For years the worlds largest racist website. Stormfront (not linking) has been a punch line for me. I grew up listening to racists in my family, who weren't stunned into silence when I married a non-white. Their racist and bigoted comments were just said behind my back.
Through the years I have read with interest and hope reports from Christian magazines, Muslim magazines, and liberal websites of white racists turning away from their past ideology - and getting free tattoo removal for their racist tattoos.
In the years since Barack Obama was elected president not once but twice, however, I have lost hope seeing the open and loud racism pervade political and common sense discourse from those on the right. Even from people who I never saw as racist before.
So when the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) posted on Facebook today that Derek Black, the son founder of (and still runs) Stormfront has renounced white nationalism it's a big thing.
He grew up steeping and stewing in racism. His father Don Black, was former Alabama Klan leader and "once served time in prison for plotting a racist invasion of a small Caribbean nation." Derek even had a racist kids page on the web site.
I encourage you to read the whole blog post. It is thoughtful and eloquent. Something you may not expect after reading all the tea party/racists signs.
There are some important insights that are not just a window into the mind of the white racists, but also confirms what we knew.
“Advocating for white nationalism means that we are opposed to minority attempts to elevate themselves to a position equal to our own,” wrote Black, a junior at the elite New College of Florida.
And he confirms that my race, is populated by a bunch of scared little people who want to maintain their race based elitism and power status - but see it slipping away. And they just don't know what to do with themselves.
Black also directly confronted some of the main arguments of white nationalism, such as the idea that whites are being victimized by non-white immigration, mixed-race marriages and affirmative action — what amounts, in the arguments of most white nationalists, to “genocide” aimed at destroying the white race. He also ridiculed many white nationalists’ “particularly bizarre” hatred of Jews.
“I now consider this belief system principally flawed,” he said. “Most arguments that racial equity programs disadvantage whites who would otherwise be hired or accepted to academic programs mask underlying anxieties about the growth of non-white social status. It is impossible to argue rationally that in our society, with its overwhelming disparity between white power and that of everyone else, [that] racial equity programs intended to affect the deep-rooted situation represent oppression of whites.”
And they will use all the waning power at their disposal to maintain their supremacy.
"Stand You Ground" laws, is just one facet of that desperate grab to maintain control.
In fact, if you really want to know the truth, there are members of my race who are scared to death that they be treated the same way they've treated non-whites when non-whites are a majority and have control.
You can hear it in what they say.
But depute the loss of hope I've felt with the Tea Party, et. al, Derek Black does bring hope with him. There is a chance for all racists out there, no matter how long they'd marinated in it.
Go read it, it's good for the soul.