Just asking: The question, of which I never tire (just ask my cousin Jon) is, “Why do people only see racism in the south?” When it crops up elsewhere, or is manifested by somebody from elsewhere, it’s not called racism.
Take the case of one Samuel “Conservative Not Racist” Alito. Had he been a member of the Concerned Alumni of Auburn,* a group dedicated to keeping Auburn University free of blacks, women, and Latinos, would there be more outrage? As it is, not many people are concerned about Alito’s concern for Princeton. After all, it just shows he’s a conservative. Nothing wrong with that.
At least columnist DeWayne Wickham is paying attention.
In 1985, when he applied for a job in the Reagan administration’s Justice Department, Alito burnished his conservative credentials by touting his membership in CAP: “I am a member of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy … and a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton University, a conservative alumni group.”
…When questioned about CAP’s opposition to the enrollment of women in the once all-male university and an article in its magazine that complained that blacks and Hispanics “don’t seem to know their place” in this country, Alito distanced himself from such talk. Alito said he joined CAP because he objected to a school policy that banned the ROTC, even though that decision was reversed in 1972.
“I am and always have been a conservative and an adherent to the same philosophical views that I believe are central to this administration,” Alito boasted in his application. He was talking about the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who launched his 1980 campaign for the White House in Philadelphia, Miss., with a speech in which he declared his support for states’ rights…
Ah ha! I knew sooner or later, we’d get back down south, where everyone feels noble calling a racist a racist.
Alito’s job application…came after Reagan’s 1981 statement of support for South Africa’s apartheid government because it was an American ally that produced a lot of natural resources that the free world needed.
New Jerseyite Alito sounds just like my own Garden State Italian relatives so I’m not surprised by any of this. The part that continually bakes my cookies is that he sounds like none of my more enlightened North Carolina hillbilly relatives. Yet the expectation by so many is just the opposite.
Wickham points out that all this non-discussion of the racist aspects of Alito’s alliances was taking place as we celebrated the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
In 1956, King said, “If we are to speed up the coming of the new age, we must have the moral courage to stand up and protest against injustice wherever we find it.”
Alito failed that test. In 1985, when he thought his membership in CAP benefited him, he held it out like a badge of courage. Last week, when he feared his association with it would hurt him, he denounced the organization. The Senate should not be so easily fooled.
Right on DeWayne, but notice King said “wherever” we find it, not “whenever.” Could be an accident, or he might have agreed with me that the rest of the country doesn’t get a free pass on race relations just because their re-enactors wear the blue uniforms. Racist is racist no matter where you live or with whose alumni you’re concerned.
*I made that up.
GW (Good Work)!
But Dear Leader says he is not a racist, and that he will bring ‘a lot of class to that court’, so it must be true! God speaks to Dear Leader and tells him what is true. What could be more American?
BTW, when did ‘a lot of class’ become something that the highest court in this land concerned itself with? Did I miss the part in history 101 about Gucci v Target?
Yo, cousin Trish, our fathers’ people are referred to as “Appalachain-Americans” now, rather than “hillbillies” or even the preferred appellation when you and I were children in the Blue Ridge of the Great Smokys: “mountaineers.”
But to your larger point: ML King also said that de-segregating the South was just the first step and that de-segregating northern cities would be just as difficult as the initial struggle.
Putting Judge Alito on the supreme court is like A mirror of clarence thomas. You can bet the house when the vote comes down. It will always be five to four. In favor of the republican agenda.
The KKK was active in the north and controlled a number of Yankee state legislatures. In the south they don’t care how close they get as long as they don’t get too high. In the north its the other way round.
Many Union soldiers disliked Lincoln because of the Emancipation Proclamation. They were fighting for the Union, not the coloureds. President Andrew Johnson was the Yankee President but pro-slavery and a fanatical ignorant racists.
Johnson was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, but moved to Tennessee as a young man. As a Tennesseean, he was a congressman, two-term governor and senator — so definitely not a Yankee.
He was also the first president to be impeached and, like President Bill Clinton, was found not guilty and served his term.