Sleazy Rider

From our political correspondent, Dorothy Dawe:

As seen on twitter -- here from @ByChipBrownlee -- Alabama publisher Goodloe Sutton's editorial "Klan needs to ride again":​

Mr. Brownlee's take:  "Check the date (February 14, 2019).  A paper published this in 2019.  Wow."
​

Are you surprised? We're not -- for several reasons.

First, In the era of Trump, nothing like this is surprising. Trump and the GOP have abandoned their dog whistles, and they've brought out the bull horns. White supremacists are emboldened by Trump's racism and white nationalistic views and rhetoric.

Second, we visited Alabama this past summer and saw first hand the racist legacy of the state's dark past. A travelogue of our trip is HERE. Slavery in the state evolved in the 19th century from a "necessary evil" to an ingrained and accepted construct of their society. This structure is still present today, and it manifests itself in many ways -- from the overt (current political constructs) to the subtle (for example, the dismissive {and almost completely hidden} coverage of the Klan in the state's Archive's exhibit of 400 years of Alabama History) to the comical (when driving to the Brown Chapel AME Church in Slema, our GPS told us to "turn right on Jefferson Davis Parkway").

Third, in the special senate election in 2017, 48% of the voters in Alabama cast votes for racist Roy Moore -- and in neighboring Mississippi, the voters these chose a daughter of the Confederacy to send to the senate.

So were we surprised that in 2019 Klansman Sutton published his editorial?

In a word, no.

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More of our posts on Alabama, HERE, HERE, and HERE.