Ease His Payne -- Augusta National Caves

Billy Payne and Augusta National: It all has to do with bowing to Black-Run America

Latest Paul Kersey over at Vdare is a look at the capitulating of Augusta National, the famed private golf course in 54 percent Black Augusta, Georgia (remember what Black people did at this years Fourth of July celebration?) that is home to The Masters tournament.

In reality, it's just an excuse to go after the horrible Billy Payne, a man who Richard Yarbrough fawned all over in his book on the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta AND THEY CALL THEM GAMES [Hardcover].

Payne (Sports Illustrated profiled him in a cover story published in 1996) was basically the person responsible for bringing the Olympics to Atlanta -- well, he and Coca-Cola, which worked to bribe African nations to vote for the Black Mecca to host the games.

Andrew Young, former mayor of Atlanta and permanent United States ambassador to the rising tide of color worldwide, tried to take credit for his part in bringing the games to the Black Mecca, writing in his autobiography An Easy Burden (556-556):

At the time of the MARTA referendum, less than one percent of city contracts were offered to black-owned businesses in a city that was nearly 50 percent black; the agreement provided that 20 percent of the contracts on the project would go to minority companies as well as 30 percent of the management positions.

That fairness model was extended during the administration of Atlanta’s first black mayor, Maynard Jackson. When the city needed a new airport, Mayor Jackson and black members of the city council withheld their support until an agreement was reached to provide 25 percent of contracts to minority firms and establish joint ventures of the concessions.

As Atlanta won its Olympic bid on the strength of its diversity and inclusiveness, there was scarcely any need to argue that 40 percent of the construction contracts be awarded to minority and women-owned firms.

Yes, that's what I'd call a 'fairness model': holding the metro Atlanta hostage unless they capitulate the quotas set-forth by the Black-controlled city of Atlanta. The New York Times documented in 1996 article that showed Mr. Young's version of the events leading up the Olympics weren't exactly a reality:

Under pressure from Atlanta's black leaders, the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, the private corporation established by city officials to run the event, made it clear to businesses seeking contracts that it expected them to have significant partnerships with companies owned by minority members and women. While the committee never adopted formal quotas or goals, it used the city's 36 percent goal as a benchmark.

Companies that submitted bids with insufficient minority participation did so at their peril. Those that said they could not find qualified minority partners were provided with lists of names compiled by the Olympic committee. "People soon realized that the team with the greatest minority participation was usually the team that won the contract if all things were equal," said former Mayor Andrew J. Young, a co-chairman of the committee.

As a result, virtually every new site for the Summer Games, which begin on July 19, was built with significant minority participation. Almost every purchasing and vending contract signed by the Olympic committee includes a minority partner.

As of March, 32 percent of the committee's $387 million in procurement contracts had been granted to minority companies, including 35 percent of the $297 million spent on design and construction.

Worse, Billy Payne surrounded himself with fellow white people (well educated and connected in the business community, as opposed to being connected in the shakedown industry that had set-up permanent residence in Atlanta City Hall), with an article in the quarterly publication Southern Changes noting:

When ACOG was created in January of 1991 by an agreement signed between Billy Payne and then-Mayor Maynard Jackson, Payne was appointed as the new body's president and chief executive officer. He proceeded to assemble around him an upper-management cohort of people similar to himself--white, male, middle-aged lawyers and businessmen. As Clark Atlanta University's Bob Holmes notes, "Among the policy makers of ACOG, in the inner circle of about ten folks, you've only got one African-American: Shirley Franklin, who was appointed in 1993 as ACOG's chief senior policy advisor and who was Andrew Young's former chief of staff. On the next level, you've also got only one African-American: Morris Dillard, who's the director of transportation and security."

A state representative and the director of Clark Atlanta University's Southern Center for Studies in Public Policy, Bob Holmes has co-authored a 1995 study entitled "The 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics and Their Impact on African Americans," which analyzes ACOG's employment patterns, among other issues. In the study, Holmes notes that if you look at all of ACOG's employees and not just those of upper management, the organization was "doing a good job" in hiring African Americans up until 1993, when more than one-third of ACOG's employees were African-American. By the end of 1994, however, the relative percentage of blacks had slipped to 26.4 percent, and Holmes said he intends to see if this downward trend continued in a follow-up study which will published after the Olympics.

Payne could have said "F--k off" to the City of Atlanta during the build-up to the 1996 Olympic Games, but he allowed ACOG to be dominated by the same hostage negotiation techniques that Black people have used in Black-Run America (BRA) for years.

The most hilarious part of the 1996 Olympic Games was the City of Atlanta government basically granting carte blanch to would-be peddlers of Olympic gear on the streets of the city as official vendors, setting up a bazaar type atmosphere that can only be provided by an abundance of melanin.

Those corporate sponsors of the Olympic Games (who had paid upwards of $40 million to be official sponsors) were now forced to contend with hundreds of vendors hawking shirts, hats, and other paraphernalia courtesy of a sweetheart deal with then Mayor Bill Campbell's friend Munson Steed (Black Enterprise ran a hilarious profile of Steed and his Olympic scheme here). In fact, those same companies which signed on with ACOG now had to pay tribute to the Steed's company -- B.G. Swing -- for marketing space with the City of Atlanta.

Basically, the Black aristocracy of Atlanta made tremendous financial gains out of the continued political capital held over from the Civil Rights Era, and Billy Payne was forced to go along with this scheme.

