This archive article is selected from The Cleveland Pages, the city's only weekly independent journal of politics and opinion on the Internet. Find out all about the Cleveland Pages here, or check out the current issue.
The Free Times, in an article no longer online, called Cleveland Pages "Spicily independent... in the best tradition of citizen-journalist."
The Cleveland Pages is a somewhat-weekly commentary on what's new and why it's all happening in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. If what you read here is upsetting, you might prefer this simple-minded happy-talk instead.
Bookmark the Cleveland Pages at http://re.cleveland.oh.us. Bookmark this issue at http://re.cleveland.oh.us/archives/19990820.html.
A Cleveland Pages archive search will be available soon... Meanwhile, skip to the flat-file archive list! And read an overview of who's putting this thing out and what it's about.
"I used to like the NBA but I can't relate to the players anymore since Larry Bird retired." What the hell does that mean?
[this paragraph added January 2002] I just fixed a horrible, horrible typo in the following paragraph. For the sake of consistency I'll note that you're not now reading the original. Let's just say that leaving out the word "not" can cause serious misunderstandings.
[this paragraph added February 2001] I don't know what happened. For a year and a half this article has been visible on the Web and as easily found as any other commentary on the subject. But over the last few weeks it seems that the URL has been passed around--and then read by people whose anger exceeds their reading comprehension. It hasn't quite escalated to the level of "hate mail," but some very angry accusations have hit the mail server. To make it as simple as possible: this is not a pro-Klan essay. Geeeeeez. And now to the original article:
I don't know why everyone's talking about this weekend's downtown KKK rally as though it's a bad thing. It could have been the best opportunity ever to improve our own sad, sad social environment. Too bad the atmosphere of white liberal indignantion is so thick most of us won't see the point. Or perhaps that is the point.
Among the speeches and counter-rallies and alternative events, and the endless posturing by well-meaning white people, let's ask ourselves, "Why does the Klan find Cleveland so attractive?"
To start with, they could have picked practically any city in America. A nation founded in slavery, united by Reconstruction, is going to carry baggage for a very long time. Cleveland Heights, stop snickering, I mean you too.
The KKK doesn't need to work on its visibility in places where the N-word is used publicly. Their job is to reach the "inner redneck" that lives in many if not all white people. Like any other northern US city, Cleveland is chock full of inner rednecks. Most of us don't know they exist inside us.
Earlier this week Channel 5 interviewed a Klan leader in Indiana. The guy was trying hard to sound reasonable--working what you might call a "kinder, gentler" segregationist angle. In these times, with outspoken racial hatred out of style, the various KKK groups have adapted their message to speak of "white civil rights" and "protect[ing] American jobs" and "love of our people's unique heritage and character."
"The Bible says you should live with your own people," said the Klan leader interviewed on TV, "but I'll shake the hand of any black man." The Klansman went on to explain that legislation intended to help minorities is creating conflict, and they'd like to see it ended.
Now how many of us have heard that from friends? You haven't? Have you heard the liberalspeak translations?
I've personally heard all of these statements, from people you would otherwise consider reasonably liberal, within the last few years.
Swap a few buzzwords. Say "property values" when you mean "white power." Say "racial tension" (my favorite euphemism) when you mean "colored people around," as in "There's too much racial tension in Cleveland so I moved to Westlake." Don't blame crime on Black people; talk about "urban youth" instead. Make sure you put white racism on other people's heads, never your own. And always, always disassociate yourself from the people who say directly what you say in code.
Let's go back to last year's home-run record chase. Cleveland-area white people, folks with no particular connection to Chicago or St. Louis, not regular fans of the National League at all, not Cardinals followers anyway... how come not one white person told me they thought it would be great for Sammy Sosa to get the home-run title? Why is it that half a dozen total strangers at various times thoughout the baseball season commented to me that they really hoped Mark McGwire won out?
What is McGwire to an average white person in Cleveland? One of us. For crying out loud, he admits abusing legal performance-enhancing hormones, and he's still the hero of White America. That's tribalism, people.
Baseball isn't so important. It is, however, symbolic of our own social hopes and fears. Blacks were thrilled when Jackie Robinson played for the Dodgers for the first time. Jews adored Sandy Koufax and Al Rosen in their day. And in the little town of Wethersfield, almost exactly halfway between Boston and New York, it was the Italian kids who followed the Yankees of Lou Pinella while the Polish kids were fans of Yastrzemski's Red Sox in the 70s.
Isn't that harmless? Within reason, I suppose yes. But what does it say when we cheer on the white guy against the black guy because he's one of us? What more does it say when we don't admit it?
Do yourself a favor: read Nathan McCall's latest book, What's Going On. One excellent chapter begins with McCall's account of a white-on-black pickup basketball game held in a white suburban park. I won't ruin the telling, but it's so predictable you have to laugh and cry. The gathered crowd, your typical young suburban mix and not what one would consider KKK material, revealed a mixture of abject fear and White Pride (there is just no other thing to call it)--and we've all seen the story played out in one arena or another.
It's good to oppose the Klan's agenda. But the various groups using the Klan name are doing us a tremendous favor by naming our sins publicly. If every Klansman and Klanswoman were to vanish at midnight in some weird white-supremacist rapture, the effects of racism in this country would not diminish in the least. The Klan groups are powerless not because they're so small and divided, but because they constitute just the most visible and vulnerable part of a supremacist ideology under which most white Americans implicitly believe and act.
In other words: the Klan groups may be the tail, but the rest of us constitute the dog.
We'll see ourselves reflected in every burning cross. We'll hear the words of our own parents and friends in your speeches, and maybe if we listen especially closely we'll hear a bit of our own thoughts echoed too.
We owe the Ku Klux Klan a debt of gratitude for the lesson: racism goes a lot deeper than that white robe. We should view their arrival tomorrow not as a confrontation but as a form of confession. Let's remember that the step after confession is repentance.
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