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Jan. 19th, 2011 08:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* I wish I could say I couldn't guess why there's so little coverage of the domestic terrorist attempted bombing in Spokane, but I'm betting it's because this bombing attempt doesn't fit the Fox News racial agenda. Given the history and context it's likely the White supremacists again. This bombing attempt was competent, unlike say the Times square bomber or the underwear bomber. It was a serious threat only stopped because the Spokane public employees are extra alert due to previous white supremacist attacks. White people trying to kill a lot of POC isn't news in America, the way brown people trying to kill white folk is. After all, you can't use this to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment or for Othering the President. Instead, publicizing the real danger white supremacists and militias pose to folks in my part of the country would undermine Anne Coulter's claims that all terrorists are Muslim and might remind people of things like the Oklahoma city bombing, and all those dead children pulled from the ruins. After all, looking at the things that are actually an American problem would mean looking at things like the racial issues just under the surface and trying to deal with them like adults, instead of pandering to the ultra right base of which the militias and the White supremacists form a part, and we can't have that. Maybe another reason it's not news is white people trying to kill POC out of racial hatred isn't news is it's a little dog bites man. After all, this is so much a part of history as to become a common place, an expected happening. That's pretty fucked up, really.
* Some things I didn't know until I moved out here might be of interest context wise to those of you not living in my region of the US. The way it is in Oregon and Washington is, there's a thin line of Urban blue along the I-5 corridor, and the further west you get, it's more red. You scratch the surface here and underneath is militia country. When I first came to Oregon, they were in the middle of a whole collection of organized anti-gay ballot measures. Portland, Eugene, and Corvallis together had just enough population to win each time. It was always close and always ugly. (Yes, there are anti gay folk in the cities, and equal rights types in the country, but overwhelmingly, the progressive types out here gravitate to cities and it matters in elections like whoa).
This was Klan country back in the twenties and thirties. Here the focus was primarily anti-catholic, but there were plenty of towns with sunset laws and plenty of anti-POC, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant nastiness happened here. In my very left wing Bellingham, when the 8th graders did Reconstruction, I could count on their being a kid in the room who's Grandparents had spoken of the Klan riding openly down main street and right into the church as a show of power. That's living memory folks, like the boarding school atrocities are living memory on nearby reservations, like Japanese internment camps are to Asians of a certain age. When I lived in Eugene, they were still using the same stalls where they held the Internees before shipping them to camps to hold horses during fairs. My ex's father's best friend was born in an Internment camp in Idaho. Living memory, folks. When the Klan went out of style, people started talking White Power or anti-government militia's. Idaho is sort of White supremacist central, but there's branches and sympathizers all over the PNW. Out here, their organizations are big into bank robbery to fund the groups. I have lived my adult life in college towns along the I-5 corridor. Left leaning places with coops and recycling that are trying hard to make things better for their children. That means schools that come down hard on racist crap. Even very rural meridian suffered that not at all from students and I could turn up in the office with a name and quote and oh, there would be an intervention. When the High School had a rash of hate pamphlets shoved in lockers, there were student counter demonstrations. Meridian is literally where you end up if you drive past our mall a few miles. It's absolutely progress, but I have to ask, where did that student get the pamphlets and why did he think it was okay to do that? I''m guessing parents. Scratch the blue and you get red. This far west, the real ugly racism is thin on the ground. There's social pressure and rocky ground for the seeds of that sort of hate, but it's not that way everywhere. Out here, White supremacist groups are a sort of organized crime on top of being domestic terrorists. It's not cute, or quaint. It's an ugly threat that law enforcement has to take seriously. What they are capable of is both living memory and stuff you can see if you take a short drive in a certain direction.
* Some things I didn't know until I moved out here might be of interest context wise to those of you not living in my region of the US. The way it is in Oregon and Washington is, there's a thin line of Urban blue along the I-5 corridor, and the further west you get, it's more red. You scratch the surface here and underneath is militia country. When I first came to Oregon, they were in the middle of a whole collection of organized anti-gay ballot measures. Portland, Eugene, and Corvallis together had just enough population to win each time. It was always close and always ugly. (Yes, there are anti gay folk in the cities, and equal rights types in the country, but overwhelmingly, the progressive types out here gravitate to cities and it matters in elections like whoa).
This was Klan country back in the twenties and thirties. Here the focus was primarily anti-catholic, but there were plenty of towns with sunset laws and plenty of anti-POC, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant nastiness happened here. In my very left wing Bellingham, when the 8th graders did Reconstruction, I could count on their being a kid in the room who's Grandparents had spoken of the Klan riding openly down main street and right into the church as a show of power. That's living memory folks, like the boarding school atrocities are living memory on nearby reservations, like Japanese internment camps are to Asians of a certain age. When I lived in Eugene, they were still using the same stalls where they held the Internees before shipping them to camps to hold horses during fairs. My ex's father's best friend was born in an Internment camp in Idaho. Living memory, folks. When the Klan went out of style, people started talking White Power or anti-government militia's. Idaho is sort of White supremacist central, but there's branches and sympathizers all over the PNW. Out here, their organizations are big into bank robbery to fund the groups. I have lived my adult life in college towns along the I-5 corridor. Left leaning places with coops and recycling that are trying hard to make things better for their children. That means schools that come down hard on racist crap. Even very rural meridian suffered that not at all from students and I could turn up in the office with a name and quote and oh, there would be an intervention. When the High School had a rash of hate pamphlets shoved in lockers, there were student counter demonstrations. Meridian is literally where you end up if you drive past our mall a few miles. It's absolutely progress, but I have to ask, where did that student get the pamphlets and why did he think it was okay to do that? I''m guessing parents. Scratch the blue and you get red. This far west, the real ugly racism is thin on the ground. There's social pressure and rocky ground for the seeds of that sort of hate, but it's not that way everywhere. Out here, White supremacist groups are a sort of organized crime on top of being domestic terrorists. It's not cute, or quaint. It's an ugly threat that law enforcement has to take seriously. What they are capable of is both living memory and stuff you can see if you take a short drive in a certain direction.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-20 07:18 am (UTC)There was a great deal of anti-semitism as well. Governor Julius Meier (of Meier and Frank fame) had to build a house with guest cabins a few miles up the Gorge because Jews were not allowed in any hotel room in Portland. The place is still there. It's called Menucha, and is now a retreat center. I've always found that more than sad: Meier could be Governor of Oregon, but was not welcome in its biggest city.
As far as Black history in the NW is concerned, Oregon had a Black Exclusion Law in the 1800's that was not repealed until the early part of the 1900's. Blacks were still excluded from living in Portland proper until the Vanport flood. Washington was far more tolerant than Oregon.
Black settlers who were turned away from Oregon were able to found settlements in the Puget Sound area.
The NW also had its own version of the Klan - the Posse Commitatus. They are as ugly and ruthless as the KKK, and groups still exist in Western Washington and Northern Idaho. As a child at summer camp, I witnessed Klan rally in a field across the river from our camp. My parents wouldn't tell me what it was at the time, but I saw pictures of the Klan years later and figured it out.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-20 07:47 am (UTC)I was not aware of the thing with Governor Meier, and I very much appreciate you mentioning it. I have odd gaps in my PNW history knowledge because I did not grow up here.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-21 03:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-21 10:39 am (UTC)I've heard good things about Deus ex, but never had a chance to play.