A young Don Black (seen here in Klan robe) has known most key racist leaders
in his life, including a young David Duke (in tie) who would later become
the 'Grand Wizard' of the Ku Klux Klan.
January 15, 2015
After Steve Scalise admitted to speaking before a white-nationalist group founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, Duke gave an interview in which he said, "I've grown up. And I understand who the real racists are." Spoiler alert: Duke insists he isn't among them.
According to the interview published at Fusion.net, Duke also denied being a "white supremacist." Apparently we've pegged him wrong. Actually, according to Duke, it's the "Zionist" media who have routinely defamed him.
Consider what it means for somebody who is as indisputably racist as Duke to insist that he's not a racist. Consider, too, just how often a person's claim that he isn't a racist is proof enough to clear him of that charge.
You know how it goes:
Person A says something racist.
Person B responds, "Person A is a racist."
Person A says, "I'm not a racist." Then he either mentions a friendship that he thinks exonerates him of a racism charge or he will say that Person B is the "real racist." Either way, we're supposed to take Person A's word for it that Person A is not a racist. Because, apparently, the only people who count as racists are the people who admit that they are racist.
But it should give us pause that we are now living in such a time when even a person with Duke's racist credentials, with Duke's racist vitae, can say with apparent seriousness that he isn't the hate-inspired bigot that he is.
It's important that we hold the line; it's important that we say clearly and unambiguously: We know David Duke, and we know that David Duke doesn't have a nonracist bone in his body. It's important for us to hear it, but it's also important that we properly label Duke and his kind for the generations to follow. If we don't, a certain kind of revisionism will certainly be attempted.
Consider the op-ed at AL.com recently crafted by George Wallace Jr., the son of Alabama's most infamously segregationist governor. Wallace, who in his 1963 inaugural address proclaimed "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever," is, according to his namesake, wrongly maligned in the movie "Selma." Thursday, that movie received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.
According to the son, "his acceptance of segregation was with no sense of ill feeling, malice, or hate toward black people."
"[H]is acceptance of segregation was with no sense of ill feeling, malice, or hate toward black people." -- George Wallace Jr. on his fatherLet's set the record straight. Segregation is malice. Segregation is an expression of hate.
The junior Wallace is particularly upset at the movie's suggestion that in 1965 Gov. Wallace ordered Alabama state troopers to attack a group of black activists marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
"It is important to note that while support for segregation was part of his early life and career, he never advocated violence. He was defiant, charismatic, and energetic in his battle against what he saw as a threat from the central government to seek and control every aspect of our lives, but he was never violent."
Is he unaware that the segregation of which his father preached could only be maintained with violence? Or the threat of it?
George Wallace Jr. insists that what his father really wanted was for the troopers to protect the black activists from the Ku Klux Klan reportedly lying in wait for them.
According to Artur Davis, a former representative from Alabama, the former governor gave Jesse Jackson a similar version of events when Jackson visited the former governor in his final months. Wallace reportedly told Jackson that, for their own good, he was trying to stop King and the marchers before they got within shooting distance of the Klan. But Jackson wondered why, if protecting the marchers was Wallace's aim he didn't instead sic his state police on the Klan.
In his own op-ed at AL.com, Davis writes, "Did Wallace truly have 'no sense of ill feeling, malice or hate toward black people,' as his son testifies? I have no idea what was in his heart. But if it was hate-free, he gave as skillful and as energetic a performance of hate as Southern politics has seen in the last century."
Wallace would eventually apologize for the hateful things he said and did, but did he ever become completely honest with himself? In a pathetic scene in "4 Little Girls," Spike Lee's documentary about the deadly bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Wallace insists, "I did many things for black people." Wallace motions for his black male nurse to stand beside and identifies the mortified man as "my best friend."
For all I care, Wallace could have befriended all the Harlem Globetrotters; it wouldn't have made his past any less racist.
Let us not tolerate the revisionism that would clean up yesterday's racists or tolerate the revisionism that would legitimize current ones.
Jarvis DeBerry can be reached at jdeberry@nola.com. Follow him at twitter.com/jarvisdeberry.
********
As the last of the generation that fought along side Dr. King enter the twilight era of their lives, it's up to us to record and remember what they defeated at the cost of many lives including Dr. King's to secure a better future not only for people of color, but for every American of every color, creed, ethnicity, religion, sex, or gender expression. The modern gay rights movement is a direct off-shoot of the black civil rights movement and we should never forget those who fought for freedom, civil rights and equality. To do this, we can never forget (or allow others to deny) the evil that they defeated.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
George Santayana
"Fear Eats the Soul"
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments may be moderated and will appear within 12 hours if approved.