The Ku Klux Klan is holding a rally in our state. The white nationalist group — or more accurately, white terrorist group — was thought to have been driven into the dark corners of the internet and fringes of society. That is no longer the case.
While the KKK largely receded from the public, other white nationalist organizations rose to take its place, often adopting a more modern approach to racism, but it seems the original is making a comeback. Racism was omnipresent in American culture, but the degree to which it is societally acceptable to be openly racist has grown immensely.
Possibly even worse is the news of known white nationalists getting positions of power in the upcoming administration.
This resurgence of white nationalism needs to be stopped, but why did it arise in the first place? It is probably because we have tolerated microaggressions and more indirect hate for so long.
For a long time, U.S. racial discourse essentially centered on progressing past a racial society. This is something conservatives have been saying for years.
In the past eight years, the right criticized the left for essentially “grasping at straws” when talking about racism. This often resulted in the mocking and denial of lived experiences of people alive today, and often they tried to counter today’s examples of racism by invoking images of the 1960s as a time filled with “real racism.”
Our question for this group and for all of us is this: Will you speak up now?
We are now seeing the resurgence of the same organizations and actors that lynched, killed and terrorized mostly Black people, but also Jewish and other minority groups, in the past.
They claim to be peaceful Christians, but they said that in the 1960s too.
