a hustler, and I use that term most respectfully. As we suffer through this era of lazy, commercial-driven journalists, it is refreshing to look back at a career of hard work. Jim worked the phones, went underground, and probably talked to people he did not even like. All the while, he has maintained his journalistic integrity.

To pin a point in the whole matter, James W. Schutze is RASH. He is a reporter, an analyst (and annalist), a satirist, and a scholar who hustles to stay ahead of his peers. Jim is respected for his performance, purity, and his world-class ability to piss people off.

William Clay, a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus in the 1970s, was spot-on. Politics has no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, just permanent interests. The estranged friendship or prolonged hate relationship that Jim and I have maintained is proof of the quotes validity.

It is exciting to see this vital work of Dallas history get the second publication and readership it deserves. I love Jim like a brother and despise him like a foe, and I suspect our accommodation is mutual.