President Barack Obama was two years old when the Civil Rights law was passed in July of 1964. Progress in human rights has been made in the 50 years since, but there is no doubt that many people in the United States would just love to call him “boy.” Under segregation, white people in the South called blacks “girls” and “boys” from birth to death, regardless of age. Corky and I were stationed in North Carolina from 1954 through 1957, so we lived with “separate but equal” and “Jim Crow,” both alive and well today.
   For over two hundred years up to 1865, almost all blacks were enslaved. Then the uncivil Civil War technically “freed” the slaves. The next hundred years brought us more than 4,000 lynchings, beatings, and murders, and two separate cultures in most towns and cities. This amounted to “across-tracks” segregation of gravel and concrete, two-holers and sewers, the front and the back of buses, white and black water fountains and phone booths, white and black schools and hospitals, white and black Bibles for court witnesses, “Nigger Heaven” in theaters and auditoriums, white and black restaurants and gas stations, white and black beaches—and, of course, white rule. We had separate days for zoo, park, and museum visits. Blacks could not try on clothing or shoes before purchasing.
   When Lena Horne, a famous black singer, stuck her big, black, arrogant, uppity toe in a lily-white Chicago hotel swimming pool where she was entertaining, it was immediately drained of the “pollutants.” Newspapers refused to carry black wedding announcements. Telephone directories identified “colored” residents. Blacks on trips were often banned from facilities for eating and sleeping. Many of them had restrooms and bathrooms for whites only.
   I noticed in Bob Lind’s column in the Forum that when Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and other blacks played Fargo’s Crystal Ballroom, the owner put up cots for them to use because no Fargo hotel would accept them. Remember? Fargo was a very strong Ku Klux Klan kind of town. However, I must report that when 18-year-old Mudcat Grant from Florida joined the Fargo-Moorhead Twins in 1954 as a black pro baseball pitcher, he was very happy living in Fargo—because it was the first time in his segregated Southern life he had ever eaten in a restaurant.

The Conservative Republican Supreme Court Says Blatant Racism Has Ended

The political second the five Republicans on the Supreme Court voted to modify and severely weaken the Voting Rights Act, white racists immediately put hundreds of restrictions on minority voting in bills submitted to racist legislatures around the country. States recognized as being racist no longer had to get approval from the Justice Department for voting rules changes. The flood of changes: Intrusive Voter IDs, elimination of early voting days, changes in registration and identification documents, precinct rule changes, changes in student resident voting rules, elimination of same-day registration, and other changes too numerous to mention.    
All changes are designed to limit access of blacks and Latinos to voting booths. In Texas a voter can use a state concealed weapons permit as a voter ID—but an 85-year-old woman cannot use a federally issued Medicare card for the same purpose! In the 2012 Florida elections, minorities often waited six hours in line to vote. The Miami-Dade County Elections Department recently voted to close all restrooms in or near voting precincts on election days!  I would suggest that if this policy is not changed, voters should bring blankets for shields, form walls, and urinate and defecate on sidewalks or in precinct buildings while waiting to vote. That should get the attention of the Election Board.
Having lived in the South for three years, I have never believed a word about Southern hospitality. My definition of that kind of hospitality rests on the fact that Southerners took the family to celebrate “nigger” lynchings on Saturday afternoons, took pictures of the lynchings so they could send them to relatives, and then retired to the country club for nice dinners of mint juleps and barbecue. These people were often charter members of the Knights of the White Camelia, an upper-crust organization that followed the principles of the lower-class KKK. I remember when black Marines of my heavy machinegun platoon—who were decorated veterans of the Korean War—still couldn’t walk on the sidewalks of Jacksonville, North Carolina. They had to walk around in the streets.
The mother of famous Southern author Pat Conroy once told him that all Southern literature and life could be summed up in these words: “On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister.” The mass of Southerners have never been known for outstanding character, morality, and empathy—at least in my book.

The “Sub-Human,” “Kenya Mongrel,” “Marxist Witch Doctor,” “Socialist,” “Anti-Christ,” “No-Drama” Obama

Since Obama was elected in 2008, he and his family have received an average of more than 30 death threats a day, according to the Secret Service—four times what George W. Bush suffered. That’s more than 65,000 in six years. Over a third have been traced to white supremacists. What facts are the five Supreme Court Republicans using to determine that “harmful” racism does not exist in the U.S.? In striking down the Seattle school district’s attempt to continue policies in integrating the schools, Chief Justice John Roberts came up with this memorable statement: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Sounds nice, but the fab five must live on some restricted planet.
They should study the court records of a Tennessee white supremacist group that plotted to rob a gun store, kill 88 blacks, and then assassinate Obama. Have Supreme Court justices spent so much time with the law that they have neglected the humanities and history? Black lynchings reached a peak in 1895. Booker T. Washington, the top black educator and leader in the South at the Tuskegee Institute, was invited by President Theodore Roosevelt for dinner at the White House in 1901 to discuss the matter. South Carolina senator Benjamin “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman criticized Roosevelt and said, “Entertaining that nigger will necessitate killing a thousand niggers in the South before they will learn their place again. White Supremacy will be maintained in our primaries.”
By 1964 the word “nigger” was not used in public pronouncements. This was the new vocabulary: “states’ rights” trumped “federal regulation,” “liberty” was more important than “equality” (Notice how much the Tea Party today uses “liberty”?), and “freedom of association” was more important than “diversity.” Even by 1964, a hundred years after emancipation, there were no black Supreme Court justices, Fortune 500 CEOs, or presidential cabinet officers.

