Miss the days when white power was hip? Still entertaining fantasies of hell-raising in the dead of night wearing a white sheet? Are the cookouts just not the same without a burning cross?
Well, the good old days of Jim Crow may be on their way back, just this time, no pointy hats.
You needn’t cast about for a couple of neo-Nazis palming a secret handshake. The resurgence has taken on a far more overt and tangible incarnation. The leaders of today’s movement wear suits, expensive suits.
Who are these pioneering bridge-builders forging a path back into America’s checkered past?
One of them is Tramm Hudson. Before we learn what Hudson does for a living, let’s listen to a bit of his parochial insight.
“I grew up in Alabama. I understand. I know this from my own experience that blacks are not the greatest swimmers or may not even know how to swim,” Hudson recently claimed.
Was this a stump speech from a local Klan rally? Not even close. Hudson is running for a spot on the GOP ticket in Florida’s 13th Congressional District, the same district vacated by Florida’s former Secretary of State Katherine Harris.
You may recall that prior to her service in Congress, Harris presided over the 2000 presidential election and recount. Just before the 2000 election, Harris oversaw a purge of Florida’s voter roles, ostensibly to remove convicted felons from the lists.
The purge ended up removing many eligible voters that had the same first and last name as a convicted felon.
Others booted from the roles had only committed misdemeanors. On Election Day those eligible voters, largely blacks, were turned away at the polls.
Apparently, for politicians emerging from Florida’s 13th District, the goal isn’t simply to keep minorities out of the water, but out of the voting booth as well.
Surely that example is just a fly in the ointment and nothing more.
Enter contestant number two, George Felix Allen Jr., the Republican senator representing the capitol state of old Dixie, Virginia. Allen is in the midst of touring Virginia for his re-election bid. Doggedly trailing Allen on his trip was S.R. Sidarth, a staff member of Allen’s Democratic opponent, James Webb. Sirdarth’s job was to videotape Allen’s speeches.
In the middle of a speech to supporters, Allen turned his attention to Sidarth and his running camera. “This fellow over here with the yellow shirt – Macaca or whatever his name is – he’s with my opponent,” Allen said.
Macaca is a genus of old world monkey commonly found in the Eastern Hemisphere. Macaca is also a racial slur originally coined by French colonists in North Africa to refer to the darker-skinned natives.
Sidarth is of Indian descent. Allen’s mother, fluent in French, was an immigrant from the former French colony of Tunisia in North Africa.
“Let’s give a welcome to Macaca here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia,” Allen added. Perhaps in Allen’s mind, no one lacking skin to match his own pasty complexion could possibly have been born in America. Allen must have had a hard time reconciling that fact that Sidarth, an American citizen, was born in Fairfax County, Va.
Jim Crow revivalist number three is Pat Buchanan, a common fixture on the cable punditry shows that pass for news these days.
The conservative commentator and one-time presidential candidate states in his new book that, “If we do not get control of our borders, by 2050 Americans of European descent will be a minority in the nation their ancestors created and built. No nation has ever undergone so radical a demographic transformation and survived.”
God help us. We may actually end up living in a true melting pot where there are no majorities.
The most frightening aspect of this renaissance in narrow-mindedness is that these individuals are not operating on the fringe of society. These are people running for or holding some of the highest public offices in the land.
How could this be happening in America, the land of equality and freedom? Who’s to blame?
Well, we are. Martin Luther King expressed our culpability best when he said, “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.
He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
“Not a peep of protest escaped the lips of supporters listening to Hudson’s speech.
The 100 or so supporters attending Allen’s event applauded and laughed when Allen referred to Sidarth as Macaca.
They laughed.
What does that tell you about the state of racism in America today?
Ironically, the most incisive answer to that question comes from Comedy Central, where commentator Rod Cordory reflected on Allen’s remarks.
“I don’t know what Macaca means, but it sure as “bleep” sounds racist . Here in Virginia, still not sure if that helps or hurts a guy,” he said.

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