Racism found its way onto a Long Island, New York golf course last week after a white golfer went berserk, yelled the N-word at two black golfers, attacked one of the black players with a golf club, and then threatened to stab him.
The reason for the unprovoked racial attack: The black players apparently weren’t playing golf fast enough.
Grant Smith, 48, who is white, shouted at the black golfers, accusing them of not having proper golf etiquette. He used the N-word three times while yelling at the black men at the White Course at Eisenhower Park in East Meadow.
“I said, ‘if you were courteous, I would have allowed you to go through, but after this, no,’” one of the black golfers told NBC 4 New York. “After the third one, he grabbed his club … came up to us and swung the iron and hit my buddy in the leg.”
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The impact broke the head off the club, and police said Smith then threatened to stab the men with the broken club.
Smith was arrested at his home in Long Beach and charged with two counts of assault and hate crime menacing. He pleaded not guilty in court last week and is being held on $50,000 bond. A judge also issued orders of protection for the two attacked golfers.
Smith thinks he’s not guilty of what? Not guilty of using the N-word? Not guilty of racism? Not guilty of assault?
Good luck with that.
This kind of premeditated bigotry is particularly troubling. It’s bad enough that African Americans are forced to file racial discrimination suits for injustices in the workplace, housing and public schools, but now two black men, 66 and 65 years old, can’t even play a relaxing game of golf without being called the N-word and attacked by a lunatic who wanted to speed up his golf game on the third hole.
Maybe Smith was enraged because two African American men were playing on a course that Smith considers exclusive for white golfers.
Are some Americans becoming more comfortable using the N-word in public and becoming more enraged with black people? And is there a pattern developing?
Smith’s bizarre racial meltdown comes two months after Joe Rickey Hundley of Hayden, Idaho, was arrested for slapping a black toddler on a Delta flight after using the N-word to describe the baby.
Hundley was tired of listening to the baby crying and decided to apply his own brand of in-flight corporal punishment. Hundley was arrested and charged with assaulting a minor on a flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta after he shouted the N-word at the toddler and then slapped the baby with an open hand.
“He reeked of alcohol,” Jessica Bennett, 33, the boy’s mother, told a local television station. “He was belligerent, and I was uncomfortable.”
“And I said, ‘What did you say?’ because I couldn’t believe that he would say that,” Bennett said. “He fell onto my face and his mouth was in my ear and he said it again but even more hateful. And he’s on my face, so I pushed him away.”
Hundley lost his job because of his racist behavior and Smith should certainly be punished for assaulting the black golfer.
In the meantime, it seems the N-word is being used more frequently in public by those who feel it’s acceptable to degrade African Americans. And some still call this President Barack Obama’s post-racial society.
