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Obama Win Prompts Wave of Hate Crimes
Barack Obama's election as America's first black president has unleashed a wave of hate crimes across the nation, according to police and monitoring organisations.
Signs hang on the office door of University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston, Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008, in Tuscaloosa, Ala., as Houston posted a message against racism after someone defaced a previous poster of Barack Obama and his family with a death threat and racial slur.
(AP Photo/Jay Reeves)
Far from heralding a new age of tolerance, Mr Obama's victory in the November
4 poll has highlighted the stubborn racism that lingers within some elements
of American society as opponents pour their frustration into vandalism,
harassment, threats and even physical attacks.
Cross burnings, black figures hung from nooses, and schoolchildren chanting "Assassinate Obama" are just some of the incidents that have been documented by police from California to Maine.
There have been "hundreds" of cases 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.
The phenomenon appears to be at its most intense in the Southern states, where opposition to Mr Obama is at its highest and where reports of hate crimes were emerging even before the election. Incidents involving adults, college students and even schoolchildren have dampened the early post-election glow of racial progress and harmony, with some African American residents reporting an atmosphere of fear and inter-community tension.
In North Carolina, four students at the state university 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." Mr Obama has received more threats than any other president-elect, authorities say.
Marsha L. Houston, a University of Alabama professor, 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," Ms Houston said.
Second and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted "assassinate Obama," a district official said.
Meanwhile in Snellville, Georgia, Denene Millner, an African-American, said a boy on the school bus told her nine-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 faeces outside the front door, Ms 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," Ms Millner said. "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."
But the incidents have not been restricted to areas of high anti-Obama sentiment. Even states and cities which leaned heavily towards the Democrat have seen their share.
In New York, a black teenager said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four white men who shouted "Obama", while 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."
In the north-eastern state of Maine, customers at a general store in Standish were placing $1 bets on when the president-elect would be killed. A sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool." "Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," it said. At the bottom of the marker board was written "Let's hope someone wins."
Black figures were hung by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported, while crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, New Jersey, and Apolacan Township, Pennsylvania. In Massachussetts, a nearly-finished church belonging to a black congregation was burned to the ground just hours after Mr Obama's victory was declared.
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.
Mr 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," Mr Ferris said. "It's never totally wiped out - it's in remission."
The day after the vote, Barbara Tyler, a black high school student in Marietta, Georgia, said she heard hateful comments about Mr Obama from white students, and that teachers cut off discussion about his victory.
Ms Tyler spoke at a press conference by the Georgia chapter of the civil rights body NAACP which discussed 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 on November 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."
Sociologists said African-Americans suffering attacks and intimidation were essentially proxies for the frustrated emotions of some whites.
"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," Mr Gallagher said. "But it happens a lot."
- Posted in
128 Comments so far
Show AllAre these are the same people who were intimidating people who criticized the Bush Administration?
Of course now that they are exposed the way they are they are lashing out at anything out of frustration. Anything to keep from having to do a little introspection!
It shows that legislating & protecting civil rights is only a part of the struggle against the toxin of racism. It's the primary duty of religious leaders to enlist on the side of civil rights, because religion remains the favored shield for bigotry.
And we can't just say that racism, like cancer, never goes away, because the Bush junta eviscerated the Department of Justice & set back federal protection of minorities' rights forty years. These people were not just lying low; they were deliberately and calculatedly bred & we saw this in the Nuremburg rallies of Palin over & over.
In my home state, the racist sheriff & his racist County Attorney were just re-elected (under shady circumstances) & the so-called Minutemen flourish here. Fortunately, we will have a new DoJ & I hope the new US Attorney will aggressively address the human rights violations which have been routine in Maricopa County over the last 16 years.
And from this segment of society will come the next Republican presidential candidate, cleaned up, buffed up, well dressed, as eloquent as Shakespeare with the racist code words and phrases, spouting scripture and wearing a key chain in the shape of a noose. Haley Barbour might do; I'm sure he's thinking about it. And if not, then the next Great White Hope and Political Wet Dream of the Republicans will be David Petraeus, especially if Obama gingerly shoves him aside because the president wants out of Iraq in 16 months and the good general doesn't want to shut down his laboratory for the study of counterinsurgency.
