This is the kind of story that should be simple — an elected official attends a college football game, a rude heckler mouths off, and the school and employer hold the offender accountable.
Instead, it became a mirror reflecting the uglier things roiling American civic life: casual racism, performative outrage, and the political double standards that let some groups get a pass while others are condemned.
Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, a Jamaican-born American and the first Black woman ever elected statewide in Virginia, was on the receiving end of a disgraceful “go back” slur at a James Madison University game. The footage is ugly and unmistakable: a man yelling racial taunts, then flashing peace signs when he sees he’s being filmed.
The reaction, in the small and swift ways that matter, was correct — JMU suspended him from future events, and his employer’s contractor chain moved fast enough that Zeta Associates reported the individual is no longer employed. That’s how institutions are supposed to behave when confronted with plainly unacceptable behavior.
But the incident also exposes a larger problem. Earle-Sears pointed out rightly that this abuse happens with an added sting because she’s a Black Republican. Too often, conservatives who are people of color are dismissed or excused when attacked because the attackers belong to the “right” political tribe.
And when civic leaders reflexively rush to castigate law enforcement or federal agents for doing their jobs, as we’ve seen in other controversies, you get a culture in which outrage is selective — loud when it advances a political narrative, muted when it doesn’t.
There’s also the dangerous escalation elsewhere: days of videos showing calls to violence at “No Kings” events, people openly talking about shooting ICE agents, or glorifying threats against political opponents. That rhetoric matters. It isn’t abstract; it fuels real-world menace. If we rightly condemn the JMU heckler and take decisive action, we must also apply the same standard to those who counsel violence at protests or suggest physical harm to public servants.
Civility is not nostalgia; it’s a baseline. Political disagreement is normal, but the moment it slides into dehumanizing slurs or threats, institutions must act. JMU and Zeta did the right thing here; others should follow.
America can and should be a place where a Black Republican can attend a game without being told to “go back,” and where protesters aren’t excused when they cross the line into incitement or violence. Until both sides are held to that standard, trust in public life will keep eroding — and nobody benefits from that.
