This dip into the history and nature of the Klan was inspired by the meme below that equated the Ku Klux Klan with Black Lives Matter. A quick Google uncovered a lot of variation on the meme theme with BLM referred to as “the Klan with a tan” and both being called hate groups.
Before I start writing about the fallacy of comparing BLM and the KKK I want to briefly mention the false dichotomy in the second half of the meme. Memes are simple and simplistic in their nature but the idea that people can be divided into good and bad is the kind of thinking that I hope most of us outgrow by the first grade. People are layered. Good people do shitty things. Bad people do good things. And most of us are somewhere in-between.
I could understand being somewhat ignorant of BLM. It’s fairly new and, if you get all of your information from one or two sources- sources that don’t include the group itself, then I can see how negative feelings are inspired in those who already struggle with concepts like systemic racism. But to compare it to the Klan and its century plus history of graphic violence shows a deep ignorance of the Klan that can only be deliberate.
The day I started this post this article appeared in the Washington Post. The article is about a police union in Florida pushing back against a young adult novel, Ghost Boys, being taught in the schools by decrying it as antipolice propaganda.
A couple of things stand out. The first is the following quote:
“The most common factor across banned and challenged books is that the author is from a marginalized or underrepresented group or tells the story from the perspective of a character who is, said Alaina Lavoie, a spokesperson for the nonprofit We Need Diverse Books, which promotes diversity and representation in literature and awarded the book with its top prize in 2019.”
Bellware, K. (2021, May 11). A Florida CLASSROOM offered a book inspired by the killing Of Tamir Rice. POLICE decried it AS ‘propaganda.’ Retrieved May 11, 2021, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/05/10/ghost-boys-police/
The second was controversy in Chicago Public Schools over the teaching of the facts of history. Throughout the 1970s and 80s John Burge, a former Chicago police commander, was allowed to physically and mentally torture over 100 Black men* into false confessions while the system turned a blind eye- when it wasn’t actively protecting him. It was not until 2008, well into this century, that Burge was finally made to account for his crimes. Teaching the facts of the history of systemic torture of Black people by the Chicago police, it was argued, “unfairly painted all police as bad and could open the children of police to ridicule.”
Is it an American thing or a human thing for the Powers That Be to fight so hard against uncomfortable realities? We push back against the slave holding histories of many of our Founders. We pretend that there were no abolitionists at that time and that discussions of slavery in the era never included whether or not it was moral. Teaching about how the Chicago police department covered for a sadistic madman who tortured suspects for decades is anathema.
It is only in this environment that the Klan can be dismissed as merely a hate group. Calling the Klan a hate group is a compliment. Painting BLM as a hate group and linking it to the Klan does more than tarnish BLM’s image. It lifts the Klan as no more than a group of people who are pro-white.
The Klan is a terrorist organization. It has a long history of extrajudicial bloodshed in a system that is already biased against anyone who is not a white, Anglo Saxon, protestant. Every wave of the Klan has been associated with theft, rape, torture, arson, bombings, and an endless variety of murder. The Klan literally and randomly targets people for death for the crime of not being white. Calling the Klan a hate group is like calling the Mob a men’s club.
From the FBI: “Terrorism is the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government or its citizens to further certain political or social objectives.” The Klan operates on fear and violence. They are not the standard of racism or racists, they are an extreme.
Sources
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/15/chicago-bad-cop-police-reform-318955
https://www.themarshallproject.org/records/551-jon-burge
https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/house-of-screams/Content?oid=875107
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/obituaries/jon-burge-dead.html
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-jon-burge-chicago-police-torture-timeline-20180919-htmlstory.html
http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/2011/12/28/jon-burge-torture-and-the-militarization-of-the-police/
*John Burge was careful in his victims. He wasn’t choosing class valedictorians. The men Burge gleefully tortured to false confession in his House of Screams were bad guys with long rap sheets full of violence. The guys that, at the time (and perhaps still) many believed it was okay to railroad because “they were probably guilty of/had gotten away with something.”