The article was read on the air, this morning, by Bernard White on "WakeUpCall",WBAI www.wbai.org with discussion afterwards with Prof. William Loren Katz. It's archived for about 90days,free online. Katz made a point about in other times, there were examples of solidarity between whites and blacks when there were particular incidents, going back to the 1930s, at least (what I remember). Prof. Katz is a historian.
I do want to point out, that the assassinations of former presidents and other leaders, were not murdered by "random" loners, but we really don't know who killed JFK, Rev.MLKingJr, and Bobby Kennedy Jr (even though individuals were arested for the crimes).
Random members of hate groups, and "spontaneous" groups of men have attacked individuals, such as happened on Election Day on Staten Island, the most conservative part of NYC. All people have to say that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated. Local law enforcement may have to be forced to prosecute hate crimes.
It was proven in a Civil suit trial that the US Government was responsible for MLK's murder. The details are all here. For JFK, we know it wasn't Oswald.
"Hate Groups" are domestic terrorists.
As a Camelot Kid, I was raised believing that it wasn't Oswald, or that he was as he said, a patsy. Vincent Bugliosi's "Reclaiming History", written over the two decades since Bugliosi participated in a mock trial of Oswald with Gerry Spence, persuaded me otherwise. Not that there weren't people in the intelligence & criminal community who weren't eager to get rid of JFK, or who may have been plotting to do so.
I'm disinclined to use the term "domestic terrorists" because the term "terrorist" itself has served those who hate human rights so well in the last decade. It is absolutely true, though, that these hate groups hate the United States for our freedoms -- they only want the freedom to print lies, to own weapons & to threaten those outside their mental prison compounds.
Your second paragraph would be a perfect description of our U.S. shadow government.
I think I might include Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Neal Boortz, and others of that ilk as 'domestic terrorists'..they spread hateful lies to line their pockets.
I really think we need to look at these radio thugs and examine how their 24/7 spew affects people. While I'm loathe to censor what they say (within reason), it's obvious that most of them knowingly come dangerously close to inciting violence. They seem to know just where the line is, though, that line has been redefined over the years.
If nothing else, I hope Obama reinstates the Fairness Doctrine - not that I expect it to matter to those who follow these creeps. But, it may have some kind of stabilizing effect. Hard to tell.
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope
It is way past time that these most ignorant,racists were told: AMERICA LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT!
Amen to that, Paul Revere!!!
Really?
Does that mean you are prepared to give back Turtle Island to the folks you ripped it off from: MY people?
I very much doubt Paul revere "ripped off" anyone's land.
OH?
You think the land his house stood on belonged to no native tribe?
Time for a basic history course, sir or madam.
The poster's pseudonym, not the actual historical person.
Do you believe that the house that the poster whose handle is Paul Revere is on land that belonged to no native tribe?
Definitely time to learn something about the history of the US.
Quite likley. My house is on land never "owned" by Native Americans, although they certainly "inhabitated" my region. I have an MA in US History and have spent most of my life studying the US Empire. And First Peoples are certainly not innocent of taking others's lands. A related question: Who came first, Palestinians or Hebrews?
I doubt very seriously that your house is not on tribal land.
An MA in revisionist history, gringo style?
Native Americans stole lands from WHOM, precisely?
Israel should be de-countrified.
Lets face it. We Europeans squatted on whatever land we found and considered natives of an inferior race/culture to justify our takeover. We are all humans..natives and squatters who both can and do kill each other, steal from each other, and claim that the devil made us do it. Natives killed each other, sacrificed each other, stole each other's game..and we are no better than they. Personally, I have always wanted to be a Native American so I could feel more at home here. Nothing like gassing up in sight of the Custer Memorial while a giant with shiny black hair towers over you cleaning your windshield to KNOW THAT WE DON'T BELONG HERE..we owe the indigenous peoples much.
Sounding like JakeNewton more and more. You don't read very much or well, do you?
Read plenty, and didn't get my PhD from a box of Cracker Jacks, either.
Go troll somebody else.
Based on election returns, I compiled a list of clearly racist states.
In no particular order:
Kentucky
West Virginia
Alabama
Mississippi
Oklahoma
Tennessee
Arkansas
Kansas
Louisiana
Nebraska
Texas
Wyoming
Utah
Idaho
Alaska
These came close to making the list:
South Carolina
Arizona
So it should come as no surprise that we have 2nd and 3rd grade students from Idaho chanting "assassinate Obama" or incidents in Alabama. Racists ought to be treated as terrorists, and their parents ought to stand trial with them; afterall, who taught them to be racists?
