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<DIV>If Nate Alford is looking for any good reporters let me recommend Frank
McGovern!!! </DIV>
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<TD class=contentheading width="100%"><STRONG>Moscow still racist after
all these years</STRONG> </TD>
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<TD vAlign=top align=left width="70%" colSpan=2><SPAN class=small>Written
by Frank McGovern -Argonaut </SPAN> </TD></TR>
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<TD class=createdate vAlign=top colSpan=2>Friday, 02 September 2005 </TD></TR>
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<DIV>Prejudice is sneaky. It creeps up on you like The Shadow and clouds
your mind with a multiplicity of faces. Unfortunately, the worst sort of
prejudice isn’t the easily dismissed, mouth-breathing skinhead variety.
The most devious tentacle slithers in initially smelling like logic.
</DIV>
<DIV>Barbara Richardson-Crouch, executive director of the Moscow/Latah
County Economic Development Council, recently announced that she and her
husband were leaving Moscow because our town had grown, and was growing,
increasingly racist. The thing is, Richardson is absolutely right; Moscow
has changed since my arrival. At the risk of assigning blame unfairly or
intolerantly, I’ll try to be diplomatic about this. The catalyst of this
change, indirectly or not, is Christ Church and its direct affiliates.
</DIV>
<DIV>For those of you unfamiliar with Christ Church, it is a local
fundamentalist denomination whose umbrella shelters a collection of
businesses and schools. The capo de capo of Christ Church is Doug Wilson,
a neo-Confederate minister and publishing gadfly. Wilson has enjoyed a
great deal of local infamy over the past several years due to the
publication of a booklet titled “Southern Slavery as it Was.” </DIV>
<DIV>“Southern Slavery” defends its titular institution as an interracial
utopia peopled by happy, content slaves and their good Christian masters.
It included the following gems: “Slave life was to them (slaves) a life of
plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care,” and
“There has never been a multiracial society which has existed with such
mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world.”</DIV>
<DIV>The booklet is a devious, mini-magnum opus of manipulation employing
cherry-picked, distorted citation and decades-defunct history, defended by
Wilson as a Biblical justification of slavery. The co-author of the
booklet is Steve Wilkins, a founder of the League of the South (LOTS), a
group advocating the re-secession of the South. Incidentally, they are
labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.</DIV>
<DIV>Despite the absolutely blatant assertion that white people owning
black people was not only acceptable, but a paradise of subservience to
Caucasians, the authors are quick to point out that they’re not
supremacists. It’s true that nowhere in “Southern Slavery” are racial
slurs or beat-you-over-the-head declarations of white power present, but
the lines leave a wide enough berth to be read between, that one could
drive a truck through them.</DIV>
<DIV>As an indicator of LOTS’ politics regarding race and history, check
out the “suggested reading” section on its Web site. There are three books
suggested; two of them are revisionist love letters to Nathan Bedford
Forrest, confederate general and principal founder of the Ku Klux Klan.
The other is an attack on abolitionist John Brown and, according to the
review, the “fanatacism and cowardice of the Abolitionist movement by
their use of others to do their dirty work.” </DIV>
<DIV>It’s odd to think of a man who gave his life to free human beings
from slavery and those who supported him as “fanatics” and “cowards,” but
I guess I’m just an intolerista. Once again, for those of you new to
Moscow, the word “intolerista” is Wilson’s creation. It’s A Rush
Limbaugh-esque (Feminazi) frantic flailing for some pithy addition to the
local lexicon. </DIV>
<DIV>I’m sorry, but this tired, double-speak semantic tap-dancing that
broad-strokes anyone who calls him on his ugly bigotry is worn out. It’s
not intolerant to call for tolerance.</DIV>
<DIV>Refraining from using the n-word or declaring white supremacy is not
an absence of racism. Maybe Doug Wilson isn’t a racist; maybe he believes
it’s God’s will that people of all colors and creeds should be able to
own, beat and rape each other as long as they pay lip service to the
Bible. The fact remains that Southern slavery, as it was a nightmare for
the blacks who were owned by white people, should never be celebrated. And
the celebration of it is drawing a line in Moscow, with those who
sugarcoat and glamorize a shameful American holocaust on one side, and us
intoleristas on the other.</DIV></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Georgia size=3 FAMILY="SERIF" PTSIZE="12">Rose
Huskey</FONT><FONT lang=0 face=Arial color=#000000 size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10"><BR></FONT><FONT lang=0 face=Georgia color=#000000 size=3
FAMILY="SERIF" PTSIZE="12">"And he took his staff in his hand, and chose him
five smooth stones out of the brook, and put them in a shepherd's bag which he
had, even in a scrip; and his sling [was] in his hand: and he drew near to the
Philistine. "<BR>1 Samuel 17:40</FONT><FONT lang=0 face=Arial color=#000000
size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><BR></FONT></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>