cowboyji's Blog
-
Kelly Picks a Fight: Racist Ass-hats
- Posted on 01.04.09
There was a headline story on "Democracy Now!" recently that thoroughly upset me. It was about the increase in racist rhetoric and hate crimes in the age of Obama. Most of us know that he has received more death threats than any other candidate or President in history. But it goes beyond that. It seems the plague is nationwide, not just relegated to southern outposts and other typical Klan territories, with hundreds of reported incidents being gathered by Associated Press and monitored by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
In Snellville, Ga., a boy on the school bus November 5 told Denene Millner's nine-year-old daughter: "I hope Obama gets assassinated." Vandals followed up later that night trashing her sister-in-law's front lawn, destroying the Obama lawn signs and leaving two crap-filled pizza boxes on the doorstep. Human crap, that is.
The black Millner commented: "I can't say that every white person in Snellville is evil and anti-Obama and willing to desecrate my property because one or two idiots did it. But it definitely makes you look a little different at the people who you live with, and makes you wonder what they're capable of and what they're really thinking."
As Intelligence Project Director at the SPLC, the white Mark Potok thinks there is "a large subset of white people in this country who feel that they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them." To illustrate that sentiment in the form of a real, live Georgia native, the white Grant Griffin dreams of “all the members of (Obama's) church being deported."
Isn't that nice? Our neighbors aren't just gay haters, they are also racist ass-hats! Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, doesn't it?
You may be thinking, “Crap pizza doesn't seem so crazy. What else you got?” Take a seat. Some of these tales are pretty stunning.
-Four North Carolina State University students scrawled things like "Let's shoot that (N-word) in the head" in a tunnel designated for free speech expression.
-The Oak Hill General Store in Standish, Maine displays a sign inside that reads: "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool. Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count. Let's hope someone wins." People can place $1 bets on Obama's assassination date.
-Elementary school students on a bus in Rexburg, Idaho, were heard chanting "assassinate Obama."
-In New Jersey and Pennsylvania, Obama supporters woke one morning to find burned crosses in their yards.
Really? Seriously? That all really happened in 2008? Yep. And that's not counting the nooses, graffiti, physical assaults and other vandalism acts that are happening coast-to-coast, from Maine to Texas to California. I never realized Maine was so pissy.
Sociologist and co-author of the diversity book "A Peacock in the Land of Penguins" B.J. Gallagher says it's a classic case of substitution. If you can't hurt the person you're angry at, hurt them in effigy by hurting someone who looks a little like them. “We saw the same thing happen after the 9/11 attacks, as a wave of anti-Muslim violence swept the country. We saw it happen after the Rodney King verdict, when Los Angeles blacks erupted in rage at the injustice perpetrated by 'the white man.' It's as stupid and ineffectual as kicking your dog when you've had a bad day at the office," Gallagher said. "But it happens a lot."
So, the moral of my story is that while we homos have our own fight to fight and some of our people are pointing fingers at racial minorities in California for helping Prop 8 over the hump, the bigger struggle is for equal rights for all. Full stop. Minority groups shouldn't be at odds over superficies, stepping on each other to get a seat at the table. We should be banding together to erase the whole hate, rather than picking it apart one skirmish at a time.
Related causes: Community, Human Rights
Comments
You must be logged in to do that.
Sign In
