My inspiration today comes from this story about opposing protests by black and white racists in the town of Paris, Texas. The New Black Panther Party protest was allegedly over the dragging death of Brandon McClelland. That in turn motivated about a dozen Klansmen and skinheads to counterprotest.
Reading about McClelland’s death, I search in vain for a racial motivation. The mere fact that McClelland was black and the suspects (against whom charges were dropped because of lack of evidence) were white does not make it a racially motivated event, especially since the victim and the suspects were friends who had been drinking together. But it made me ponder the fact that both the black and white racists are more similar to each other than they are to the rest of us. For starters, they both see race and conspiracy behind absolutely everything. They both have an interest in causing controversy and making mountains out of molehills in order to draw attention to their causes. They even share the same goal of separating whites and blacks.
The idea of this commonality was suggested decades ago in the novels of Allen Drury. In the sequels to his Pulitzer prize winning novel Advise and Consent (still required reading for anyone who wants to understand how Washington really works), Drury wrote of an uneasy alliance between black and white extremist groups, together with a pro-Soviet peace-at-any-cost outfit, all working to undermine a strong American foreign policy. While the grouping was arguably far-fetched, the speeches made by the leaders of the groups revealed that they were in fact flip sides of the same coin.
It’s enough to make one fantasize about marooning them all on a desert island together.
Sanity Injection 