• Miller, Shabazz, and other “bigotidiots”

On a warm autumn day in 1985, the idiots came to town.

I was a young reporter, and puffed up as a peacock, having a freelance assignment from an editor with a big paper. The Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan were marching in towns all over the place, including ours. I was preening like said peacock that I’d drawn the job, although the truth of the matter was that every newspaper everywhere wanted each KKK parade covered.

Glenn Miller was running for some office back then, and some folks actually thought he was a viable candidate.

So I went out and covered the parade, taking a few photos, talking to both participants and parade-watchers. The rumored violence never occurred, leaving me proud of my hometown, both the blacks and the whites. The only incident came when a black man from Raleigh rushed the parade route, but he was quickly stopped by the police before anything happened.

I interviewed Miller that day, and later he commented how I’d been fair to him, unlike most reporters. I took it as a compliment that I could hide my own disgust at a man who blasphemed a flag I loved, as well as the cause so many of my ancestors fought for. States’ rights and Southern independence have long been cast aside by the politically correct nature of society, but I can assure you—my folks didn’t fight to keep anyone enslaved.

I mostly remember the still, black faces of friends from the north end of town, from over at Riverside, and from the Red Hill Church community. A few of the younger ones booed, but mostly the folks just stood there and watched, impassive, silent.

Ol’ Glenn Miller ran off the next year and got arrested in Arkansas on a variety of charges. He somehow avoided a felony conviction, and is now running for office again, this time in Missouri.

When the videotape of New Black Panther member Malik Zulu Shabazz was broadcast recently, I was reminded of ol’ Glenn.

I find it amusing, but not surprising, that most media outlets have ignored the Justice Department’s refusal to prosecute Shabazz and the New Black Panthers. Shabazz is now famous for his diatribe against “crackers,” meaning white people. He even went so far as to exhort blacks to kill “cracker babies,” to make their point. Shabazz and two other NBP members were videotaped outside polls in Philadelphia during the 2008 elections, wielding riot batons and intimidating voters.

Back in the 1980s, when Ol’ Glenn was running around waving an AR-15 and calling for a race war (and donations), a white Republican president wanted to find ways to prosecute the growing “White Patriot” movement.  

Although I heard several of Glenn’s speeches, and have recently looked up some more of his ramblings, I never heard him suggest infanticide as a way to make a point. Many other horrible things, but never infanticide.

Yet now, we have a black Democrat president, and his Justice Department quietly drops two of three cases against the NBP.

I would never defend them, but Glenn’s boys never—at least not that I saw, heard or have been able to find—stood outside a polling place with weapons more dangerous than picket signs.

How times have changed.

I reckon it’s only hate speech when ugly words are directed against people who are not white. I get grumbly when I hear the words “reverse racism,” a misnomer on so many levels. Racism and bigotry are not the same thing (although Glenn Miller proudly called himself a racist, and Malik Shabazz and Co. may as well).

The black race doesn’t hold a copyright on the term racist—Webster’s dictionary does not discriminate, referring to a racist as anyone with the idea that a race is inferior to another. It doesn’t say that a racist is someone who thinks blacks, white, Asians, Latinos,  American Indian, people of Arabian descent, or people of mixed heritage are inferior—it says anyone who considers any race inferior is racist.

Hence, reverse racism would be desirable; that would mean that no one holds any preconceived notions about the color of anyone’s skin.

The president kneejerked and fired a USDA secretary the other day because she admitted – indeed bragged—in a speech to an NAACP meeting how she had intentionally avoided providing a white farmer all the help she could.

To her credit, she had a change of heart, but in the midst of all this hullabaloo, the White House told the USDA boss to fire her immediately. She told several news sources how she was ordered to pull off the road and use her Blackberry to resign. Then the president stopped to think about it a little more. He offered her a new job, tailor-made just for her, as an apologetic apple. The issue was in doubt as I wrote these words.

President Obama makes a lot of noise about healing the rifts between whites and blacks; even while campaigning, he called for folks to vote for the man, not the race, while playing the race card just as hard as he could. Whether you like him or not, he won the election.

While we allow politicians to twist the truth and forget their promises—sadly, that’s how business is done now—Obama could cement an unquestionably positive legacy with a couple of phone calls.

Call one would be to the media – all the media – to announce a new national policy that brings the wrath of the U.S. government down on any group, white, black, green, purple, or chartreuse, that even seemed to interfere with a single person’s right to cast a ballot. Advertising and free speech are not the same as standing outside a polling place using a riot baton for a metronome whilst singing a hate-filled solo about killing babies.

Call two would be to the Justice Department, to order them to investigate, and if necessary, prosecute the members of the New Black Panther Party with the same enthusiasm they would use against any white-supremacist organization.

If Barack Obama wants this country to move ahead, he can lead the charge against any racial foolishness. He is the first president of mixed heritage our nation has ever had, although he identifies best with African-Americans. That’s his choice. It puts him in the place to truly mend some bridges, although he’s burned a few on his way to Pennsylvania Avenue.

Barack Obama is singularly placed to be able to truly, finally defeat the ogre of racial conflict that has been nearly dead in this country for years—unless he’d rather keep things stirred up, thus manipulating the political process by allowing people to profit by engendering fear of their fellow Americans simply because of skin color.

Whether Obama has the guts to put down the Shabazzes –- and the Millers, and the other “bigotidiots” in this country–remains to be seen. If he is willing to do so, he could be a great president, despite all the other mistakes I think he’s made.

If he won’t—well, he’s just another politician, and they’re all the same color—chameleon green.

–         Weaver is a staff writer with the News Reporter, and not a proponent of anything new age. Call him at 642-4104, ext. 227, email him at jeffweaver@whiteville.com, or catch up to him on facebook.com.