Spokane7
55°
June 3, 2011 in City
Racism, here? Denial convenient, misguided
Remember the KKK snowman?
In December, a Hayden Lake doofus built a 10-foot, pointy-hooded snowman holding a noose in his front yard. Hilarious. Idaho made the news again.
What struck me at the time was not the bigoted display, but the utter normalcy of the guy’s home. Small and white, with gray trim and a two-car garage. Inside the garage hung a Confederate flag and one touting white power – along with the ultimate automotive symbol of the Northwest mainstream: a Subaru Outback.
Honk if you love white people!
We’re not a haven for racists, exactly. But there is a thread of denial and defensiveness about our reputation as a haven for racists that’s woven tightly into the regional fabric – an insistence that what is right before our eyes or alongside us at the stoplight isn’t really there. Or that if we just ignore it, it will go away. This is our real race problem here in Whiteyville: Our insistence that we don’t have one accommodates the one we have.
The accommodators range from those who don’t want any bad vibes troubling the swells at the Coeur d’Alene Resort to those who think the Aryan Nations did sort of have a point. (Have you been to California lately? So many brown people!)
The latest dose of accommodation comes from the Coeur d’Alene Press, which is owned by grandiosity magnate Duane Hagadone. The Press published an editorial last week glibly dismissing the work of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations as yesterday’s news.
The editorial – which has drawn outraged responses from task force stalwarts Tony Stewart and Norm Gissel – dealt with the departure of Human Rights Education Institute honcho Dan LePow, who raised less money than was hoped.
The unsigned editorial assures readers that “We are ardent supporters of human rights causes in general and HREI in particular.” But the Press’s ardor for human rights runs aground on the shoals of not really wanting to get all specific about local racism. It’s such a bummer. Makes it hard to raise money from the wine-sipping cheese eaters who like their human rights more along the lines of “children’s safety” and “international peace.”
“In our view, there is too much emphasis from the task force on what was, and not enough on what is or what can be,” the editorial says. “Constantly reliving the rise and fall of (Richard) Butler’s pathetic little empire does more than keep the past alive and give it ever greater significance in the annals of North Idaho; it reopens wounds among a compassionate populace. And it provides parasitic modern-day racists with the attention they must have to survive.”
In other words: The task force, by going on and on about racism, fosters racists. I think they might have that backward. And I wonder: Which wounds among which compassionate people are reopened by talk of the Butler saga, exactly?
Maybe it’s some of the folks who commented on the editorial online.
“I just moved here from a state which is in a very sad state of affairs,” writes one. “It is the poster child for ‘diversity’ and tolerance, etc. I moved here to get away from that which comes with the price of gangs, violence and lots of grafitti. … Native Idahoans, be carefull what you ask or wish for. Go ahead and sing Cumbaya around the campfire and welcome everyone here and you’ll really see Northern Idaho go by the way of LA, Oakland, etc. and then … lets see just how much racial tolerance you have. Take a look at what has happened to Moses Lake, WA. I’m not saying bring back the Nazi skinheads but you’d better rethink a few things. Trust me!”
That person does seem wounded, after all. Mentally wounded.
Here’s another:
“If anyone wants to experience first-hand serious real racism and racial fear go to East Los Angeles. Take your families for a lovely evening stroll along the streets of Compton and I assure you will have a mind opening and unforgettable adventure in racial intolerance.”
That poor soul. Visiting Compton! Hurry back to Idaho, where there’s absolutely no racism!
These bigots are here, and they are here, in their own words, because we’re such a white loaf of bread. For every guy who builds a snowman, there is some unknown number of morons telling horror stories about Compton and Moses Lake. And for every one of those, there is some unknown number who would never say that because they’re less socially maladjusted – but who might point out that, while they personally have nothing against people of color, of course, they feel that things have gotten very bad for white dudes. And behind every one of those folks, there’s someone saying ignore it, pay no attention, your tee time’s coming up …
Gissel and Stewart have responded to the Press editorial specifically and at length. Stewart pointed out 22 rock-solid reasons the task force remains a vital organization, ranging from current hate crimes to the organization’s many, many instances of leadership in raising money and fighting bigotry.
We’ll probably never fully win this battle, but we can sure lose it.
Failing to fight it at all would be an excellent way to start.
Shawn Vestal can be reached at (509) 459-5431 or shawnv@spokesman.com. Follow him on Twitter at @vestal13.
The draw of the unknowable 
gmorton on June 03 at 9:16 a.m.
Shawn Vestal writes,
“Remember the KKK snowman?”
Uh, no. It was utterly unmemorable. That story was a waste of printer’s ink when it was first reported, and and even bigger waste when it is rehashed six months later.
“We’re not a haven for racists, exactly. But there is a thread of denial and defensiveness about our reputation as a haven for racists that’s woven tightly into the regional fabric – an insistence that what is right before our eyes or alongside us at the stoplight isn’t really there. Or that if we just ignore it, it will go away.”
You’re missing the point of the CDA Press’s editorial, Shawn. No one is “denying” that there are racists among us, just as there are Marxists, Maoists, Fascists, Gaia worshippers, fanatic Christians preparing for Doomsday, Satanists, and adherents of innumerable other nitwit doctrines and ideologies. Just as there are everywhere else in the world. No one is denying that they are “really here,” or believes they are going away.
Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately, if you yourself are bewitched by fantasies of egalitarian solidarity and brotherhood, another nitwit ideology), all those nonsensical doctrines are examples of freedom of thought and free speech, and are thus protected by the First Amendment. So you’re really wasting your time harping about them, not to mention boring your readers.
Someone’s racist beliefs merit public attention when they lead to lynchings, bombings, assaults, or other violations of someone’s rights. As long as they lead only to building tacky snowmen, they are no one else’s business.
You need to find something more substantive to worry about.
ManleyPointer on June 03 at 9:45 a.m.
The race problem here in the eastern Washington/northern Idaho area really has two facets: the tiny segment of the population with overt white supremacist ideology and (sometimes) behaviors, and the more insidious, almost-subconscious racism peculiar to racially-homogenous areas such as ours. We tend to focus on what I believe is the less-harmful, pathetic group of skinheads and idiots who pop up on the national news every once in a while for building snowmen or engaging in embarrassing public exhibitions of their sub-normal intellects. What we should be addressing is the background-noise racism, which would require us to take hard looks at law enforcement attitudes, employment and housing practices and just general overall racial and cultural xenophobia. I do NOT advocate blind “tolerance and acceptance” of aspects of “foreign” culture that might be harmful or culturally corrosive (such as gangs, violence or wind-generated electricity); neither do I think that we suspect or reject all elements of “outside” influences just because they are unfamiliar or even uncomfortable.
We might be 95% white around here, but our attitudes and practices concerning issues of race do not have to be skin-color-based, blindly intolerant or just plain stupid.
greenlibertarian on June 03 at 1:12 p.m.
Eastern Washington and northern Idaho have been a prime “white-flight” destination for decades.
It was merely a fluke that Butler’s idiot goons took a pot shot at somebody that lead to them losing their compound. And I still hear people saying that event was a “setup” of the Aryan Nations by minorities.
Yeah, right, in denial much?