If you've read my blog long enough, you realize I am the light, trivial, chipper side of the blogosphere. Blogs like Little Green Footballs and Command Post have the more relevant issues well in hand, and like the man said, write about what you know. (Don't ask me what man, I forgot to get his name while I was whoopie-cushioning him.) So I feel a little out of my depth here, commenting on a serious subject.
But nevertheless....
I read this post about the KKK, led there by this heartfelt article by Paul at All Agitprop. I don't know if I'm the best person to be objective about the subject. I'm not black, and until I was 30 years old, I had never met a black person socially. I was raised in West Virginia, and quite a few of the boys I went to high school with were involved in the KKK, albeit not openly. (It was one of those secrets everyone knew.) The KKK boys scared the hell out of me. I saw the damage they could, and did, do.
The Klan is not a group of guys commiserating with each other about how outside the power structure they are. It's a group of xenophobes joined together in distrust and hatred of anyone who isn't them.
They're thugs. You can dress them up in social rhetoric and dissect their behavior until the cows come home. But they're still violent thugs with no redeeming value.
Just go read. I'm done.
(previously posted on Blogspot)