Obama Is Half-Mud And The Lust Of Eve And Satan Created Jews

Many white supremacists and nutcase militia members believe in the religious philosophy of the Christian Identity Church, developed in the 1880s in England. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was a true believer. Christian Identity followers believe that Anglo-Saxons are descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Whites in England and the United States are the true Israelites in the Bible and are the “chosen people.” In other words, the white race is superior to other races, and blacks and other “coloreds” are mud people on the same genetic level as animals. They have no souls. This justifies the racism and extremist violence of Christian Identity believers.
The gun-toting incidents by militia members at the Clive Bundy “Freedom from Grazing Fees” ranch in Nevada? You can bet your sweet bippy that most of them are Christian Identity white supremacist bigots. The messiah of the church is the prophet Adolf Hitler, because he followed through on the children of Satan and Eve. With more than 1,200 violent hate groups listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, one can easily assume that many of the daily death threats to Obama come from militia members influenced by the Christian Identity. These churches are often recognized by the IRS and the government as legitimate churches, so they have the same tax benefits and respectability other religious organizations enjoy. The Aryan Nation, the Nazi National Alliance, and the Order are some of the offshoot groups of the Christian Identity. They are not nice boys.
   There is no question that many Southern and western Tea Party members parading around rallies and meetings with AK-47s and Glocks have Christian Identity backgrounds. Obama is a mud person who is supposed to be a servant-slave to whites, not their president. The lack of respect shown Obama by many Republicans is the result of hundreds of years of slavery, separate but equal policies, Jim Crow laws passed by white legislators, and the hatred publicly expressed by whites.

Obama The African Witch Doctor, The House Nigger, And The Rodeo Clown
 
Plantations had “house niggers” who were educated to handle finances, serve as secretaries, and teach the white children. They had some perks. Obama started life with a black father and a white mother just before the Civil Rights bill was passed. He was not a full partner in either culture. He ended his college education as president of the Harvard Law Review, but he had many minimum-wage jobs, including scooping ice cream at Baskin-Robbins, painting houses, and waiting on tables in a nursing home. He and Michelle bought old cars. They had loads of student debt from their college experiences. Some might say these experiences would help him as president in a “city on a hill in the country of dreams.”
But he is still called sub-human by some. He is a representative of the mud people to others. He is a mongrel of race to a few. Robert Copeland, the police commissioner of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, announced very loudly in a restaurant that he hated watching TV because every time he turned it on he saw a “f-----g nigger,” the president of the United States. He later e-mailed his fellow commissioners: “For this I do not apologize—he meets and exceeds my criteria for such.”
These stories prove that the Supreme Court Taliban are politicians, not judges. Judges use facts when they are surrounded by them. Politicians don’t. Joe Rickey Hundley of Hayden, Idaho, an executive of AGC Aerospace & Defense, got mighty irritated at the crying of a 19-month-old black child as his plane was landing at Atlanta. He was seated next to the mother and the child, so he reached over, slapped the child, and yelled at the mother, “Shut that nigger baby up!” He is currently serving eight months in jail. Please note that he lived in Hayden, Idaho. Hayden is the home of many white supremacist groups, such as Aryan Nations, The Order, and the Church of Jesus Christ-Christian—which it ain’t. Some are classed as terror groups, some influenced by the Christian Identity.

So John Roberts And His Fellow Taliban Think That Racism In The U.S. Is Dead

Thousands of racial incidents prove that racism is alive and ticking. During a rodeo at the Missouri State Fair, the announcer asked the crowd if they would like to see Obama run down by a bull. According to a reporting website, “The crowd went wild!” So a rodeo clown put on an Obama mask with bobbling lips and pretended to be almost “run down” by a bull. The crowd “hooted and hollered.” Missouri is well known for its “Christian” evangelicals.
Remember the Cheerios TV ad that featured a mixed couple, their biracial five-year-old, and “good for the heart” Cheerios dumped on the sleeping black father? So many comments on YouTube were so obscene the section had to be turned off. That’s diversity in America at this point. When Obama was elected in 2008, some thought it signaled the end of racism in America. Actually, his election brought back the Civil War, slavery, the Confederate Battle Flag, the Tea Party, the KKK, and about 600 more dormant white supremacist organizations in a sort of religious resurrection. We still have a long, treacherous racial obstacle course to run before we attain equality in this country.

Raymond is a former Marine officer and school board superintendent and resides in Detroit Lakes.