Racial ugliness, nationwide

[SCREAM]

I was in the South for the past year and got to experience a little of this. I moved to LA about two months ago. Well while in the South one red neck told me if Obama became President someone would kill him and then with a smile he said, "Yeah, and it would be a redneck who did it."

I told him if that happened then the red neck would deserve a bullet in his fucking head. Anyone who wants to see this country torn apart by such a horrible act, and doesn’t care about the riots or the people hurt and maybe killed in the riots - because they only care about their own hated - is not a Patriot, but a traitor to the United States of America.

[Francois Cellier]

From the Associated Press

Obama election spurs race crimes around country

By JESSE WASHINGTON
AP National Writer
Nov 16, 6:19 AM EST


Cross burnings. Schoolchildren chanting "Assassinate Obama." Black figures hung from nooses. Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars.

Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are dampening the postelection glow of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America.

From California to Maine, police have documented a range of alleged crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students and second-graders.

There have been "hundreds" of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.

One was in Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: "I hope Obama gets assassinated." That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law's front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs, and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door, Millner said.

She described her emotions as a combination of anger and fear.

"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," said Millner, who is black. "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."

Potok, who is white, said he believes 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."

Grant Griffin, a 46-year-old white Georgia native, expressed similar sentiments: "I believe our nation is ruined and has been for several decades and the election of Obama is merely the culmination of the change.

"If you had real change it would involve all the members of (Obama's) church being deported," he said.

Change in whatever form does not come easy, and a black president is "the most profound change in the field of race this country has experienced since the Civil War," said William Ferris, senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina. "It's shaking the foundations on which the country has existed for centuries."

"Someone once said racism is like cancer," Ferris said. "It's never totally wiped out, it's in remission."
If so, America's remission lasted until the morning of Nov. 5.

The day after the vote hailed as a sign of a nation changed, black high school student Barbara Tyler of Marietta, Ga., said she heard hateful Obama comments from white students, and that teachers cut off discussion about Obama's victory.

Tyler spoke at a press conference by the Georgia chapter of the NAACP calling for a town hall meeting to address complaints from across the state about hostility and resentment. Another student, from a Covington middle school, said he was suspended for wearing an Obama shirt to school Nov. 5 after the principal told students not to wear political paraphernalia.

The student's mother, Eshe Riviears, said the principal told her: "Whether you like it or not, we're in the South, and there are a lot of people who are not happy with this decision."


Other incidents include:

-Four North Carolina State University students admitted writing anti-Obama comments in a tunnel designated for free speech expression, including one that said: "Let's shoot that (N-word) in the head." Obama has received more threats than any other president-elect, authorities say.

-At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool." Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. "Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written "Let's hope someone wins."

-Racist graffiti was found in places including New York's Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted; Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and "Go Back To Africa" were spray painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.

-Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted "assassinate Obama," a district official said.

-University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur. "It seems the election brought the racist rats out of the woodwork," Houston said.

-Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported. The president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas said a rope found hanging from a campus tree was apparently an abandoned swing and not a noose.

-Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacan Township, Pa.

-A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four white men who shouted 'Obama.'

-In the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying "now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house."

Emotions are often raw after a hard-fought political campaign, but now those on the losing side have an easy target for their anger.

"The principle is very simple," said BJ Gallagher, a sociologist and co-author of the diversity book "A Peacock in the Land of Penguins." "If I can't hurt the person I'm angry at, then I'll vent my anger on a substitute, i.e., someone of the same race."

"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."

[toolman846]

"...............it's cornered people who have turned violent."

It's only "cornered people" who turn violent? Is that what happened in NI, Zan? And what's the difference between feeling cornered and being cornered? And if the results are the same, IS there any difference?

And by the way, Guru, I agree with every word of your post too. As well as your assessment of any resurgence of the Klan, and the general mental state of it's members. All that "circle the wagons" mentality ever did was prolong the violence and delay the understanding.

FS - maybe you better read that post again, and ask yourself if your own predjudices are not coloring and slanting your understanding of what I was saying. Nowhere in that post did I ever mention color. But you immediately assumed that was the underlying premise of the whole thrust of the post. See what I mean? It's deeper than you think, and is going to be way harder, and take much longer to get rid of, than most of us would like.

