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TIME: KKK unwelcome at Ole Miss debate


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http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1844872,00.html?cnn=yes

Unwelcome Visitors at the Ole Miss Debate: The Ku Klux Klan

By Laura Fitzpatrick Friday, Sep. 26, 2008

klan_debates_0923.jpg

From left: a Klansman circa 1946; the Gertrude Ford Center at the University of Mississippi, where presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama will debate

Now that John McCain has decided to attend Friday night's debate, Ole Miss should be able to breathe easy. The presidential debate, after all, is supposed to be Ole Miss's big moment. Hosting the first such forum of the general campaign, administrators hoped, would help the school shed the racial-backwater image that has clung to it since its embattled 1962 integration, when 120 federal marshals could barely hold back the violent riots that left two civilians dead and dozens injured. The fact that the debate participants will include Barack Obama, the nation's first black presidential nominee of a major party, would only add to the symbolism. The high-profile event is a chance "to invite the nation and the world to visit us and see Ole Miss today," says university chancellor Robert Khayat. "This is a very different place from 1962. I'm confident that they will see that."

That might, however, be very hard to see if, as the University's Daily Mississippian newspaper reported on Sept. 12, the audience of thousands right outside the debate hall watching by simulcast includes some unwelcome guests: the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klansmen won't be wearing robes or hoods or making "a big hoopla," says Imperial Wizard Richard Greene, 46, who refuses to divulge how many members the Mississippi chapter has. Nor will they take advantage of the designated protest zone outside the debate theater to stage one of their typical demonstrations — which include fiery speeches and a cross burning — for fear of causing riots. "We don't want anybody to get hurt," says Greene, who insists physical violence is no longer part of the Klan way of doing things. But Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, which studies hate groups and extremism in America, disagrees: "That's hogwash," he says, citing a lawsuit under way against a different Klan branch, the Imperial Klans of America, for allegedly assaulting a teenager at a county fair in Kentucky.

The Klan will, however, have pamphlets and membership applications on hand for any audience members who happen to share the Klansmen's views. Some examples of those views: Obama's election "could be the destruction of America," says Greene, who states categorically that he would not vote for a black candidate. Says the Emperor of the Mississippi White Knights (the group's ritual leader), who asked not to be identified: "Locally, every place that has come under black rule has declined, and has declined sharply." He cited Jackson, Miss., and Washington, D.C., as examples. "Not all black people are particularly bad people," the emperor adds. But leadership, he asserts, "is just not in their character ... it's just not in their ability." The Obama campaign did not return requests for comment.

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You are putting Wright up there with the Klan and Farrakhan? Aren't you the bama that keeps pretending to be independent?

Sure do not the other two like to place the blame on other rces for what is happening, heck did not Wright give Farrakhan an award shortly after he said the evil Jews were oppressing blacks in the US?

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Sure do not the other two like to place the blame on other rces for what is happening, heck did not Wright give Farrakhan an award shortly after he said the evil Jews were oppressing blacks in the US?

:doh:

you are actually comparing the KKK to a know nothing jerk of a reverend who is already a steady afterthought (Wright) and the leader of a black "militant" faction who talks a good game but has never done anything (Louis) to back it up.

Do you even know what the Klan has done in this country? It's not hard to find out, they've only been spewing their hate and violence toward people of all colors (and the whites who befriend and support them) for 100+ years.

Seriously....SERIOUSLY?

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:doh:

you are actually comparing the KKK to a know nothing jerk of a reverend who is already a steady afterthought (Wright) and the leader of a black "militant" faction who talks a good game but has never done anything (Louis) to back it up.

Do you even know what the Klan has done in this country? It's not hard to find out, they've only been spewing their hate and violence toward people of all colors (and the whites who befriend and support them) for 100+ years.

Seriously....SERIOUSLY?

Yes you can compare them because theyplant the seeds that lead to people acting on rascism

it is like the clerics in the Me who preach hatered of America they are not the ones who act they plant the seeds of hatered and intolerence

I can compare rscists of any colour, white black red yellow brown no matter their colour they spew the same crap

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The kkk should be labeled a terrorist organization. It's members should be identified, tracked down, then shot.

You forgot the part where they get put on trial, before the ones who deserve it are executed.

I know the "trial by jury" thing hasn't been in vogue lately, but that's the way it's done in a civilized country.

Enough with the vigilante justice -- although in this case, it would be extraordinarily satisfying.

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Yes you can compare them because theyplant the seeds that lead to people acting on rascism

it is like the clerics in the Me who preach hatered of America they are not the ones who act they plant the seeds of hatered and intolerence

I can compare rscists of any colour, white black red yellow brown no matter their colour they spew the same crap

Spreading the seeds is one thing, but planting, cultivating for future generations, cooking the "food", and then buying more groceries, is a whole other thing. Judging by your spelling acumen, I forgive you if the metaphor went over your head.

Perhaps you should read up on the KKK. They were and are more than racists.

Wright is an afterthought, and while he spoke against this country and the population as a whole, is a joke that no one has taken seriously. Why? Because the members of his church didn't up and firebomb a white church down the street, or lynch thousands of whites just for being white or GASP associate with a black person. Wright's members don't run around burning crosses and screaming "black power" in the lawns of law abiding white citizens who have done nothing.

Now Farrakhan is perhaps a different story, but I still wouldn't group him with the Klan. While preaching separation and "black power" he has attempted, in whatever bass ackward way, of working within the system and utilizing the pro-black message of his "religion" to the fullest. Racists? Sure, you can call him that, he is definitely an anti-semite (even though he claims not to be), but forgive me if I'm wrong, but besides being responsible (allegedly) for the assassination of Malcolm X, I can't recall one act of violence the Nation of Islam inflicted on anyone that can be compared to what the Klan has done throughout their existence. Surely if they did, with the repuation of certain law enforcement officers in the nation, they would be brought up on charges quicker than you can say "spell check".

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I've always considered the KKK, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panthers all on the same level of ignorance? :whoknows:

I can give you that...as far as ignorance, but frankly, what the NOI and Panthers have done (or really did, since they're pretty irrelevant nowadays), is less than a fraction of what the Klan has put together through the years. You're talking about killing people dude, like I said, that wasn't the NOI's gameplan, they were more rhetoric. The Panthers were more aggressive and militant, but still not as influential or callous and unnerving as the Klan.

Honestly, if the NOI or Black Panthers did a third of the things the Klan did, back in the day, they (the establishment) would've wiped them off the planet, and during Jim Crow, would've had the support of many people in Washington. As long as they stand on their boxes and talk about being pro-black, they aren't hurting or scaring the status quo.

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The reason the black panthers and the nation of Islam have never got to the level of violence that the kkk did was if they did the army would have been turned on them. The kkk was born of thenfederate army and after the war continued to attack Republicans, they were tool used by Democrats in at least one election

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