Jim Schutze is back, sort of

Schutze, the cop-loving, union-hating, not-so-liberal curmudgeon of Dallas Observer fame, followed by a cup of coffee at D Mag that lasted less than six months and expired more than six months ago, is now back, in a sense.

Schutze's 1970s book about Dallas civil rights, "The Accommodation," is being reprinted. The book is what really rocketed him to local fame. 

The Monthly reviews the history. Gus Bova has yet more, with more detailed info, at the Observer. (Via Bova, D Mag reports the Monthly trashed the book on first publication; its new review, "shockingly," ignores that.) The new issue has a new forward by Our Man Downtown, John Wiley Price. Bova's account, unlike the Monthly's, includes some of the Price-Schutze tensions. It also notes that some younger Black activists think Jimbo overstated his thesis. Reading Jerry Hawkins' quote on that, though, I think HE oversells HIS thesis that Schutze is overselling his thesis. Doesn't matter if the Black Panthers were in Dallas in the 1960s and 1970s and wouldn't talk to Schutze; Black clergy and businessmen in more activist cities than Dallas wouldn't work with the Panthers, in general.

As for the cop-loving? Sure, he bashed on cops from the early 1950s when writing in the mid-1970s. Easy stuff. But, hey Jim? "Amber Guyger." "Botham Jean."

 

Re Jimbo and JWP, have they fully buried the hatchet? Pretended to? Dallas Inland Port still lurking in the background? 

I mean, contra Hawkins' claims, Our Man Downtown having a thumb in the pie of the Inland Port, or rather, a thumb in the pie of Ross is Junior Boss's Fort Worth Alliance, and so, trying to kill the Dallas Inland Port, proves Jimbo right 119 percent. I've written before about that, about JWP coming off as a shakedown artist and more.

On the third hand, despite the tenor of the book, Schutze in the past decade has come off to me as looking kind of anti-Black.