The Ku Klux Klan is coming! Let's pretend we give a crap

There was a piece of graffiti in Johannesburg sometime during the 1980s. A cynical artist wrote the word “Izit” across a slogan that read: “The AWB is coming”. Much as I would like to, I cannot convey that same sentiment in this brief post, but… the Ku Klux Klan are coming!

Actually, that might have been insensitive; it would have been damn funny, though, if these people were not so dangerous. White supremacists in the United States are licking their chops at the prospect of a black president. They consider the presumptive presidency of Barack Obama as the clearest sign yet that they are “losing” their country to black people. The bigots and anti-Semites seem to believe that a President Obama would bring white people in the US to their senses, and some of them hope, set off a race war which they seem convinced would end in white victory.

Parenthetically, in my personal discussions with some (white) people in the US — some of whom have all their lives been Democrats, or at least “socially liberal” — the idea of a black person named Barack Obama as president was reason enough to vote for the white candidate, John McCain. They are, of course, less toxic than the bigots on the right.

On his website, the white supremacist, and former Ku Klux Klan leader, David Duke writes, “Obama is like that new big dark spot on your arm that finally sends you to the doctor for some real medicine.”

The election of Obama, Duke explains, was the pain that lets the human body know that “something is dreadfully wrong” and that there was “a real cancer eating away at the heart of [the US]” – something a Republican aspirin cannot cure, but can merely mask.

“My bet is that whether Obama wins or loses come November, millions of European Americans will inevitably react with a new awareness of their heritage and the need to defend and advance it. Obama’s winning the Democratic nomination will usher in a new age of racially conscious American politics. The minorities have long had this consciousness. They have been voting in blocs for decades. Now it is our turn.

“The Obama nomination draws the lines of racial demarcation in America. He helps make everything very clear to our people. He paves the way for thousands of other candidates on the American horizon, white candidates who stand up for our own people the way that Obama stands up for his,” Duke writes.

So, should we shake in our socks, or should we ignore them. My personal view is that a single presidency is insufficient to turn around the Titanic vessel that is the United States. Yes, I did kind of mix a metaphor… but you get the point.