Dick Yarbrough put it best, writing:

Taxpayer indemnity didn’t stop Bill Campbell and his stooges from trying to extort money from the competitors of Olympic sponsors who were underwriting the Games or from embarrassing us with a sidewalk vendors program that looked a Third World Flea Market on steroids.

The point is this: at any time during the last 40 years, the white elite in Atlanta could have said "no more" to the Black people in control of the city. The man who "brought" the Olympics to Atlanta, Billy Payne, could have simply said "Shut the F--- up" to the pathetic leeches in the Atlanta City Council, but he didn't.

Like all good white southerners in positions of power (subordination) in BRA, he continued to play the game with the Black leadership of the city -- something that is called the "Atlanta Way."

Chief Executive magazine published an article by Peter Lacey in 1992 that nailed the problem:

Says an Atlantan who knows both men: “Maynard Jackson challenged the business community to have some minority representation in contracts and on boards. He’s still challenging them.

“Jackson was basically changing the power structure of the city away from a solely business power structure,” the observer continues. “In the 1970s, he was more oriented toward grass-roots, neighborhood participation. This time around he’s much more greedy. They say he’s learned the Chicago way of doing business, the whole Harold Washington philosophy: ‘I give you, you give me.”‘

No Atlanta CEO would dream of saying that for publication, jeopardizing the fragile-but crucial-links between the black and white communities.

“Atlanta and the South have a different way of doing business than any other part of the country,” says Atlanta Journal business columnist Maria Saporta. “Manners are very important. You don’t dress anybody down, in public or in private. You do things quietly and with respect.

So, Payne had to play by these rules. But, he didn't. As you can read in PK's latest piece at VDare -- Billy Payne, Augusta National And The End Of The All-Male Golf Club (Also Of Freedom Of Association), August 22, 2012:

Interestingly, Payne had earlier unsuccessfully attempted to have both the men’s and women’s golf event at the 1996 Olympics played at Augusta National (and, paradoxically, bringing gender integration to the club six years before the Burk-New York Times blowup).

But Mayors Maynard Jackson and Andrew Young and Black nationalist city council members were upset that Payne would dare suggest the playing of an Olympic sport at a venue where Black people were, once, barred from being members.

The New York Times joined in, noting that Augusta’s first Black member—Ron Townsend—was only admitted in October 1990. In its account, Billy Payne was on the defensive:

"Besides, we'll be running the tournaments. When we open up this prestigious course to both sexes and to all races and religious backgrounds, black inner-city kids are going to see blacks, Indians and Asians playing on a course that is so magnificent, so beautiful."

"They're going to say, 'I don't have to grow up to be 6-foot-10 to play basketball,' " continued Payne, who is white.”They can play golf."

The issue has already divided politicians in Georgia — along racial and geographic lines. The Atlanta City Council this week unanimously passed a nonbinding resolution urging the U.S.O.C. and the I.O.C. not to select Augusta as the host course for the Olympic competition. Councilman Bill Campbell, the sponsor of the resolution, called the site "profoundly inappropriate, given the historic lack of any black, Jewish or other minority members."

"Augusta National, by virtually all accounts, had a racially and sexually discriminating membership," said Campbell, who is black.
Olympics; Augusta: A Dispute Within a Dispute, by Filip Bondy, November 21 1992

The result:

Regrets? Billy Payne's had a few, but too few to mention.
The man who has done it his way in bringing the Olympic Games to Atlanta always accentuates the positive. He never publicly expresses regrets about the process of putting on the Olympics.

But Saturday over lunch with a dozen reporters from around the world he admitted his 1996 Olympics experience isn't quite complete.

"It's clear the biggest thing missing here is golf at Augusta," said Payne, president of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games. "I'm sorry about that. It's my biggest personal disappointment."

Losing Olympic golf also was one of the biggest disappointments for Augusta-area residents, many of whom said the whole episode left a bad taste in their mouths for the whole Olympics.

After Atlanta won the rights to host the Olympics the members of Augusta National agreed to allow their club - normally closed for the summer - to be used as the site of Olympic golf. Payne and the Augusta National even held a joint press conference on Oct. 21, 1992, at the golf club to announce that golf would return to the Olympics after a 92-year absence.

It seemed a marriage made on Mt. Olympus: The most famous sporting event in the world hosting a golf tournament on one of the most famous golf course in the world.

But members of the Atlanta City Council had not been consulted about the decision to try to play golf in Augusta and they raised objections. They said they were concerned because the Augusta National is a predominantly white club. They also wanted to have the golf tournament held in Atlanta.

ACOG officials tried to smooth things over, but the political squabbling got so intense, not even the persuasive Payne could calm down the Atlanta political leaders. Finally, ACOG decided to not even ask the International Olympic Committee to approve golf as a sport in 1996.
That ended Augusta's Olympic dream. And in the middle of Billy Payne's biggest triumph it still bothers him.

Billy Payne is teed off over Olympic golf, by Dennis Sodomka, Augusta Chronicle, August 3, 1996

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise when Payne announced that Rice and Moore had been extended membership offers to Augusta National. He wanted his legacy to be something other than going against the New York Times.

Read the rest over at VDare. You see, in the end all of America will be forced to play by the rules set-forth in the handbook that governs proper civic-duty as outlined in the "Atlanta Way." Barack Obama even praised Mayor Jackson and affirmative action/quota/set-aside program back in 2003 while writing for the Chicago Defender.

The model for the future (indeed, how Atlanta has gone since 1973 has been the model for the present) is on display in Atlanta; as we see with Billy Payne, any white person who garners any power - be it political or cultural - must always bow to BRA in the end.