Stay Away, Mike Lee 

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I was at the home of Pratt and Brenda Cole this past week, planning the Bingham High School Class of 1972's 50-year reunion. That's so long ago, I barely remember that when I met everyone assembled back in junior high, we were all virgins. I'd also forgotten that Pratt and Brenda wed while in high school, meaning that this reunion is also an anniversary of sorts for the Coles.

To be sure, I couldn't be happier for them. They've enjoyed a wonderful and successful marriage plus equally successful careers—evidence of what a real partnership can produce in life.

Also at the table were classmates Dee Oviatt, RaNae Gourley and Mike Haslam, each eating perfectly grilled burgers. As I'm currently on what the Greek Orthodox call a "strict fast" during this Easter Lenten period, I had pickles, sauerkraut and onions on a bun, juiced with mustard and ketchup. I doubt that a fast-food concept featuring pickle burgers could succeed, but that was it for me. I didn't mind since Brenda generously kept the rum and Cokes flowing. Pratt served me up a nice scotch and soda for dessert.

A couple of years ago, the Coles joined us on the annual City Weekly Greece Trip. That trip will take place again this year in September and October (we have two trips that overlap in Athens running in 2021—one on the mainland, one to Mykonos and Crete). If you're interested in joining us, come aboard. Just email me.

We traveled to the islands of Kos and Rhodes that year, and I distinctly remember Brenda ordering Mexican food on our first night out on Kos. I didn't even know one could find Mexican food in Greece. I also remember her being impressed after a visit she took to the ruins at the ancient Asklepieion, the medical school on Kos founded by Hippocrates around 400 B.C. Greeks love their sciences, you know.

There were a fair number of Greeks at Bingham High School in the early 1970s, thanks to so many of our parents and grandparents migrating to Utah and the men working in the Kennecott Copper Mine in Bingham Canyon. Our Bingham was a sea of ethnic cultures. The valley kids who attended Bingham weren't even close to such diversity. No need to go into details, but there were issues. It made for some very interesting first dates, that's for sure.

It bears noting that some of us who will attend the 50th reunion, who were once merely separated religiously, are now separated politically, too. Some of our sweet soul classmates have become MAGA Trumpers, while some mean buggers march with the Never Trumpers. Time has a way of working its mystery magic.

At one point in our planning chat, we talked about labor unions and how they formed in Utah. Most of my former classmates have no notion at all of what early immigrants went through in the mining camps—why they united to form working unions or even that immigrants were harassed by KKK branches in Bingham Canyon and in Carbon County.

If we immigrant grandchildren did not hear the sad tales ourselves, or if some histories were not captured by the Utah Historical Society, those stories of bigotry and discrimination would be lost. It's not taught in our schools. The result is that many Utahns grow up with a cultural blind spot that prevents them from understanding how bias works or what discrimination looks like. They just don't know how to care about something that they have no awareness of, and sadly don't even try to understand. In their world, everything is hunky-dory.

But it isn't. Case in point is Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a racist whether he knows it or not. Matters so recent as discrimination against ethnic Utahns are not even part of Utah's school curriculum—let alone subjects with deeper racial overtones. Did your school teach about the Mountain Meadows Massacre? Mine didn't. If you were Mike Lee, you might not want people to know that your kin were neck deep in the Utah chapter of ethnic cleansing. Ignoring it didn't make it go away, though.

It matters not to me if Lee hires women or has black friends. He might even like souvlaki. But, his actions belie his core. One could generously say, "Ah, but he was never taught about other cultures. He never walked in a foreign pair of sandals. He will come around." That's the thing. Most people come around. Not Mike Lee.

But let him speak for himself. This week he sanctimoniously said—with cameras rollin'—of U.S. Supreme Court justice nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson: "She comes with impressive qualifications, academically and professionally. She's been called to serve at all three levels of the federal judiciary." People on the receiving end of discrimination know the taste of such butter. They also know that soon comes the slice: "I will vote no," said Lee of Jackson, and then quickly turned his "no" vote into what he does best as a Utah senator—an email fundraising campaign that slapped Jackson to the ground. Is this a good time to mention that many racists often make very good cowards?

Lee's vote flies in the face of everything ever said that is critical of "reverse discrimination," or that we should always hire the best person for the job. You know those folks never meant that, right?

It's all been said before. You're a nice young man—stay away from my daughter. You're really sweet—but my son will not marry a Mexican. You have all the skills to succeed—the auto shop is down the hall. You scored 95 on the exam—how did you cheat?

We get it, Mike. You're a nice young man—now, stay away.

Send comments to john@cityweekly.net.