ifferent races come into contact regularly; often with painful results.  You can find dozens of racial incidents in the news every single day, if you care to look, and anyone with any common sense knows that there are thousands more just as bad that aren't reported.  I don't often write about this sort of thing, but once in a while something comes along that just demands comment.

Entries from various blogs on this subject are archived on this page.

December 16, 2003

Thanks to Strom Thurmond, who has, post-mortem, perfectly lived up to the old one-liner description of a redneck racist: "Someone who'll go to bed with a black girl but won't go to school with her."

The family of late U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond released a statement on Monday acknowledging that the former segregationist was the father of a 78-year-old mixed-race woman.

Essie Mae Washington-Williams, a Los Angeles woman whose black mother worked as a maid in Thurmond's parents' home as a teen-ager, went public with her claim that Thurmond was her father in a report published by The Washington Post on Saturday.

The Thurmond family released a statement on Monday through attorney J. Mark Taylor, who represents the senator's estate.

"As J. Strom Thurmond has passed away and cannot speak for himself, the Thurmond family acknowledges Ms. Essie Mae Washington-Williams' claim to her heritage," the statement said. "We hope this acknowledgment will bring closure for Ms. Williams."

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Thurmond was once a strong proponent of segregation, who started his political career as a Democrat and left the party in protest when Democratic President Harry Truman called for a strong civil rights plank in 1948. He later moderated his views and in the 1970s was one of the first southern senators to hire a black staff member.

So let's see, 1948 was 55 years ago, which means his black bastard daughter was um... 23 at the time.  Thanks for pushing me to the back of the bus, dad.

While both candidates carved out blocs of fervent supporters, many voters in this tradition-bound state appeared befuddled by the ballot choice — either because of resistance to supporting a woman or a non-white, or because the two candidates were so close ideologically.

This is the same state where, just over a decade ago, a majority of white men voted for former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

Jindal sought to neutralize possible opposition based on his ethnicity. He campaigned far to the right, running radio ads extolling the Ten Commandments, deriding gun control, and promoting his strong Catholic faith.

"It's not about race, it's about which candidate has the qualifications and experience to lead our state forward," Jindal said last week.

Unfortunately for the political aspirations of the self-loathing Mr. Jindal, it's always about race, in the American South. And as it turned out in this election, being male and arch-conservative wasn't enough to overcome the white Republican voters' dislike of a non-white. At least not while all of the democrats and women were voting for his opponent.

October 24, 2003

Disturbing news about the levels of racism found in English cops.

LONDON—Eight British police officers have either resigned or been suspended after a television documentary secretly filmed disturbing examples of racism among recruits.

The worst incident on the BBC show showed a member of the North Wales Police dressed in an improvised Ku Klux Klan hood, and demonstrating how he wanted to beat up an ethnic minority colleague on the force."A Paki born in Britain is still a f----- Paki," Constable Robert Pulling then says, captured by a hidden camera and microphone.

The documentary, filmed by an undercover reporter who spent five months working as a trainee and two months as a police officer in northern England, shook forces throughout the country.

The documentary, called The Secret Policeman, was broadcast Tuesday night, and by yesterday afternoon, five police officers had resigned and three others were suspended. They worked in the Greater Manchester, Cheshire and North Wales forces.

My first thought was that the investigative reporter had better be in like, Spain, if he wants to live to investigate again.

My second thought was to snigger at the reports of utter shock and amazement by most of the people in the UK.  It reminds me of the whole Rodney King thing, when white people were for the first time exposed to the sort of vicious violence and racism that runs rampant in most law enforcement agencies in the US.  It was like, "Wow, how could police hit an unarmed man like that?  This must be a totally isolated incident, and he must have done something to provoke them!"

Yes dear, of course he did.  Police are all very heroic and motivated to serve and protect and never take bribes or beat people up and never do anything mean or bad, unless it's to a really bad man in order to get information to save some poor innocent child.  Honest.  Just like the cops you see on the teevee.

I'm usually surprised just how little of a clue most white people have in the US about how anything is for anyone non-white.  The whole "I didn't get something exactly as I wanted it due to reverse-discrimination." whining is pathetic, as is the whole, "Why should any minority get special privileges when racism is a thing of the past?"  But hey, it's all fun and games until it's you, right?

January 9, 2003

Typically great post on PLA about the freedom riders.  Groups of whites and blacks who banned together to try and break the illegally segregated bus travel across the US in 1960.  They were beaten and nearly murdered several times by angry white mobs, had a bus firebombed and escaped with their lives only due to a cop firing warning shots into the air, sent to the hospital nearly dead, in addition to suffering constant verbal abuse and harassment from various Trent Lott fans.

