We are so quick to forget the evils of racism, particularly those evils that are committed against colored Americans (i.e. Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans). It is one thing to have a nation of people who desire a better tomorrow and feel great shame from a past that propagated the enslavement, displacement, objectification and mass murdering of so many minorities. However, it is an entirely different thing to soft shell and sugar coat that which is an abhorable past, and in many ways an equally appalling present. While I hate to speak in generalities, as people are not entirely good or bad like movie characters, I will speak to the idea that some people do hold better moral and ethical values than others.
It is with this basic idea that I address the notion that past KKK members were simply victims of their time. Hogwash. “Good” people, those driven by the notion that justice and equality are rights, create cultures that support justice and are vocal in cultures that lack it. Human beings are responsible and in control of their own morality. It is the human being who creates culture, the human being who creates the notions of justice within the culture, and it is ultimately the human being who tears down the injustice of the culture. People who are truly virtuous support good despite the popularity of bad. The KKK was responsible for lynchings, cross burnings and some of the most inhumane murders America has ever seen, including, but not limited to, the drawing and quartering of human beings until their bodies ripped apart.
The KKK created a culture in which watching black Americans being gruesomely murdered was a family affair. Forgive me for such crude imagery but it is not possible to paint a pretty picture of that which is atrocious.
Ultimately, the KKK was responsible for the mass terrorism of black Americans and several other minority groups. The support and/or participation in such heinous behavior is not illustrative of “good people,” and it certainly does not look that way to those who needlessly suffered for just being alive.
Thus, I find it entirely offensive to insinuate that membership in a hate group and support of white supremacy is a small issue that doesn’t speak to one’s character. If such an idea is true, then turn to the mothers of those four little girls who were murdered in the 16th Street Baptist Church and tell them that those who support and/or are members of the group that killed their daughters were “good” men … aside from one cultural flaw.
To say that KKK members were simply bending under the pressure of a racist culture is to insult Americans (both white and black) who did not conform to an evil culture which ordered the subjugation of an entire race. There are those, in every situation where injustice prevails, who still fight for justice. However, in order to discuss the good, we must also discuss the bad.
Caroline James is a junior majoring in psychology and communications.
