In doing so Sandy Springs attracted the eye of the Rev. Joseph Lowery, an icon of the civil rights movement. Lowery said he’d be keeping his eye on our piece of heaven, because what if this exemption tempted us to play fast and loose with someone’s voting rights?

Then again, reverend, what if it didn’t? Your pledge to stand guard in case something might happen is either a waste of time or a hint of coercion.

I get it. Though we live in 2010 we aren’t as colorblind as we need to be. I still hear people drop racial epithets, and those same folk don’t have a good word for anyone who does not share their ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation. We are not close to a jubilee of diversity.

That said, threatened vigilance where none is needed is not going to get us there any faster. It conveys an exigency of trust that we are not the same society we were in 1955. And it is not the best use of someone with the intellect of Lowery.