by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
It is no secret that America's racist miscreants have been crawling out from under their rocks ever since the Trump organization took over the White House. They march in public demonstrations carrying tiki torches and flashing white power signs, and feel emboldened to hurl insults and racial invective at people of color with truly wild abandon. For too long these yokels have suffered under the unfair burden of "equality," and now it is time to once again assert their God-granted racial superiority.
The Trump administration sanctioned this attitude of intolerance in its earliest days with proposed travel bans of visitors from a group of primarily Muslim countries, and also through its relentless attacks on immigration along the southern U.S. border. Trump encouraged racial tensions through describing certain immigrants (those from primarily non-white countries) as being "animals" and their homelands as "shithole" countries. Race mattered to Trump, and his followers heard that message loud and clear.
The good old days of the open acknowledgement of white superiority seemed to be making a comeback in certain areas. It was, for instance, once again becoming harder to vote in many places thanks to the demise of the Voting Rights Act, education was once again sorting itself out along lines of color with the national push toward charter and private schools - with public funding, and color lines were being strengthened in many major housing markets.
And Donald Trump had a visceral reaction to Barack Obama, our nation's first black President, and Trump supporters took his criticism of all things Obama to it heart as a license to once again be openly opposed to all things that could possibly be of benefit to black Americans or any citizens of color.
But with all of that vitriol and racial hatred bubbling to the surface, one staple of America's Jim Crow era seemed to be lacking. There was a marked absence of violence against black churches, institutions that in the past had been the scenes of mass murders, bombings, and fires. Now, however, that streak of calm has come to an end with the burnings of three historic black churches in one parish in southern Louisiana.
The ATF, FBI, and local fire authorities are investigating the string of three arsons that took place over the past two weeks - and, as yet, have not been officially connected to each other. The first happened on March 26 at St. Mary Baptist Church in Port Barre, Louisiana, It was followed this past Tuesday with a fire at the Greater Union Baptist Church in Opelousas - and two days after that the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, also in Opelousas caught fire. Each of the churches was more than one hundred years old.
In a tremendous act of Christian charity, Reverend Harry Richard of the Greater Union Baptist Church told a newspaper reporter that he didn't want people to panic. "I don't know who's doing it or why they're doing it," the minister said, "but I don't want to be the one to inject race into it."
Don't bet the collection plate on it not being about race, Reverend Richard, and don't be surprised when the skies are alight with the flames of more intolerance. It's all about hate, a hate that is being sanctioned in America's most exclusive corridors of power and is slowly trickling down to the basest of Trump's base.
The tiki torches weren't hot enough or bright enough to convey all of their rage. Bolder flames were needed so that the hatred could be seen throughout the land.
Citizen Journalist
It is no secret that America's racist miscreants have been crawling out from under their rocks ever since the Trump organization took over the White House. They march in public demonstrations carrying tiki torches and flashing white power signs, and feel emboldened to hurl insults and racial invective at people of color with truly wild abandon. For too long these yokels have suffered under the unfair burden of "equality," and now it is time to once again assert their God-granted racial superiority.
The Trump administration sanctioned this attitude of intolerance in its earliest days with proposed travel bans of visitors from a group of primarily Muslim countries, and also through its relentless attacks on immigration along the southern U.S. border. Trump encouraged racial tensions through describing certain immigrants (those from primarily non-white countries) as being "animals" and their homelands as "shithole" countries. Race mattered to Trump, and his followers heard that message loud and clear.
The good old days of the open acknowledgement of white superiority seemed to be making a comeback in certain areas. It was, for instance, once again becoming harder to vote in many places thanks to the demise of the Voting Rights Act, education was once again sorting itself out along lines of color with the national push toward charter and private schools - with public funding, and color lines were being strengthened in many major housing markets.
And Donald Trump had a visceral reaction to Barack Obama, our nation's first black President, and Trump supporters took his criticism of all things Obama to it heart as a license to once again be openly opposed to all things that could possibly be of benefit to black Americans or any citizens of color.
But with all of that vitriol and racial hatred bubbling to the surface, one staple of America's Jim Crow era seemed to be lacking. There was a marked absence of violence against black churches, institutions that in the past had been the scenes of mass murders, bombings, and fires. Now, however, that streak of calm has come to an end with the burnings of three historic black churches in one parish in southern Louisiana.
The ATF, FBI, and local fire authorities are investigating the string of three arsons that took place over the past two weeks - and, as yet, have not been officially connected to each other. The first happened on March 26 at St. Mary Baptist Church in Port Barre, Louisiana, It was followed this past Tuesday with a fire at the Greater Union Baptist Church in Opelousas - and two days after that the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, also in Opelousas caught fire. Each of the churches was more than one hundred years old.
In a tremendous act of Christian charity, Reverend Harry Richard of the Greater Union Baptist Church told a newspaper reporter that he didn't want people to panic. "I don't know who's doing it or why they're doing it," the minister said, "but I don't want to be the one to inject race into it."
Don't bet the collection plate on it not being about race, Reverend Richard, and don't be surprised when the skies are alight with the flames of more intolerance. It's all about hate, a hate that is being sanctioned in America's most exclusive corridors of power and is slowly trickling down to the basest of Trump's base.
The tiki torches weren't hot enough or bright enough to convey all of their rage. Bolder flames were needed so that the hatred could be seen throughout the land.
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