Some of the Freedom Riders were taken to the hospital for their wounds. Jim Peck suffered broken teeth and at least six head wounds that required fifty-two stitches to repair. A photograph of Peck at the hospital appears here.

Jim Peck was a middle aged white man. He was the heir to the Peck & Peck clothing fortune. He had attended Harvard University. He had nothing to gain, personally, from the integration of Southern bus terminals. He chose to be a Freedom Rider out of pure principle.

While at the hospital, a reporter asked Jim Peck about his future plans and whether the Freedom Rides had been worth the cost. In an act of almost unfathomable courage, Jim Peck replied:

The going is getting rougher, but I’ll be on that bus tomorrow headed for Montgomery.

That statement exemplifies the courage and valor of the Freedom Riders.

This is the sort of thing that was necessary to break through the institutionalized and socially-acceptable racism of the American south, and it happened just a few just a few decades ago, and nearly a century after the South's defeat in the civil war preserved the Union, and rid this nation of the abhorrent evil of racially-biased human slavery.

December 16, 2002

There was a recent news article showing the sort of racism people with "black sounding names" face trying to get a job, and then today there's this bizarre news item about an angry old Indian chief in Canada, who is quite open about his total hatred for the Jews.  As well as his total ignorance of history and an amazing amount of hypocrisy in his personal views.

"The Jews damn near owned all of Germany prior to the war," Ahenakew said.

"That's how Hitler came in. He was going to make damn sure that the Jews didn't take over Germany or Europe. That's why he fried six million of those guys, you know. Jews would have owned the goddamned world. And look what they're doing. They're killing people in Arab countries."

He said Germans told him the Jews started the Second World War. He said Israel and the United States are about to start a third world war, a reference to the current troubles in the Middle East.

Approached afterwards to clarify his comments on Jews and the Second World War, Ahenakew said he agreed with his German friends. When asked how he could justify the Holocaust, Ahenakew said: "How do you get rid of a disease like that, that's going to take over, that's going to dominate?"

So the Germans told him.  And they certainly wouldn't have any reason to lie.

The article is actually pretty funny, as he just rambles on and on like any crazy old man you could find on a street corner in the deep south.  Totally happy and content in his ignorance and bigotry.

There are some nice quotes from other members of the tribe where when asked if they're comfortable with the remarks being made by Chief Himmler there.

When asked if he feels comfortable having Ahenakew represent the FSIN at public functions, Bellegarde said, "you're the guy writing this. Don't quote him."

Chief Heap Antisemite closes with this last bit of wisdom.

He also complained about bigotry in city schools.

"My great grandson goes to school here in Saskatoon. These goddamned immigrants -- East Indians, Pakistanis, Afghanistan, whites and so forth -- call him a dirty little Indian. He's the cleanest of the old goddamn works there. That's what I'm saying. It's starting right there, at six years old."

There's no way his kid could be bringing racist comments upon himself, due to his evil GGfather filling his head with hatred, is there?

My belated point is that there are still a lot of people like this around.  Obviously this guy isn't voting in any US election, but there really are people who feel this way about the Jews, and would never vote for Lieberman under any circumstances.

December 14, 2002

Zimbabwe heading for total disaster.  Famine at the least, and civil war isn't out of the question.  It's all being caused by the paranoid, racist, and probably insane leader of the country, Robert Mugabe.  The famine is coming about due to his policies of seizing most of the farms in the country, most of which were owned and run by whites.  He had no reason to do this since they were people who had lived in the country their whole lives and who employed thousands of blacks, other than racial paranoia.  Most of the whites have left the country, or moved to cities.  Meanwhile most of the farms are lying idle since there's no one who knows how to run them properly, or there's just no one taking on the land and business.

Mugabe just wanted the whites to not have nice land and farms, and didn't give any thought to what would happen to the food if the whites were run off and there wasn't anyone to pick up the slack.  Now with that ongoing, the opposition party (which is almost 100% black, as is the country's population) nearly won the last election and with Mugabe driving the country to economic ruin and famine, his popularity can't be exactly climbing.  So he's changing his policies in the face of reality, right?

President Robert Mugabe threatened retribution against the white population of Zimbabwe on Friday, suggesting they were working with Britain, the former colonial power, to sabotage his government.

Mugabe accused the British of leading an international campaign to isolate Zimbabwe and recruit support for his opponents inside his country.