And maybe now some people will start looking in the mirror, and re-assessing their own attitudes about people different than themselves, and why they always seem to be on the outside looking it. But I won't be holding my breath.

[Zan de Man]

Feeling cornered has the same effect as being cornered Jim. And sectarian leaders are very adept at making people feel cornered. I never felt that way because I had enlightened parents. They were sometimes very worried about my contacts with the "other side", especially girlfriends, but they didn't preach sectarianism to me. I had close neighbours who joined the Ulster Defence Association, the closest thing to a right wing militia we had in NI. I can only assume that their upbringing was different than mine.

Now, instead of pointing out to others the error of their ways, I think you should lay out your own views. You're clearly very angry and not the Jim I've come to know and admire.

[freespirit]

Jim, the assumptions I made about your post had much more to do with the source than the substance. I know that sounds insulting to you and I apologize. It's just that your posts have been a bit on the virulent side lately...

I know this problem is deep. I also know that I've heard way too many people claiming that racism is a distant memory in this country; that they've never seen it; that non-whites in this country are just being drama queens, creating monsters where there aren't any.

Our brains tend to categorize people (and things). We recognize and assign labels to people/things by our own paradigms. That doesn't mean we have to give in to that tendency. As rational beings we realize that people don't fit into little boxes and that generalizations are unreliable. Some realize this more readily than others, but I believe we are all capable of it.

[Black Lance]

Originally Posted by suedanim

I'm just trying to assimilate the hatred coming from the right at the moment.

Remember back when your fellow liberals used to compare Bush to Hitler, and you never complained about it? Assimilate the idea that way.

Its wildly over the top and isn't all about just plain old racism. If so, then where the explanation for the absence of hatred for Rice and Powell.

I just wonder if the threats and hatred would be so pronounced if Palin had not taken it upon herself to launch an attack against Obama, Andy Martin and Jerome Corsi had not launched racist attacks calling Obama everything from simple anti-American, black liberation theology (black people are coming to take over the world), Muslim, terrorist sympathizer, then socialist, marxist, communist... Have I left anything out? (oh yeah... Nazi...)

Tell me Suedanim, is Bush still a puppet for big corporations?

Obama's opponents sought to demonize him and Michelle Obama in pretty much outrageous ways with tenuous linking, guilt by association, but little to any real hardcore evidence of any wrongdoing on his part. So then they resorted to the flag pin..anti-American thing, the mispeaking of 57 instead of 47 states he'd visited and Michelle's comment about the first time she was proud of America.

Links such as: George's Bush's brother was the governor of Florida, so therefore Bush stole the Florida election.

No, wait, you meant to denounce guilt by association, such as when the Bush family flew the Bin Laden family out of the country after 9/11.

THIS is where the hate and threats of violence are coming from....and the mainstream media gave the attackers a full and open stage, playing the Paris Hilton video's, the mocking disdain over and over and over again.

This being the same media that opened the way for McCain to compare Obama to a celebrity by treating Obama like a celebrity.

I'm not buying its all about the Obama's are black deal. Its more than that...and it came from some down and dirty campaigning whipping the crowds into a frenzy that compelled some to yell "Kill him!" and "terrorist!"...one lady calling Obama and Arab.

Death threats were also made against Bush. You never denounced any of these.

Colin Powell nailed it in his endorsement of Obama regarding how public on the right's mindset had been molded and shaped by Obama's opponents. The thing I now find fascinating and waiting for Obama's lead now... is that these same opponents are now sucking up... claiming they wish to work with the now President-elect Obama. While they make their amends, the people they molded are still in frenzied mode.

Somebody needs to calm 'em down.

Indeed they do need to be calmed down if they seriously plan to assasinate Obama. But you don't have any real moral objections to these backhanded political tactics, you have even used some of them on the boards. Your real objection is that you simply can't tolerate that anybody dares to be critical of Obama the messiah (D- Illinois).

[Zan de Man]

Weak, weak, weak.

[Black Lance]

Originally Posted by Zan de Man

Weak, weak, weak.

Sue spent plenty of time denouncing Bush on completely conspiratorial grounds, therefore so far as I am concerned, what is weak in this thread is the fact that she now has the nerve to complain when the tactics she personally used are applied to her political savior.

[Zan de Man]

From this I take the following assumptions:

1. You don't see the difference between political partisanship and racism;

2. You seek to excuse the racists who call for Obama's assassination.

[clownboy]

Originally Posted by ninjalooter1701

So, you're saying that the Republican Party has a lot of racists in it?

