Racism Flares Up After the Election

This probably won't surprise you that much. It seems that having a black guy running for President and then winning may have ticked off a couple of racists. Well, it's just as good that they stand up and identify themselves, I guess, we knew they were out there. Here's the LA Times:

Reporting from Bogalusa, La. -- Barely three weeks since America elected its first black president, noose hangings, racist graffiti and death threats have struck dozens of towns across the country.

More than 200 such incidents -- including cross burnings, assassination betting pools and effigies of President-elect Barack Obama -- have been reported, according to law enforcement authorities and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups.

Racist websites have been boasting that their servers have been crashing because of an exponential increase in traffic.

And America's most potent symbol of racial hatred, the Ku Klux Klan, is reasserting itself in a spate of recent violence, after decades of disorganization and obscurity. White extremists lash out over election of first black president

You saw at the end of the campaign how the social conservatives would say anything, Obama is a communist or socialist, he's a Muslim, he's going to take all our guns, he's in favor of abortion -- it was tricky though to figure out how to badmouth his race out loud. Oh, you had them saying he's not really black, he's Arabic, you saw the Obama waffles that cast him as an Aunt Jemima or Uncle Ben type, you had stuff just shy of the threshold, there were some overtly racists incidents -- dummies lynched, blackface costumes -- but really, what's to say? He's black, you got a problem with it? Apparently some people do.

Since the election, racism has busted out into the open. Skipping down ...

"We've seen everything from cross burnings on lawns of interracial couples to effigies of Obama hanging from nooses to unpleasant exchanges in schoolyards," said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Montgomery, Ala. "I think we're in a worrying situation right now, a perfect storm of conditions coming together that could easily favor the continued growth of these groups."

Experts attribute the racist activity to factors including the rapidly worsening economic crisis; trends indicating that within a generation whites will not comprise a U.S. majority; and the impending arrival of a black family in the White House.

The FBI is investigating whether the recent Klan-related incidents involve conspiracies. And the Secret Service is monitoring the racist activity "to try to stay ahead of any emerging threats," according to spokesman Darrin Blackford.

One white supremacist leader, describing himself as moderate, professes alarm.

"There is a tremendous backlash" to Obama's election, said Richard Barrett, the leader of the Nationalist Movement in Learned, Miss. "My focus is to try to keep it peaceful. But many people look at the flag of the Republic of New Africa that will be hoisted over the White House as an act of war."

I just looked this up, and there really is a Republic of New Afrika. They spell it that way. Here's what Wikipedia says:

The Republic of New Afrika, (RNA) is a proposed independent Black-majority country situated in the southeastern region of the United States. The vision for this country was first promulgated on March 31, 1968, at a Black Government Conference held in Detroit, Michigan, United States. Proponents of this vision lay claim to five Southern states (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina) and the Black-majority counties adjacent to this area in Arkansas, Tennessee and Florida. A similar claim is made for all the Black-majority counties and cities throughout the United States.

Wikipedia shows a little map of the US, with several Southern states colored in red to mark the RNA's proposed territory. Okay, well, good luck with that. Suffice it to say, though it is a wonderfully vivid image for paranoids to meditate on, I am not expecting the flag of the Republic of New Afrika to be flying at the White House during Barack Obama's term as President.

There's more to this story, mostly focusing on the situation in Bogalusa, Louisiana, where the Klan is apparently just part of everyday life. You might want to follow the link and read the rest of it.

According to the Anti-Defamation League:

The World Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, based in Sharpsburg, Maryland, was originally a tiny Klan group, but has exhibited growth in the 2000s, expanding to a number of nearby states, including West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Some 30 members of the group showed up at a rally in September 2006, held in pouring rain on the Gettysburg Civil War battlefield in Pennsylvania. Considering the poor weather conditions, it was a surprisingly high turnout for the Klan group. World Knights leader Gordon Young used the event to denounce multiracial marriage and immigration.

In case you're wondering, Sharpsburg is up north of us a few miles, sort of between Frederick and Hagerstown in Washington County.

This is interesting -- still from the ADL site:

Klan expansion in the Mid-Atlantic states received a setback, however, with the unexpected disbanding of the World Knights in late November 2006. Members of competing factions left the World Knights to join other groups. The World Knights’ leader Gordon Young took his followers into the National Socialist Movement (NSM) and became that group’s Maryland state leader, while some dissident World Knights joined an NSM splinter group, the American National Socialist Workers Party. In January 2007, Young was arrested on seven criminal counts, including two counts each of second-degree assault and sex abuse of a minor, and the NSM disassociated itself from him.

This guy was too creepy for the largest neo-Nazi group in the United States, imagine how creepy that is!

Well, the point is, you can read about some town in Louisiana, but this same stuff is happening in our state too. Let's keep it under control, okay?