Obama has continually said "There are no blue states, there are no red states, we are the United States."
By making Lincoln's principle of union the foundation of his political philosophy, Obama reminds us not to make such lists. The people who reported the racist incidents are, after all, citizens of those states where social institutions remain animated by a secessionist & segregationist model. It is always the racist parties that want to separate from the US, the way that Todd & Sarah Palin would like. In the fog of all the idiotic things she's said, people missed the fact that she believes that the United States is a foreign country, where people "aren't as advanced as we are in Alaska".
Racial hatred reached its zenith in the 1920s in the US -- the most aggressively capitalist decade prior to this past decade -- and it was really the experience of Depression & war which resulted in the civil rights movement & its successes.
So we need to continually refresh ourselves in the belief that the United States means a place of equality, where racists feel that they are in a miserable Hell of miscegenation & openness.
It is the rightwing that practices divide & conquer; we should practice unification & liberation.
I'll just say that my 40+ years studying US and World history leads me to a different interpretation of Lincoln's intentions. The "Union" means the same as Empire, and served Northern interests far more than Southern. Preserving that Empire was why Lincoln goaded the South into firing the first shot because there was little public sentiment for the Union/Empire's preservation. All that changed with the attack on Fort Sumter.
I would also observe that the strongest secession movement exists in Vermont and is based on wanting out of the Empire for moral and ethical reasons, and that those sentiments are echoed by the other secessionist movements outside of Alaska.
"...the United States means a place of equality..." is a myth, as proven by the Constitution's "3/5s clause" and the complete exclusion of females.
You forgot Hawaiʻi. They actually had a quite sophisticated government before it was overthrown by the USA. Considering how militarized Oʻahu is, they got a long road ahead of them.
My personal experience indicates that both S. Carolina and Arizona are MORE racist than many on your list.
How did you miss adding GEORGIA to your list? Representative Paul C. Broun (R-GA) has called Obama 'Hitler' and says Obama's national security force proposal is an effort to create an American Gestapo. How did Broun get elected ANYWHERE?
People on the Right are not the only ones concerned about Obama's call for a "national domestic security force". There's a BIG question about the possibility of Obama dismantling the Police State which has matasticized over the last eight years. Obama has called for a "national domestic security force" to number even greater than our present military and to be funded at an even greater level than the military. Yes, Obama and Emanuel have some really big plans for national "service", especially for the masses of the jobless roaming the streets. Looking at the record and associations of Obama and Emanuel, not to mention the enthrallment of so many who swallow the Obama rhetoric whole cloth, I think some conscientious skepticism and vigilence is definitely in order. I'm reminded of a poster on CD, who has twice used Obama's quoted reason for not impeaching Bush. For me, Obama's words are quite alarming. Could this quite possibility be a "seamless transition" to greater fascism.
This is the "real" America whose ass McCain and Palin were kissing.
Actually, from my viewpoint they were peeking out of that ass.
:o) touche.
Unfortunately, you are correct...perhaps McCain and Palin sedate themselves to sleep at night.
Please remember that some of us, even though we live in those "real" America towns,
aren't part of that crowd. I live in a small town in Eastern Texas and hear plenty
of remarks that make me ashamed to live here. McCain won in this county by almost
three to one and I hear the N word often. That these things are happening does not
surprise me at all. I'm proud to have a President that I feel is much smarter than
me. I sure never felt that way the last eight years.
Brits are never more content than when they look down their snotty noses at Americans. Brits forget their persecution of the Irish as "savages" and "animals" and their continued occupation of three counties to create the fiction of "Northern Ireland".
Brits forget that they had pro-fascist Hitler sympathizers from the lowest to the highest ranks of their society during WWII and that they too have a long history of anti-semitism going back to the days of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice.
I just can't wait till some former colony or Commonwealth national who is not caucasian is elected Prime Minister--on that day I expect to look out my window to see the pigs flying.
Poet
Poet: The Jews of England were expelled, en masse, in 1290. I just googled it. By King Edward I.
The law or justice( I use these terms loosely) apparatus in thes country is much more interested in prosecuting peaceful demonstrators or Quaker meetings than going after people who would assissinate our President-elect. This is a direct result of the Republican administrations beginning with Ronald Raygun in 1981. It was only slightly dampened by the Clinton Republican administration.
