We did ask him about that once. He tried to explain it as something like “you know, when someone in the community steps out of line and breaks the law, or is improper with someone’s wife, or does stuff that everyone knows needs to be punished, the Klan’s there to help everyone out.” It sounded like the kind of logic that got Emmett Till killed. Quite frankly, once the guy started talking about how the Klan was pretty cool, we didn’t spend much time around him anymore.
17 Likes
This is not about you or your friends, and I’d probably have done the same, but in the grand scheme of things, this is how these guys maintain their twisted views of reality.
If they had people of a more positive influence around them, slowly steering them away from the underlying ignorance by osmosis, I think a significant percentage of these “well meaning” types could be rehabilitated.
3 Likes
I tend to take that statement more in the vein of saying that she got carried away and started doing things that she normally wouldn’t, like others have said.
On the other hand, what little sympathy I would have for that evaporated away when I saw one of the earlier videos about the early investigation of the incident (also on that news channel’s page) where one of the other drivers spun the tale that it had all been a big misunderstanding, that they’d pulled over because he got a flat tire, and then that the kid’s birthday party group had threateningly advanced on the trucks.
11 Likes
Those tiny clown cars might work.
3 Likes
Obligatory:
28 Likes
That’s a lot of work though when it’s someone you don’t care about. Seriously, this was just a guy on the college dorm and sometimes you ain’t got time for that.
7 Likes
If he’d been a generally cool dude we liked hanging out with, but his one weird flaw was a culturally ignorant attitude towards other races, then absolutely.
But we were all college freshmen with tons of coursework to deal with and a wide spectrum of social possibilities; rehabilitating a Klan kid nobody really liked much anyway wasn’t high on anyone’s priority list.
16 Likes
Well the good news is that these racists are going to jail, which has a lot of white people that share their…wait, what?
4 Likes
I’d say the punch line is they used laws regarding “street gangs” to convict these idiots. I may be wrong but it sounds like those laws were designed with “inner city youth” in mind.
9 Likes
This time they used them against the Creeps and Bubs.
9 Likes
Beautiful.
4 Likes
Thank you for including the gun in the title and not the flag. Only headline I have read like it about this today, in fact. And I’m glad that the flags implications were included, too.
6 Likes
Is it that time of year at McDonald’s again?
6 Likes
Oh yes. The “You’re one of the good ones” mentality.
2 Likes
I hope so! I love me some White Supremacist Shakes. Although generally I just call that “Vanilla.”
3 Likes
Muito obrigado.
We’re very kind people… to our friends and family who are also mostly racist white people… and to a few of ‘you people’ who are the ‘good ones’… until you step out of line…
I would drive past in a convoy. Less direct confrontation with you also means I have less direct confrontation with my own bullshit…
Because I wasn’t there… oh. Because I couldn’t do anything to stop it… oh wait, I could. Because I didn’t actually participate?.. still no. Well, fuck.
…that I got punished for what everyone would do if they had the chance, and what everyone knows in their hearts is right… anyone with me? Anyone?
But it’s out of character for her, or some shit like that.
I will get a lot of use out of that gif for the next four years.
Yes actually.
What our justice system needs to do is remind these racist little nobodies who think they’re somebody because a racist is elected president, that they’re still nobody and they shouldn’t be emboldened.
Maybe, but I think they’re crying because they know they won’t do well in prison. Sure, they can join a prison gang, but they will have nothing useful to contribute. Bye bye protection.
Not completely. You wrap furniture in the flags to keep the edges from getting scuffed during the move. It might tear little holes in the flag, but c’est la vie. If the flag gets too ratty, you can use it to mop up shit and vomit. I can think of no better use for it than that.
You can’t push a rope.
But if they actively wanted to change, I suspect that would be a different story. I’ve known many people who have grown up like that, but then got out into the real world and went the other way entirely.
7 Likes
Poor Southern White people are used to getting sent to prison – if not personally, then it’s happened to their relatives, neighbors, someone they know. They also know about parties and expeditions that get out of hand. What surprises me is the blubbing. I’d expect a stolid, low-expression sort of reaction. And the statement ‘It’s not me’ – that doesn’t ring true for me as the utterance of good ol’ boys and girls. Maybe it comes from television.
3 Likes
I’m super-liberal and super-privileged, so I’ve got the luxury of trying to muster empathy for these shitstains, and I can, and this is how it happens. I kind of can understand that. Getting caught up with the group. Not acting “like yourself” in a crowd. Struggling with the cognitive dissonance. Hell, we’ve all been there, most of us probably just haven’t pointed a fucking gun at a kid’s birthday party while being exorbitantly racist about it. I can see that under different circumstances, with a different life, and a different mind, that wouldn’t be impossible.
I think the most important antidote is to realize that yes, that was you, that sometimes you can be an awful person, that sometimes everyone can be an awful person, and that this doesn’t make it OK, it just means that if you see a person being awful that maybe there but for the grace of God go all of us. This helps you to try not to be so awful, to know that it’s always a struggle to not be awful, and to be more forgiving of others who are awful.
The fact that these people haven’t quite realized that lesson, even after all this speaks to the pernicious effects of internalized puritanical Protestant morality, where being a “good person” is so fragile and so vital that you cannot accept the idea that you did something horrible. Better to create another person, a “crazy version” of yourself, one that can be flawed, that you can try and dissociate from.
That attempt to rationalize away the behavior will never be successful in ending it.
(As an aside, please don’t read my reaction as saying that everyone should have empathy for these people. I’m not here to tell anyone else how to react, so please continue your schadenfreude or whatever works for you. Having empathy for these assholes is something I can do, so I will, but that’s just me.)
17 Likes
