Obama Victory Brings "Racist Rats Out of the Woodwork"

By Hannah Strange, The Times of London UK. Posted November 18, 2008.

Black figures were hung by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the <i>Bangor Daily News</i> reported, while crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, New Jersey, and Apolacan Township, Pennsylvania. In Massachussetts, a nearly-finished church belonging to a black congregation was burned to the ground just hours after Obama's victory was declared.

Racist graffiti was found in places including New York's Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted; Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and "Go Back To Africa" were spray painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.

Potok, who is white, said he believes there is "a large subset of white people in this country who feel that they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them."

Grant Griffin, a 46-year-old white Georgia native, expressed similar sentiments: "I believe our nation is ruined and has been for several decades and the election of Obama is merely the culmination of the change.

"If you had real change it would involve all the members of (Obama's) church being deported," he said.

Change in whatever form does not come easy, and a black president is "the most profound change in the field of race this country has experienced since the Civil War," said William Ferris, senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina. "It's shaking the foundations on which the country has existed for centuries."

"Someone once said racism is like cancer," Ferris said. "It's never totally wiped out -- it's in remission."

The day after the vote, Barbara Tyler, a black high school student in Marietta, Georgia, said she heard hateful comments about Obama from white students, and that teachers cut off discussion about his victory.

Tyler spoke at a press conference by the Georgia chapter of the civil rights body NAACP which discussed complaints from across the state about hostility and resentment. Another student, from a Covington middle school, said he was suspended for wearing an Obama shirt to school on November 5th after the principal told students not to wear political paraphernalia.

The student's mother, Eshe Riviears, said the principal told her: "Whether you like it or not, we're in the South, and there are a lot of people who are not happy with this decision."

Sociologists said African-Americans suffering attacks and intimidation were essentially proxies for the frustrated emotions of some whites.

"The principle is very simple," said BJ Gallagher, a sociologist and co-author of the diversity book <i>A Peacock in the Land of Penguins</i>. "If I can't hurt the person I'm angry at, then I'll vent my anger on a substitute, i.e., someone of the same race."

"We saw the same thing happen after the 9/11 attacks, as a wave of anti-Muslim violence swept the country. We saw it happen after the Rodney King verdict, when Los Angeles blacks erupted in rage at the injustice perpetrated by 'the white man.'

"It's as stupid and ineffectual as kicking your dog when you've had a bad day at the office," Gallagher said. "But it happens a lot."

See more stories tagged with: racism, hate crimes, barack obama, death threats

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from Rights and Liberties! Sign up now »