I find this horrifying and scary. President-elect Obama is our fairly (mostly) elected new president. Why can't these aluminum hat wearing people give him a chance?
Please give a more comprehensive definition of who you think the "aluminum hat wearing people" are. Don't you know that wearing an aluminum hat will prevent the brain from being turned into a big wad of cotton?
QUOTE:
Second and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted "assassinate Obama,"
COMMENT:
Racism isn't inborn, it is taught. Taught primarily by parents, but also peers who were taught racial hatred by their parents. So in that way it is a virus: one child catches racism from a parent then spreads it around to other children.
In the "liberal" neighborhood of my youth any foot-race between a group of boys was likely to be accompanied by someone shouting, "last one there is a nigger baby." In addition to the third generation residents, there were a sprinkling of southerners in our neighborhood and the racism of the parents contaminated their children, who then contaminated the children of "liberal" parents. The native "liberal" parents might have threatened to wash their children's mouth out with soap for using a racial slur, but the disease had already spread.
Society at large can't do much about changing the minds of adult racists, the only hope is to try to influence their children before they catch the disease.
The only place I can think of where society can have much direct influence is in elementary school, especially the early grades before racism is deeply entrenched: in public school, of course, which is why the racists want to destroy public schools, or at least get their children out of them.
This isn't simple. While university professors are more likely to have a lean toward tolerance, elementary school teachers seem to be complete products of their environment. Southern teachers teaching children in Southern schools create Southern adults. And nothing changes.
The two major things I see that can create a major influence for change in children are text books and television. Television is probably doing about all that is reasonable: already there are the "obligatory blacks" in advertising and the "obligatory black" friends or co-workers, and even professionals and bosses, in many television series.
The potential for influence in text books is somewhat greater, if only the publishers would do more to show good race relations. And of course, if only the schools would use those texts.
Anyone have any other ideas? And as importantly, any practical way to implement good ideas? For example, how can we, the great unwashed masses influence text book publishers?
"For example, how can we, the great unwashed masses influence text book publishers?"
Go to School Board meetings--become elected to the School Board. Go to PTA meetings. Meet with your kids's teachers and question their racial attitudes. Expose racist/bigoted teachers in the local press. Equate racism with sexual child abuse. Publicly challenge those making racist remarks. Make racism a moral issue.
Well I thought Oscar Hammerstein III expressed your viewpoint very well in "South Pacific". However there aren't such voices in popular media/entertainment these days that encourage people to examine their prejudices.
"Second and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted 'assassinate Obama,' a district official said."
Knee-jerk, conditioned belief systems. We've all got 'em, and a sign of maturing is to examine what we believe, where we got that belief, and whether it serves us now as something sound and valuable.
What I've perceived in my lifetime is that people who are terribly insecure and/or have developed a runaway ego, seem to always need someone or something to label inferior to them to make them feel good and talking with others who share and affirm their ugly beliefs makes for cement, and they can continue to feel superior.
For some in the South, especially, the sight of an elegant black man who also speaks eloquently who now is our president, just knocked off their Superiority Crown. And they are left with their own hatred of themselves and their insecurities and rampant egos which really is a sign of deep insecurity.
"All black [substitute N-word] people are like children. They're so stupid."
That and similar, I've heard as mantras, North and South, East and West.
Well, the curtain goes up and their stands Barack Obama, President-elect of the United States with a lovely, intelligent wife, and, my god, both of them Harvard graduates.
Obviously, the little children on the bus chanting "Assassinate Obama" have been conditioned already at the breakfast and dinner table and maybe even in school or church.
That wonderful song from the musical "South Pacific," "They [children] have to be taught to hate" and to fear ... And we are taught and we also learn just by listening to the "grown-ups," and hating and fearing becomes a conditioned habit.
Introspection? The most difficult leap toward personal,independent thinking is to buck the "tribal" belief systems by thinking introspectively, which is sort of a natural process of maturing. But if one ends up rejecting what one has been taught as "the word, sometimes it can mean ostracism and exile from family, neighborhood, etcetera. "Well, our family has never thought that way. This is what we believe and you are talking nonsense." Often that's enough to stop a young person in their tracks and put away introspective thoughts and stay tight with the clan, family, tribe ... whatever to be safe and to be accepted.
