Missouri's Shockingly Ugly Racist Past and Present: Why Ferguson's Inferno Is No Surprise

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/missouris-shockingly-ugly-racist-past-and-present-why-fergusons-inferno-no-surprise



The past week's unfolding tragedy in Ferguson, Missouri, with its militarized and overwhelmingly white police force confronting angry and hopeless African-Americans, is not a story unique to that place or this moment. Many cities and towns in this country confront the same problems of poverty, alienation and inequality as metropolitan St. Louis -- or even worse.

But beneath the familiar narrative, there is a deeper history that reflects the unfinished agenda of race relations -- and the persistence of poisonous prejudice that has never been fully cleansed from the American mainstream.

For decades, Missouri has spawned or attracted many of the nation's most virulent racists, including neo-Nazis and the remnants of the once-powerful Ku Klux Klan. Associated with violent criminality and crackpot religious extremism, these fringe groups could never wield much influence in the post-civil rights era. Beyond those marginalized outfits, however, exists another white supremacist group whose leaders have long enjoyed the patronage of right-wing Republican politicians.

The Council of Conservative Citizens, headquartered in St. Louis, is a living legacy of Southern "white resistance" to desegregation, with historical roots in the so-called citizens councils that sprang up during the 1950s as a "respectable" adjunct to the Klan. Its website currently proclaims that the CCC is "the only serious nationwide activist group that sticks up for white rights!" What that means, more specifically, is promoting hatred of blacks, Jews, gays and lesbians, and Latino immigrants while extolling the virtues of the "Southern way of life," the Confederacy and even slavery.

[geomon666]

1. Institutionalized Racism

You're seeing it live and in living color, folks.

[malaise]

2. Three of my siblings went to college for their first degrees in Missouri

in the late sixties. Apparently they didn't realize big sis was Afro-WestIndian, but when second sis arrived, the landlord gave bis sis notice. She never told second sis until decades later.
That said the third sis was given a prestigious job in a new hospital after her first degree. They all left the state eventually.

[xchrom]

3. while i'm sorry that bit of ugliness happened - i'm glad they left

and hopefully got on with good living.

[malaise]

4. We've all had great lives

Second sis had her own experiences with racism.
On her daughter's wedding day she went to pick her up fromt he salon and asked the receptionist if she had seen her. The receptionist told her that no one looking like her was at the salon.
Now my niece is merely a fairer version of her mother - they could be twins. Thankfully my niece walked out of the inner door at the same time, heard the comment and said hi mum while hugging second sis.

I tried the US - it was never for me - I am way too outspoken and never put up with the racist crap.

[xchrom]

5. most excellent

and i'm sure you have given the world a pice of your mind here and there.

[malaise]

6. As Palin the grifter in chief would say

You Betcha!!!