As I travel back down memory lane in my own archives, I find some editorial written by Pops in June of 1998 and realize that it has been that long since the KKK has been on the front page. The incident was the death of James Byrd in Jasper, TX.
I only bring this up to be provocative in two ways. The first to repeat Pops' own provocation: Where are black gangs when you need them?
I want to be clearly understood on this point. I am talking about more than an eye for an eye. That, oh shocked reader, would be justice. What I am calling for here is SVV: Stiff Viagra Vengeance...without explanation, apology or guilt. It has been said over the ages that there is no honor among thieves. Well, there is no shame among klansmen or white supremacists. They are the abject scum of this country's more blatant racists. And America has tolerated them and their absolute madness for entirely too long. It is both amazing and ridiculous that there is a fact-gathering Klan Watch and yet not a full fledged Klan Bomb Squad. As I write this DOWN FRONT! and eventually as you read the same, there are klansmen and their associated ilk who are drinking beer or piss (I suspect they hardly care much about the difference) in abject celebration of James Byrd's beating, death and dismemberment. They are of such a warped mentality that the blatant abuse or misuse of Black people is really no big deal. There is historical precedence for what happened in Jasper. The word describing it has gone out of favor, but not the practice itself. During more honest times, the word "lynching" was used. As noted in an earlier DOWN FRONT!, a Black man from Virginia was recently burned and then beheaded. (By the way, one of the white men accused of that crime came to court in a wheel chair and was considered to be much too sick to be tried. He was rearrested just this week after being spotted playing golf!) We're talking about 1998 not 1798 or 1898.
The second is to note in passing that the Klan hasn't killed any black men or women since then. So who cares or talks about the Klan any more? Not me.
Nowadays we hear more stuff like this. I think it only goes to prove my point. We are, as African Americans in the main, not all about the politics of Human Rights or Civil Rights, but of Social Power. I think it should go without saying that the advantage currently lies with the Republican Party. What's absolutely hilarious is that in 1998, nobody thought that Henry Kissinger would be asked to comment about his view of the new black female Secretary of State. We're not in Kansas anymore.
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