Because nothing diffuses racial tension like gun-toting racial separatists patrolling an already on-edge community

They're here to help:

Neo-Nazis are currently conducting heavily armed patrols in and around Sanford, Florida and are "prepared" for violence in the case of a race riot. The patrols are to protect "white citizens in the area who are concerned for their safety" in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting last month, says Commander Jeff Schoep of the National Socialist Movement. "We are not advocating any type of violence or attacks on anybody, but we are prepared for it," he says. "We are not the type of white people who are going to be walked all over." [...]

Schoep, whose neo-Nazi group is based in Detroit, tells Riptide the patrols are a response to white residents' fears of a race riot.

What could go wrong?

Related:

#fail twitter.com/daveweigel/sta…

— daveweigel (@daveweigel) April 6, 2012

Difficult not to notice the media, right wing zealots and other crazed Zimmerman apologists are working overtime to make this all about the racsim, I guess so no one thinks about the guns. As if killing Trayvon simply for walking down a sidewalk is okay if Zimmerman really isn't a racist.

This story can still be summed up in a one sentence. Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager, would still be alive if George Zimmerman, an armed vigilante, had stayed in his car as the dispatcher had advised.

No matter what color they are, justice demands Trayvon's family receive a better explanation for their son's death than an uncorroborated story told by his killer.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Post racial society

Guilty of being on the street while black. I'm sure this is somehow Obama's fault for failing to keep his "promise" to create a post-racial society.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Why grandpa says inappropriate things

by Capt. Fogg

That's the title of a smug little piece of fluff that appeared the other day on the Newsweek.com site. It contains a little anecdote about an elderly gentleman who used the word "colored" to describe someone and it continues with a bigoted diatribe about how the "social security generation" are all a bunch of senile bigots and maybe it's because their brains are all rotted out at age 65 as everyone under 30 knows.

Older adults might be "more prejudiced than younger adults because they can no longer inhibit their unintentionally activated stereotypes.” is the quote from some Australian psychologist dredged up for the purpose. "Studies since the late 1990s have shown that older Americans tend to be more racist than younger people." That seems odd to me since the people who were shot in Mississippi, and hosed and gassed and beset by dogs - the people who had that dream, who spent years fighting against discrimination, segregation and for civil rights are all in the "social Security" generation.

Of course you'll recognize that this is a rigged argument and one based on a bigoted stereotype. I'm not for instance, her "grandpa" and resent being told about how I am, what I am and how I think, based on her preconceived, negative notions of her elders. The definition of racist here has nothing to do with belief or action but is about the use of "inappropriate" words and guess who gets to decide when we stop saying Afro-American and start saying African-American lest we grow hair on our palms and be called racists for it? Guess who gets to decide that Mark Twain was a racist because he used the language of his day accurately or that Dr. King was a racist for using the word Negro or that the NAACP are a bunch of bigots for using the phrase "colored People?" And the people who got shot at and gassed and hosed and torn up by dogs and cracker cops for civil rights from Selma to Chicago become racists - and worse - old racists with decaying brains.

Of course to believe this bullshit at all, one also has to disregard the self-evident prejudice of younger Americans of all races. If you don't like the way I talk, perhaps you have to make allowances for the fact that I have a better command of English than those who learned it yesterday and I know what I'm doing when I choose my words. You might want to remember that I'm old enough to be fed up with the petty condescending scorn of tongue clucking 20 year olds who don't remember segregation or Jim Crow and spend their days examining the entrails of words and sniffing each other's drawers for the odor of racism while exhibiting the most galling contempt for those who handed them their civil rights on a silver platter.

"The frontal lobes’ decline is not inevitable. To the contrary: aerobic exercise enhances their functioning among older adults." says Sharon Begley who is probably closer in years to crapping in diapers than I am. "Next time grandpa utters something out of “Birth of a Nation,” suggest mall walking." Next time Sharon writes this kind of crap, I would suggest keel hauling. Those barnacles can rip the smirk right off your face, ya know?

And next time Sharon is out like mall walking with like her friends, maybe like she'll like remember that "Grandpa" owns it and just might have her and her stereotype-soaked frontal lobes thrown out.

Cross posted from Human Voices

Rush hits rock bottom

By Libby

Now THIS is offensive. This is not a parody. It's a hateful racist smear and no disclaimer by the station can make it less odious.

Words fail to express my disgust.

And Now For Something That Sounds All Too Familiar

“You are in the Bronx. A black van is stopping in front of you. Three African-Americans are getting out and they are insulting your mother in the worst ways. ... Act.”

These were the words used by a German instructor training a German soldier. The soldier then fires his machine gun and yells an obscenity three times in English.

Good grief! This is what German nightmares of made of? They can get all worked up thinking about being stranded in the Bronx and someone yells "Yo mama!"

Do you think that maybe young Germans are watching too much TV? I think if young Germans want to watch a TV show about New York city it should be Sesame Street.

I guess I'm not surprised about the Germans acting this way. I guess maybe it's better for them over there not to train shooting Turks or other muslim minorities, but the Bronx? Insulting your mother? Again, good grief!

Really, it could be worse, much worse. At least they weren't yelling obscenities and machine gunning another ethnic group that I won't even name.

Jim M