Former Auburn star on Tuberville’s ‘reparation’ remark: ‘Unnecessary, dead wrong, ugly’

This is an opinion column.

I’m not at all convinced Tommy Tuberville even knows the meaning of reparations.

Not even in the context of the criminal justice system.

Last Saturday, our junior senator (God help us) spewed an inane and racist rant at a place where he felt safe doing so—a Donald Trump rally.

Appearing before a frothy crowd gathered near Lake Tahoe to support Republican Adam Lexalt in a tight U.S. Senate battle with Nevada’s incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, Tuberville took out the old Republican bullwhip of fear, fear of them.

Democrats, he charged, “want reparation because they think the people who do the crime are owed that.” Then he popped off an insipid vulgarity.

Here’s one truth about reparations: Those convicted of crimes are often ordered to pay financial recompense to victims, not receive them—an insane idea I’ve heard no one, from either political party, espouse.

Here’s another one: Reparations is about righting a wrong, about, as before stated, compensating victims for crimes perpetrated against them.

We’ll converse and debate at another time on whether (how) America should pay reparations to African Americans for its greatest crimes—the enslavement and murder of more Black people than will ever be counted in the founding and building of this nation; the government-sanctioned bombings and burning of generations of Back businesses; the plethora of never-prosecuted massacres of people striving for something as noble as freedom or as simple as voting.

The discussion would most likely fly right over Tuberville’s head anyway.

U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., is introduced at a rally for former President Donald Trump at the Minden Tahoe Airport in Minden, Nev., Saturday, Oct. 8, 2022. Tuberville says that Democrats support reparations for the descendants of enslaved people because “they think the people that do the crime are owed that.” (AP Photo/Jose Luis Villegas)AP

Though the man, the ex-football coach, knows reparations.

In 2008, following an abysmal 5-7 season at Auburn, Tuberville received $5 million after quitting.

He then landed a squishy $250,000-a-year (plus benefits) gig as a special assistant to the university president, which he later admitted under sworn deposition, came with no office.

He also qualified, after ten seasons at Auburn, for a state retirement pension. Based on disclosures previously reported by my colleague Kyle Whitmire, he annually receives $57,638 from Retirement Systems of Alabama.

Now, that’s reparations gone wrong.

Karlos Dansby was an All-America linebacker for Tuberville at Auburn before playing 14 stellar seasons for Arizona, Miami, and Cleveland in the National Football League—one of dozens upon dozens of Black men upon whom Tuberville earned upwards of $25 million as a college head coach.

“What [Tuberville] said was unnecessary, dead wrong, ugly,” Dansby told me Monday.

“But that’s where he stands right now. I guess it’s a game within the game that’s being played. He just took it to the extreme and it turned a lot of people sour. But you can’t put nothing past politicians; you never know what their end goal is. No excuse for that, though; just uncalled for. If that’s his true view, that’s his true view, but ain’t nothing right about it. Ain’t nothing right about what he said.

“He’s playing in that in that field, man. I can’t get in that field. That ain’t where I’m at.”

Dansby wasn’t aware that just recently, Tuberville, along with other members of Alabama’s congressional delegation, connected with Birmingham mayor Randall Woodfin, members of his administration, and a few city councilors in Washington, D.C. as a means of bridge-building with Tuberville poised to become the state’s senior U.S. Senator upon the retirement of Sen. Richard Shelby.

“Wow, bro,” he said. “Wow. I can’t explain him. If that’s what you truly feel, you’ve got to stand on that. You got to stand on it every day. You can’t waver. You can’t go take a picture with some Black guys and then have that kind of conversation. You can’t do that; you’re a hypocrite.”

I trust Tuberville is familiar with that meaning.

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