Post-Racial What?

By Bill Fisher

Just in case you’ve bought into the “post-racial” era of “Yes, We Can,” consider the plight of Zachari Klawonn.

Klawonn is an Army Specialist, the son of an American father and a Moroccan mother. He is 20 years old.

As told by The Washington Post, Klawonn was sitting in his barrack room when he heard a THUD. THUD. THUD. Someone was mule-kicking the door of his door, leaving marks that weeks later — long after Army investigators had come and gone — would still be visible.

By the time Army Spec. Zachari Klawonn reached the door, the pounding had stopped. All that was left was a note, twice folded and wedged into the doorframe. “F— YOU RAGHEAD BURN IN HELL” read the words scrawled in black marker.

But Klawonn had been called worse in the military: Sand monkey. Carpet jockey. Raghead. Zachari bin Laden. Nidal Klawonn. But the fact that someone had tracked him down in the dead of night to deliver this specificmessage sent a chill through his body.

Quoting The Post again: Before he enlisted, the recruiters in his home town of Bradenton, Fla., had told him that the Army desperately needed Muslim soldiers like him to help win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yet ever since, he had been filing complaint after complaint with his commanders. After he was ordered not to fast and pray. After his Koran was torn up. After other soldiers jeered and threw water bottles at him. After hisplatoon sergeant warned him to hide his faith to avoid getting a “beating” by fellow troops. But nothing changed. Then came the November shootings at Fort Hood and the arrest of a Muslim soldier he’d never met: Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, who is charged with killing 13 people and injuring more than 30 in a massacre that stunned the nation. And with it, things only got worse.

Staring at the note in his hands that dark February morning, Klawonn trembled with panic and frustration. His faith, he believed, had made him a marked man in the Army. Now the November rampage had only added to his visibility.

Now rewind to 1950. The Korean War was being fought. Like millions of others, I was drafted and – because I has been a musician and a newspaper reporter in civilian life – I was assigned to a Military Police unit – the 800th Military Police Company stationed at First Army Headquarters on Governor’s Island in scenic New York harbor. For reasons that remain mysteries to this day, almost everyone drafted into that unit had a college degree.

But first came basic training, which took us to Camp Kilmer in New Jersey. During World War II, Kilmer had played a major role in shipping GIs out to fight in Europe and the Pacific – and I and my fellow conscripts lived in terror of finding ourselves on a slow boat to Korea.

There was, however, an item at Kilmer that was even scarier than the idea of shipping out. That item came in the form of our company’s drill sergeant, let’s call him Sgt. Duffy. Sgt. Duffy was a compact-looking Regular Army soldier, with the distinctive red nose of a guy who drinks too much.

But his nose wasn’t the problem; his mouth was.

“OK, listen up you college Jewboys. Christ-killers.” Kikes can’t be good soldiers, but it’s my job to try, so I will.”

And try he did. He subjected us to weeks of scurrilous religious and ethnic hate speech, even including homespun epithets from the South, which none of us Northeasterners had ever heard.

He called us “Nigger-lovers,” though the major civil rights battles had not yet been fought. He insulted our families by describing us simultaneously as “the money changers who own all the banks” and “the communists who will take over the world and take our money away.”

He woke us up at 3 in the morning to send us out in the pouring rain carrying a full backpack and our M-1 rifles, to make us run around and around what seemed an endless parade ground track until we collapsed from exhaustion, and many of us did.

To Duffy’s credit, sort of, he stayed out in the rain with his running charges until breakfast time, all the while raging at Jewboys, Kollege-Kikes, Nigger-Lovers and Faggots.

Nor was this a case of subjecting new recruits to “tough love” to harden us for battle. This was a case of modifying the Army Basic Training Manual to accommodate a level of bigotry that would normally be ascribed to our military enemies.

And Duffy wasn’t the only bigot. We learned from recruits in other units that they were hearing much of the same. It was almost like it was Standard Operating Procedure.

But it wasn’t, of course. It just happened to be the kind of behavior about which the Army was comfortable turning a blind eye.

Well, I was about to write that I was certain the Army has changed exponentially since those Dark Ages of the Korean 1950s.  But what about Spec. Klawonn?