"The more they work against us, the more they express hostility against us, the more negative we shall become to their kith and kin here," Mugabe said at the opening of his ruling party's annual convention.

So now thanks to his idiocy there are millions who may starve to death and the country's economy is taking a dive.  If total disaster and death is to be averted there will need to be large food supply operations mounted by foreign governments.  And the most likely one to help out is Britain, since they have colonial ties to the country.  Ironic, isn't it?  And you know that Mugabe will continue to blame all the problems on others, other races, other countries, other parties.  And he probably won't go quietly either.

It's tempting to just say, "let the idiots starve then." but of course Mugabe and his cronies won't starve; they live in palaces and eat gourmet food as they plunder the country's wealth. It's all the peasants and villagers who will starve.  Living in a country with a psychotic despot for a ruler pretty much sucks.

December 11, 2002

The whole Trent Lott racist remarks thing is getting bigger by the day.  New NYTimes article quotes him saying basically the same thing way back in 1980, and as his defense for his recent remarks was that they were spontaneous and poorly-chosen, he might be doomed. His explanation was crap anyway, being as his speech is on C-Span for anyone who wants to see it, and he's clearly reading from prepared remarks, and even pauses to give extra emphasis to his critical statement.

After a fiery speech by Mr. Thurmond at a campaign rally in Mississippi for Ronald Reagan in November 1980, Mr. Lott, then a congressman, told a crowd in Jackson, "You know, if we had elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today."

His initial comments, which I never posted anything about, are blatantly racist, at least in terms of expressing support for segregation, which was the legal suppression and control of blacks under the "separate but equal" bullshit.

"When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."

I didn't see any need to write about it since 1) this isn't really a political blog, and 2) of course Trent Lott is a racist.  He's a 61 year old rich southern Republican white male and there's debate on his race feelings? That's like being surprised a 15 y/o black kid from Harlem likes rap music.  I mean duh.  Most southern politicians with a largely-white voting block (Republicans) are racist, at least in their policies.  The blacks aren't voting for them anyway, so what do they care?  They just have to cover their racism in double speak and let their policies speak for them, since coming out and being quoted with blatantly-racist remarks will get you hounded out, as Trent Lott is discovering now.

It's like pornos; they say that they're for couples and designed to get you both in the mood and all that crap, but everyone knows they're 99% bought by horny guys to watch alone.  But the porno makers don't say that, since they know they have that market wrapped up already.  They have to say good things about couples and that there is romance and naked men as well.  You need to look good for the other demographics, since your core constituency knows where you stand on issues that may not be spoken of out loud.

Anyway, it looks like Lott is doomed, with the pressure mounting.  Republicans are soft on racism, much the way Democrats are soft on crime. Everyone associates Republicans with racism, so when one of them runs his mouth on record he gets cannibalized, since if they don't eat him, it gives their enemies too much ammunition.  Same with Democrats, since they get tarred with the "criminal coddling" brush, they can't give anyone an even break or they'll be killed for it.  It's all "Nixon goes to China", somewhat in reverse.

November 29, 2002

Georgia elected a red neck governor, one who campaigned on a lot of business and white issues, and now true to his word, he's going to look at putting the state flag's design up to public vote. This worrying to many in Georgia, since there are a lot of red necks there with a lingering fascination with the Civil War, and the perpetuated illusion that the Confederate Flag is something other than a symbol of racism and slavery. And if the citizens vote to put that flag back up, it could be very bad for business with civil rights groups organizing boycotts.

Such steps are precisely what business leaders fear. Atlanta, in particular, has been successful in competing for major corporations, huge conventions and Northern transplants. Long proud of its unofficial slogan as “A City Too Busy To Hate,” Atlanta ranks third nationwide with 12 Fortune 500 companies. Among the heavyweights: Coca-Cola Co., United Parcel Service Inc., Delta Air Lines and Home Depot Inc. The Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce declined to comment; many business leaders have been quiet about the issue since the election, owing in part to their support for Gov. Barnes.

Talk about "reap what you sow", eh?  You elect a Republican who will give you whatever you want, you have to take his pro-racist policies along with the anti-consumer/worker policies you wanted him in office for.

Proponents of returning to the old flag, however, argue that concerns about economic development are overblown. Dan Coleman, a spokesman for the Georgia Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group devoted to honoring what it calls the nobility and courage of Confederate soldiers, said a state flag that prominently features the Confederate emblem might actually spur tourism, if all Georgians were to rally around the banner as a source of regional pride.

