Tone-deaf racial comments aside, Coral Gables does the right thing honoring Harriet Tubman | Opinion

Election politicking behind them (or so was claimed), the newly installed city of Coral Gables mayor and commission finally did the right thing Tuesday and reversed a wrong.

They voted unanimously to join the county and nine other municipalities in supporting the designation of South Dixie Highway in Miami-Dade County as “Harriet Tubman Highway” in honor of the courageous abolitionist who helped slaves gain their freedom.

Coral Gables’ No vote back in January torpedoed the removal of the Confederate-era Dixie name for U.S. 1 in the Florida Legislature this year.

No longer the lone holdout city in Miami-Dade, the Gables’ reversal removes the last local obstacle to making Tubman’s name designation possible at the state level.

Notably, the vote came on a good day for racial healing: the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder, caught on more than nine minutes of video that awakened the country to police treatment of Blacks and led to the largest protest marches in U.S. history.

Not that the timing was even noted or commented on at the commission meeting of a city noticeably uncomfortable with issues of race; a “City Beautiful” where too many residents often wrongly equate racial reckoning with left-wing politics.

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Still, cue the applause for Mayor Vince Lago and Commissioner Rhonda Anderson, co-sponsors of the agenda item and for the supporting cast who voted in favor, Vice Mayor Michael Mena and Commissioners Jorge L. Fors Jr. and Kirk R. Menendez.

They got the job done.

Now, let’s talk.

The excessive hand-wringing that came before the Tubman vote wasn’t necessary.

In fact, some of it — especially the amount of time the commissioners spent defending the city’s racist founder — was downright offensive.

Other times, it was, at best, odd.

“Dixie, at the end of the day, is not a person,” remarked Fors, downplaying the legacy of racism embedded in the name, right after he had called Tubman “an American hero.”

Commissioners wanted to make sure no one misunderstood their vote as being in favor of “cancel culture” and tried to distance Coral Gables from the national conversation on race — as if the city weren’t part of the country.

“I want to make it clear that what we are celebrating today does not get mixed up with George Merrick,” said Lago, a previous No vote to the Tubman naming. “If it comes down to George Merrick, I will stand in support of his legacy.”

Harriet, meet George

This was Harriet Tubman’s day, not Merrick’s, but Lago had to go there, opening up the gate to a flood of apologist Merrick commentary by his colleagues.

“An imperfect man,” Merrick was called.

The University of Miami was wrong to remove his name from a parking garage, they said.

Merrick’s detractors are “blowing it [his racism] out of context,” they claimed, citing what Merrick supposedly did for Blacks and Bahamians, the people who actually put in the hard labor into building Coral Gables.

But they never mentioned Merrick’s entitled proposals to the county planning board to get rid of Black presence in Miami.

As if this was nothing to them. Maybe because it’s not?

With blinders tightly in place, Lago and some commissioners brought back into what was supposed to be a celebratory conversation all their reservations about the Tubman naming.

Why wasn’t Dixie named after locals like Thelma Gibson or, Lago preposterously said, Father Felix Varela, a Cuban Catholic priest and independence hero who grew up in St. Augustine?

Mena made sure he went on the record as not being in favor of “erasing names” and bemoaned that Coral Gables “got tied up” in a national movement to stop the glorification of people who fought a Civil War to keep slavery.

To say he’s tone deaf is a compliment.

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In the end, Coral Gables’ leaders couldn’t let the day pass without defending the indefensible and ruining what could have been a redeeming moment of racial harmony.

It’s indicative of the work city leaders still need to do to grasp with profundity the historical circumstances through which this country — including Coral Gables, believe it or not — is living.