Ever since he was recruited, The Post reported, “he had been filing complaint after complaint with his commanders. After he was ordered not to fast and pray. After his Koran was torn up. After other soldiers jeered and threw water bottles at him. After his platoon sergeant warned him to hide his faith to avoid getting a ‘beating’ by fellow troops. But nothing changed.”

Is Islamophobia worse or better than anti-Semitism or homophobia or “Nigger-Loving”? The point is largely rhetorical; they’re all equally reprehensible.

The point is that this kind of stuff has been around in American society forever and, despite (or perhaps because of) our election of an African-American as our president, it shows few signs of going away any time soon. On the contrary, all the data suggests that hate-speech – and actions – are increasing.

Now, if you’d like to try to find solace in delusional thinking, you can pretend that the ugly racism, homophobia and generalized hate exhibited by the Tea Partiers over the weekend was not typical of how Americans think and feel.

You can pretend that this kind of garbage ended with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But, sorry to say, that law simply served to amp up the resistance of the White Supremacists. And it took many years for us to turn down their volume, though the craziness that sparked the volume is still with us.

So maybe it’s not “typical” anymore, but it’s there, still very much with us.

For me, the saddest part of this current saga is that the Republican Congressional leadership has been, shall we say, muted in its condemnation of the Tea Party protestors.

Even though most of them self-identify as Republicans, this should have been a time when Democratic and Republican politicians decided to rise above partisanship and present a truly united front unequivocally condemning hate speech, incitement and violence.

Alas, to date only the Democrats seem to be able to muster the courage to call out the Tea Partiers.

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2 Comments

  1. Absolutely disgusting.
    I thought Obama’s elections said something about America..actually I still think it does.
    I think, hope, that this kind of racism is from the fringe groups, who are always louder than the non fanatical citizens.
    But I blame a lot of the Arab and Muslim hate on the usual suspects talking up the Green Peril after 911 and a lot of the press promoting, or at least doing nothing to dispel it.

  2. Tea Partiers condemn harassment
    http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/35016.html

    AUSTIN — Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a vociferous critic of the federal health care overhaul, says some of the overheated rhetoric against it has gone too far.

    He told reporters today that, “Once you cross the line of passionate to threatening, then you’ve got problems.”
    http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6929640.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+houstonchronicle/topheadlines+%28chron.com+-+Top+Stories%29

    I hate to argue but of course they’ve called out the violence. These who praise war are frightened by the prospect of purpling their nail, not to mention they are authoritarian types.

    One dynamic that is odd for a WASP Texan is that there are many brown folk that buy our white supremacy. It’s funny I love the Mexican neighborhoods here, (and I mean the Mexican Mexican neighborhoods) and Black neighborhoods a legacy of segregation. We have a “white’s only” water fountain sign that still stands in our county clerks office in Dallas, at the insistence of a venerable “Black” politician.

    I love all the diversity this world has to offer. (There was a mulatto girl I was friends with in college, I was reluctant to date her, cause part of my attraction to her was that she was mulatto)

    Another friend of mine, another WASP who’s an atheist now married a “red boned black girl” who he loves and has adopted two of her children and has two of their own.

    I love the dark hair and skin of my Algerian wife. I think many white people look in-bred, especially blondes, such as myself. Does that make me racist?

    I’ve enjoyed a bit of pride for the irascible philosophy of the Brits skeptics. I’m Irish, English and Scottish. Though those are all the same people genetically, historically, linguistically, Brits call me a mongrel.

    Race is a funny thing. Growing up, we used to throw racial epithets at each other. There are a host of epithets that have some humor and color; I think we shouldn’t demonize the words but the disgusting manipulation of power.

    It’s human nature sadly, denying that doesn’t serve anything. Race is becoming less and less an issue for younger generations.

    I make a similar argument that Jews should correct Christians about the bible, that there are many texts that can’t be read literally. That the Trinitarian doctrine is in no way suggested by anything, that the messiah isn’t some guy you’re gonna ever worship. But here religious differences are used to pick at our brothers.

    But, then my children are in an life-long death match. The youngest resents his older brother’s mastery of games, skills, whatnot. The older, for fun or vindictive play will provoke and taunt his younger brother. And, their baby sister will jump on either one, exploiting her girlishness to avoid consequences, most of the time.

    Well harass over haircuts, politics, sports affiliation, town of origin, regionalism, tribalism, I, me, mine.

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