Mr. Coleman said he doesn’t want to go back to the pre-1956 flag, because it doesn’t directly honor Confederate soldiers. And he said Mr. Perdue has told him that Georgians would get a chance to vote for the Confederate-emblem flag.

The whole Confederate Flag issue is a thorny one.  Lots of the southerners fighting in the civil war were poor farmers who had nothing directly to do with slavery, and they did have a nobility and esprit de corps and fought bravely against overwhelming odds.  However they were also essentially fighting to retain slavery, the most evil of human institutions, and one that's really indefensible in any rational way.  No one with any objectivity would deny that the Confederate Flag is basically a symbol of slavery and institutional racism, which really has to take precedence over whatever else it might have stood for.

Adding evidence is when they switched the flag to the Confederate-honoring one.

For much of the 20th century, Georgia’s state flag was simple: a government seal next to three broad white and red stripes. But in 1956, the legislature — during the beginning of the civil-rights movement — adopted a new flag, one in which the Confederate battle emblem filled two-thirds of the banner.

Let's hear a reasonable explanation about how Georgia felt a sudden need to honor their Civil War soldiers with a flag from the time of slavery, just as blacks were starting to get some legal rights and moving towards equality?  I mean let's be realistic, it's pretty obvious to anyone that the racist whites running the state at that time, wanted to send a message.  As they do again today.

It's unfortunate, since if they do vote for the old Confederate flag they'll get boycotts and hurt economically and be reviled, which will make them paranoid and more bitchy about civil rights, as well as hurting the blacks in George economically.  Going back to the old flag is a lose/lose situation, trading a momentary "fuck them darkies" red neck urge for long term economic penalties and castigation.

October 23, 2002

I happened to watch an hour of PBS this evening.  What was on?  A historical documentary about the civil rights movement in America.  More specifically the events that lead up to the legal death of Jim Crow; the end of the "separate but equal" laws in the South.  The show detailed numerous mob/KKK murders of black citizens, usually upstanding ones who had good jobs and were upwardly-mobile.  The Klan didn't care about poor blacks; they liked those type.  Liked them being "in their place." 

The blacks who dared to think they were human beings, who had a car or a house, those were the ones who had to be taught a lesson.  Dozens of black soldiers, returning from WWII, many still in their army uniforms (most because they were in those army uniforms), were lynched and murdered in cold blood.

This is one of the most shameful episodes in all of American history, in my opinion.

The case they profiled in the most detail was about two black couples who were being driven home after work by a white friend.  They were in the back roads in Mississippi and reached a single-lane bridge, which a car was blocking.  Another one pulled up behind them, and upwards of fifteen men got out of the cars and came out of the woods.  Most of them with guns. They beat the white guy into a coma, beat the black men and dragged them into the woods with nooses around their necks.  The women were screaming for them to spare their husbands, and the mob turned on them, dragged them out of the car and beat and stomped them, then shot them on the ground numerous times.  Same with the men.

Both women were pregnant, seven and eight months, so it was really six murders that day.  Neither man had done anything wrong, but they both had good jobs and had both served in the armed forces in WWII.  No one was ever charged with any crime.  The white guy who had been driving never testified, said he didn't remember.  Obvious reason for that, he knew who had done it and he had a wife and child, and knew what would happen to his family if he talked.

A black kid, 16, saw the mob an hour before when they were gathering up at a local store.  He was beaten to a pulp by three guys with guns a few days later; they put the guns in his face and told him what would happen if he talked to anyone.

A couple of local kids, white, saw the whole thing from down the road. The sheriff came around to their house and talked to them. The one who was on the show almost couldn't tell the story, he was crying so hard out of shame and disgust at himself.  He said the sheriff asked if anyone had seen what happened.  He said he had, and all the killers were local men; the kid could have identified all of them.  The sheriff told him, "I can arrest some of them, but I can't arrest them all.  Now if you talk, they're gonna know who ratted them out, and some of them might come over here and have a talk with you.  And maybe your mama and your papa too.  You don't want that to happen, do you?  It's best if you just forget you saw anything, and you don't ever tell anyone about this."  The kid was about 10 years old, and that was sufficient to keep him quiet.

They had an FBI agent on who investigated the crime at the time.  He said he couldn't get any cooperation from the local authorities.  No names, no arrests, no witnesses could be found, etc.  So there was nothing he could do about it.

The quote attributed to the head of the mob was that one of the black men was the main target.  They said "he'd been a good nigger, but after he went to the war he'd come back thinking he was as good as any white man."  Which was a killing offense, to the whites at the time.

This is just one case of hundreds just as bad, in America in those days.

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.