Others [and this is very personal to me] break with particular beliefs and traditions, and it can become a tough row to hoe. But on some things Right is Right, Truth is Truth ... and compromising self is more damaging in the long run then Knowing Thyself and liking thyself without needing someone else's approval.
We've come a long way, we think, about racial divisions; then, of course, we go to war and Muslims become the enemy. And we invent new epithets. "Filthy, sneaky Ragheads" is the one I've heard around where I live in rural-land in the Northeast.
What to do? Lots possible without being the heavy. If people are talking about such as this in ways you don't agree with, gently join the conversation. Ya' never know. You might bring a new way of looking at things and plant a seed that eventually blooms.
enuf - peace ...
Excellent post. The only thing I'd add is that racism is also used as an instrument of social control. Someone focusing their ire on immigrants/other races is expending energy that might have gone into complaining about their wages or lack of healthcare. I've read that gangs are allowed in prisons so they'll focus on other gangs instead of the guards.
Racism is based on a belief in supremacy.
I think fear is too often used as a simplification of the belief system.
It is based on the idea that your group is superior in value to others because of certain criteria of value defined by those who stand to benefit from it.
Racial supremacists do it,
human supremacists do it with respect to non human injustices.
That's why Singer is wrong when he uses the term speciesism.
It implies that other species are speciesist. they arent. the problem is entirely human. The idea that my group as I define it is better than others, and can treat it according to a double standard.
Supremacy beliefs are not absolute or objective. nature doesnt change the laws of gravity for white supremacists or human supremacist or christian supremacists.
Attacking the belief in being special and the criteria used for this belief is more effective than simply saying: oh blacks and whites are both special.
The racists wont accept it.
So its better to attack their beliefs in what makes them think they are better.
I used to do it all the time when arguing animal rights issues and it was an iron clad winner. It worked against hunters and university professors.
It wont make friends among racists but at least you dont leave them comfortable.
The reference above to Irish being regarded as "animals" is proof of this. The same was done to black slaves and asians, and even among other ethnic groups you find the tendency to want to make one group inferior to yours.
Humans ARE animals-they just think they are better that the rest without any basis for it. Racists are just another shade of it.
And this is why its silly when the anti-animal rights people try to say that humans need to regard humans first, because history shows that humans always regarded themselves according to criteria that had nothing to do with species or dna.
They used race, skin colour, religion, gender, wealth, appearance, place of birth, language, (the Greeks and Hebrews were considered democratic but were fiercely anti-foreigner).
Anyway
I suspected this would happen.
I really hope Obama has some good secret service people because all the militia nuts are going to come out I bet.
Racism has been U.S. policy since 1776.
Obama was right. There are bitter and angry voters out there.
Yeah, well, let me just say to all those pissy conservatives, "welcome to MY world for the past eight years!"
As a white, Southern woman, I feel a great responsibility to let the people around me know that I voted--happily and with both eyes wide open--for Barack Hussein Obama.
Maybe when these wingnut loons realize there aren't as many people on "their" side as they think there are, it will make them take a moment to think. That's my rose-colored perspective, anyway.
Not rose-colored at all. And thanks for that bit of reality.
If you haven't yet, you might want to read Frank Rich (Sunday New York Times...free on-line). He's been going on for the last year making basically the point you made: that America has changed a lot in the last couple of decades and that while there are still racists (and way too many), McCain/Palin's shameful pitch to racism and ignorance didn't work because America has changed.
The Repugs find themselves falling apart because they don't get it that we've changed pretty much as you've pointed out.
...yes, he was absolutely right..and I want to see him padded in Kevlar from head to foot with a standing army of Secret Service Agents at all times. This man is too valuable to the survival of this nation at this crucial time...we must ALL stand behind and in front of him.
I work for a police department in Maryland and have heard everything from the "N word" to how could Americans have elected a Muslim. As well one made a comment about a new family moving into Pennsylvania Ave in DC and of course used the "N Word". I think you made the right assement when you said the racial intolerence is in "remission". I voted for Obama and so did my Sgt. and were both White.
'"Someone once said racism is like cancer," Mr Ferris said. "It's never totally wiped out - it's in remission."'
Indeed.
There is a very thin veil of decency and civility in any "civilization." We can see this in all walks of life. ALL walks. The struggle within each of us is to transcend this as much as we can.
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope