Racism and the Grand Old Party

Okay, so not all Republicans are racist obviously. But for some strange reason, racists seem to flock to the party like geese to Canada in the summer. So it really comes as no surprise to me that a long time Republican activist, Rusty DePass of South Carolina, made the comment a few days ago that an escaped gorilla was one of Michelle Obama's ancestors. He then tried to cover his ass by saying that the First Lady had said herself that we were all descended from apes. Remember they hate evolution too. No one has found where the First Lady said this either, and I doubt that she said anything like it. And at any rate, in this case, this has nothing to do with evolution, but rather with a long standing tradition that black people are just one step above being a monkey, and are obviously not human.

This isn't the first time that rude, racist comments have been said, if you recall former Senator George Allen of Virginia, called a democrat volunteer of Indian descent "macaca" a clearly racist pejorative. He claimed he didn't know what it meant. Yeah right. At any rate, it destroyed his political career on the national stage. In the end he lost his seat, but not because he's a racist. Indeed, he was narrowly defeated by Webb who held a mere one third of one percent (0.3%) more votes than Allen. All of those people who voted for Allen didn't care that he was a racist, probably because most of them were racist as well.

Many people act like racism isn't a problem any more, that it's something that was a problem a long time ago but isn't now. Usually this view is espoused by the ones who are racist. They don't want a spotlight shown on their beliefs, so it serves them well if most people think that it really isn't a problem. Where I grew up in the south out in the countryside, there are still Klan. I knew plenty of people in high school who were virulently racist, and would say terrible things, like "the only good n____ is a dead n____." And they'd get away with saying things like that because the administration was probably racist too. I also recall a kid on the bus who told this other kid that there were probably black people in his family tree, and I remember the other kid getting really angry, and saying that there "ain't no n____ in my family!". He threatened to beat the kid up if he didn't take back the statement that he could have ancestors that were black. That was in the 90s, it hasn't been that long ago. These are things that I saw and heard first hand, so I know good and well the reality of it. And those people are still there, most of them have had a few children now, and are passing their hate on to them.