The Thread #3, I Know That Language

I am not sure what grade I was in or what year it was, but my dad took us to a couple of KKK rallies. One was very near the present day intersection of Indian Trail Waxhaw Road and Potter Road. The other was out on Highway 74, very near the present day Walmart. My best guess is that the year was somewhere in the 1954 to 1955 range because they were surely a reaction to the Supreme Court's knocking down the "separate but equal" validity for segregation in schools. The South was in an uproar then as it is now. Everywhere there were signs and billboards that read, "Impeach Earl Warren", the Supreme Court chief justice.

White southerners are some of the most easily aggrieved people on Earth. A large portion of our people never bought into the idea of a true United States that could function as a government for all of the people. They have spent hundreds of years proving that you only have to take care of certain groups.

If you think that paragraph is some sort of exaggeration, then I suggest that you take off your blinders and look at the evidence. The concept of equality never really made it into the South, not by the decrees of Abraham Lincoln nor the hand of God. This region, especially areas like South Carolina low country, were built on the idea of a caste system and that belief lives today in many of its white citizens. The dictum from Earl Warren and his court was one more reason for some white southerners to don their capes and hoods and turn the Bible and the Christian religion on its head. God, Jesus, the Constitution, and all the angles were not, are not, and never have been reason for many white southerners to accept that they are not, in fact, the focal point of the creation and all good things that came after it.

I remember rather vividly the language of the speakers at the KKK rallies. Once you took out all the racial and ethnic slurs, it boiled down to a very simple, "God put us here as the supreme deciders of all things right and wrong within his creation. To give the other man a chance is to be a fool to the corruption of his soul. It is better to slay him before he has a chance to corrupt our world."

For every white southerner who accepted the errors of the ways of the Old South and attempted to reconcile their lives to the realities of the world, another never considered that he or she had any reason to be contrite, and continued teaching their children the "old ways."

Now, here we are in the twenty-first century, over forty years removed from the enactment of the voting rights bill. We have been through forced busing and other forms of court ordered integration. We have a very large professional and middle class population ofBlacks. It is a fact that most segregation today is more economic based than cultural based.

The election of a person who was half white, half black seemed to be a positive in most respects. There was a pretty big cultural backlash during the election campaign, fueled by the image of the pure white girl who was being used to beat up on the black man. It was ugly but ineffective in the end.

But, many of us said then, and we say again today, the level of and the tone of the attacks on candidate Obama were racially fueled. In my adult lifetime, I have not seen anything that comes close to the level of disgusting lies that were told, with no hint of any attempt to stay with bounds of civility.

But, that was little more than a warmup for what was to come after the election. The image of a black family in the White House seems to be just too much for tens of millions of whites across this country, and especially here in the South. The level of dialogue has fallen to KKK days, again, except absent some of the most vile terminology.

There is indeed a strong feeling about the level of spending in the country and the level of debt. But, it was people fully supported by most of those tens of millions of white people who got us to the debt level that we are at today, and there was hardly a word of accusal language. Where it did exist, it was civil and respectful of the president.

I know this language as well as I know the lullabies that my mother sang to me. I know the difference between honest concerns that may give rise to heated debate and strong language, and the words of the white race that feels that it is under attack. To those who still fight the Civil War, anything done or said is justified to return the people, who see themselves as gods, to the places of power they have always occupied. This is war.

I would hope that all peoples of color across this nation would stop and take a good look at what the Republican Party now represents. It is saddled with the Old South while the Democratic Party now represents more of the New South. We need a strong and viable Republican Party that is willing to shed that burden. It will not grow nationally until it does.

I am actually writing this on September 12, 2009, the day of the Tea Parties and the march on Washington. I have seen the signs of hatred the participants carry that will only stiffen the casue of those who feel an affront by them. I have seen or heard nothing today that will do anything but cause the reinforcement of the lines of defense of those who feel threatened by this level of vitriol.

As a sixty five year old man who remembers the KKK rallies and knows the message, I will say that it is, today, our duty to stand up to this new assault on humanity from those who would bring back to these shores inhumanity masked as God's Will, and incivility masked as the original intent of the formers of the Constitution.