The Southern Poverty Law Center produces the Intelligence Report. It documents and details hate groups in the United States. Anyone who isn’t familiar with the SPLC should become so – check it out here: http://www.splcenter.org/. Among many other things, the SPLC has been documenting the rise in extreme hate groups since the election of President Obama. “Hate groups in recent years have risen to more than 1,000, and the number of antigovernment ‘Patriot’ groups has shot up from just 149 in 2008 to 1,360 last year,” the SPLC found.
After his first election, President Obama was hanged in effigy in Oregon, Kentucky and in the hometown of President Jimmy Carter.
(Sources:
Oregon: http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=5927324&page=1
Kentucky: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/10/30/1224956192843.html
Georgia: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34682818/ns/politics-white_house/)
Hate groups reacted to Obama’s reelection with the sort of anger and hyperbole we might expect: “The sun has set on humanity’s greatest era: 1500-2000,” declared a commenter on Stormfront, “the world’s largest white supremacist Web forum, which is run by a former Alabama Klan leader.” The commenter predicted that “the only way to survive this war of annihilation is separatism.” Another lamented, “We have truly fallen under God’s judgment. You will never see another white man occupy the White House again.”
As sad, depressing, and offensive as I find these sorts of comments, however, I am not terribly perplexed by the behavior of these groups, which clearly exist to express hatred and to promote white supremacy. I am stunned – saddened – confused – by expressions of similar hatred in “mainstream” America. When television stations called the 2012 election for Obama, “a crowd of mostly white students protested furiously” at Ole Miss, “chanting anti-black slurs and attracting hundreds more students during the ruckus. An Obama/Biden campaign sign was burned before campus police broke up the crowd…” Pontificating about the suggestion that by 2043, the U.S. will lose its white majority, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly declared, “The white establishment is now the minority. And the voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. … It’s not a traditional America any more.”
(For documentation, see Mark Potok’s “White Hot: For the Radical Right, Obama Victory Brings Fury and Fear” here: http://www.splcenter.org/home/2012/spring/white-hot. Then go ahead and browse through other issues of the Intelligence Report: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues.)
But such xenophobic reactions to our President and the declining white majority have some tragic real world implications that reach far beyond the chanting of racist slogans or the posting of horrible comments on the internet.
On Saturday, November 3, 19-year-old Renisha McBride was shot and killed in Dearborn Heights. She had just been in a car accident, and with her cell phone’s battery dead, she knocked on a door seeking assistance. “The shooter, who remains uncharged [because of the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law], told police he thought she was breaking into his home and that his shotgun accidentally misfired. McBride was standing on his porch and was shot in the front of her face, near her mouth, police said.” (http://thegrio.com/2013/11/08/detroit-activists-demand-justice-for-renisha-mcbride/#s:renisha-mcbride-protest)
On Saturday, September 14, police shot and killed unarmed Jonathan Ferrell, who had just been in a car accident and was running toward them. Police had been called to the scene because Ferrell had repeatedly knocked on the door of a woman in the neighborhood of the accident. (http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/15/justice/north-carolina-police-shooting/index.html)
And of course, George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin and was acquitted for it.
White xenophobia is leading to black deaths. Apparently simply having dark skin is considered threatening enough to justify shooting black people.
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