Gosh, that sounds almost like something...That I've said.

Nope, I'm saying the McCain/Palin ticket spoke to that minority in the party and allowed them to have a dominant voice.

[Dufrel]

Originally Posted by Black Lance

Death threats were also made against Bush. You never denounced any of these.

There was actually a legitimate assassination attempt carried out against Bush in Georgia, except the grenade failed to go off after being thrown at him (it was live)

[Zan de Man]

Every US president is at risk of assassination. Show me evidence that Bush was the subject of a spate of threats like those facing Obama.

[Black Lance]

Originally Posted by Zan de Man

From this I take the following assumptions:

1. You don't see the difference between political partisanship and racism;

2. You seek to excuse the racists who call for Obama's assassination.

Clearly my stating one idea shows my support for separate and unrelated ideas. There's the liberal reasoning skills I have come to know.

Democrats made race an issue in this election by insisting that Obama's candidacy was a grand national achievement because Obama is black. The only difference between the mainstream left and some fringe rednecks has been that, whereas the rednecks view Obama being black as a negative, liberals see it as a positive.

[Zan de Man]

So they're opposite and equal, morally speaking? I think you truly believe that.

[Black Lance]

Originally Posted by clownboy

Nope, I'm saying the McCain/Palin ticket spoke to that minority in the party and allowed them to have a dominant voice.

Clownboy, what exactly did the McCain/Palin campaign do that was racist?

[Black Lance]

Originally Posted by Zan de Man

So they're opposite and equal, morally speaking? I think you truly believe that.

Indeed, I do. Positive racism produces the same tensions as negative racism. Racist rednecks can cause tragic harm in their own local areas, but racist liberal morons who organize on a mass scale have the potential to hold back race relations in this country for decades.

"We need to have racial reconciliation in this country, but, erm, remember that you all need to vote DNC because Republicans hate black people..."

[Zan de Man]

Since you insist.

Originally Posted by Black Lance

Remember back when your fellow liberals used to compare Bush to Hitler, and you never complained about it? Assimilate the idea that way.

Let's examine that. Bush introduced the Patriot Act, which removed basic liberties from American citizens, including freedom of movement and privacy. He also gave authority for the detention without trial and torture of foreign prisoners.

Now I never compared him to Hitler and I laugh at those who did, but I would describe those actions as politically extreme. And those who described him as being like Hitler were not calling for his assassination. Even if they had, there is no tradition in the US of lynching Nazis.

Originally Posted by Black Lance

Tell me Suedanim, is Bush still a puppet for big corporations?

I can answer that. He was a puppet for the big corporations for most of his presidency. But what does that have to do with accusing Obama of being a friend of terrorist[s]?

Originally Posted by Black Lance

Links such as: George's Bush's brother was the governor of Florida, so therefore Bush stole the Florida election.

No, wait, you meant to denounce guilt by association, such as when the Bush family flew the Bin Laden family out of the country after 9/11.

Didn't they get flown out of the country? Weren't they in business with the Bush family?

Originally Posted by Black Lance

This being the same media that opened the way for McCain to compare Obama to a celebrity by treating Obama like a celebrity.

Yep. It was all the media's fault.

Originally Posted by Black Lance

Death threats were also made against Bush. You never denounced any of these.

Well I would have denounced them if I'd ever heard of them. Was there a huge spate of them after he was elected? Like the death threats Obama's now facing? Do you condemn them?

Originally Posted by Black Lance

Indeed they do need to be calmed down if they seriously plan to assasinate Obama.

Yep. Wouldn't want their trigger fingers trembling at the crucial moment.

[Zan de Man]

Originally Posted by Black Lance

...but, erm, remember that you all need to vote DNC because Republicans hate black people..."

I didn't say that. I'm certain there are plenty of racists on both sides - and none.

And there are Republicans on this board whom I respect. None of them are racists. However, it's a convenient cloak for you to hide behind.

[ninjalooter1701]

Originally Posted by Black Lance

Remember back when your fellow liberals used to compare Bush to Hitler, and you never complained about it? Assimilate the idea that way.

Remember when your fellow conservatives talked about Hitlery?

And there are Republicans on this board whom I respect. None of them are racists.

Both of them are not racists.