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Man shares two lessons he learned from disrupting a racist joke in a group of white people

"Can you speak up? Because our silence is not benign?"

Paul Scanlon/Facebook

Paul Scanlon shares his thoughts.

Racist jokes are one of the more frustrating manifestations of racism. Jokes in general are meant to be a shared experience, a connection over a mutual sense of humor, a rush of feel-good chemicals that bond us to those around us through laughter.

So when you mix jokes with racism, the result is that racism becomes something light and fun, as opposed to the horrendous bane that it really is.

The harm done with racist humor isn't just the emotional hurt they can cause. When a group of white people shares jokes at the expense of a marginalized or oppressed racial group, the power of white supremacy is actually reinforced—not only because of the "punching down" nature of such humor, but because of the group dynamics that work in favor of maintaining the status quo.

British author and motivational speaker Paul Scanlon shared a story about interrupting a racist joke at a table of white people at an event in the U.S, and the lessons he drew from it illustrate this idea beautifully. Watch:

Speaking up in a group setting where people have an unspoken sense of solidarity is difficult. Giving up social capital and being seen as a breaking a code of sorts is uncomfortable. But that difficulty and discomfort are not excuses for staying quiet. As Scanlon points out, our silence is not benign, it's malignant. Keeping quiet while a racist joke is being told and laughed at is harmful because it allows racism to go unchecked and white supremacy to remain secure.

racism, white supremacy, white solidarity, racial justice, anti-racism Anti-racist protest signs.Canva Photos.

An important point Scanlon makes is that not only do white folks allow harm to take place when we remain silent in the face of a friend, family member, colleague, or acquaintance making a racist joke, but we are actually rewarded for saying nothing. We maintain a sense of solidarity, we gain social capital, we're seen as agreeable and establish a sense of belonging. Those rewards are an insidious form of racism that many white people aren't even aware we participate in.

We have to decide ahead of time that we're going to give up that reward and embrace the inevitable awkwardness in order to do the right thing.

In a useful video based on her book Difference Matters: Communicating Social Identity, Professor Emerita of Communications and Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Colorado Denver, Brenda J. Allen, PhD, breaks down how each of us can use our privilege—whether that's white privilege, gender privilege, financial privilege, education privilege, etc.—for the good of others. Watch:

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We have to decide that ending racism is more important than embarrassment. The more people who stand firm in that decision, the less awkward it will become and the sooner we can redefine what social capital and solidarity really mean.

This article originally appeared on 6.30.20. It has been updated.

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Former Neo-Nazi shop and Klan museum is being transformed into a center for racial harmony

@abklmt/Twitter

The process of transforming a world where injustice persists into one where justice reigns is a long, slow, multi-faceted one. Much of it is invisible work, and progress is often two steps forward, one step back.

But occasionally, a project comes along that is both a symbolic and practical manifestation of change. The Echo Project in Laurens, South Carolina is one of those projects.

In 1996, the Redneck Shop and "World's Only Klan Museum" was opened in the historic Echo Theater in Laurens. The Echo had been a segregated theater during the Jim Crow era, and the town of Laurens itself was named for a wealthy slave-trader, Henry Laurens, so perhaps that shouldn't be surprising. But still.

With Confederate flags flying and a swastika hanging on the back wall, the Redneck Shop sold racist clothing, bumper stickers, KKK robes, and other paraphernalia to neo-Nazis for years.

In an odd series of events, the ownership of the building changed hands, which changed history. First it went from the former KKK Grand Wizard John Howard (who founded the shop) to his young protege Michael Burden (who lived in the building). During a temporary falling out with Howard and change of heart in 1997, Burden sold the deed to the building to Reverend David Kennedy, a Black civil rights activist whose church helped Burden out.

There was one caveat in the deed transfer—Howard would be allowed to keep running the Redneck Shop in the theater until he died.

Strange arrangement, right? Rev. Kennedy had held protests in front of the shop in the building he owned, but legally he couldn't close it. And this went on for years. In 2006, the theater even hosted the Aryan Nations' World Congress.

Finally, Rev. Kennedy took legal action to oust Howard and his racist shop and museum, and after a 4-year-long lawsuit, was successful. In May 2012, the Redneck Shop closed for good. (Kennedy's story has been turned into a feature film, "Burden," starring Forrest Whittaker, which was released last year.)

Now the theater is being prepped to become a diversity center that will focus on racial harmony and healing, which will also house a museum on racial reconciliation.

Regan Freeman helped co-found the Echo Project with Rev. Kennedy and has raised $300,000 toward the building's renovation. He's in the process of collecting stories of Black residents around Laurens to help build the history of the area, but it was a woman's tweet that led him to a disturbing treasure trove of items that will add something tangible to that history.

According to ABC News, Freeman responded to a tweet from a woman who owns the land that John Howard had lived on. She had bins of items that had belonged to Howard, which she was offering to the Southern Poverty Law Center. After some negotiations, the woman sold them to Freeman. The bins include posters of Hitler, a "Klan Rally Instructions" manual, photo negatives of cross burnings, and offensive caricatures of Black people, and "business cards" KKK members would leave Black families as a form of intimidation. (The cards said that their visit had been a social one, and "don't make the next visit a business call.")

"This stuff isn't from 100 years ago. Some of it is maybe from the last decade or two," Freeman told ABC News. "I think it is important to see it and see how deep this hate goes so you can see why we need to fight so hard to change."

Freeman plans to go through the items with historians from the University of South Carolina to determine which of them should be preserved and which will best inform the storytelling Freeman plans to do at the theater.

Though it's appalling that the theater housed a shrine to hatred a dozen years into the 21st century, the Echo Project offers a ray of hope that transformation is possible.

"We're hoping The Echo Project will become a place where every race could be respected — a place where diversity is not only just talked about, but is celebrated through action," Kennedy told ABC News.

Beatuiful. Can't wait to see it, Reverend Kennedy.

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Proud Boys tore down, stomped on, and set fire to Black churches' BLM signs—and it's barely news

Kristen Clarke/Twitter, Gabriella Quevedo/Twitter

Last weekend, in the wake of the Supreme Court dismissal of a Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, the Proud Boys gathered in Washington D.C. for a "Stop the Steal" rally. The irony in the slogan being lost on them, the far-right group took to the streets, and in the process, showed the world that they really are as racist as they are accused of being.

The Proud Boys frequently insist that they are not racist and not the same as white nationalists. They are a male-only group that describes themselves as "Western chauvinists," which essentially means they whine about equality movements infringing on their identity as the obviously superior descendants of Western Civilization's founders—which is a roundabout way of saying "yeah, we're pretty much racist."

The group tries to shield itself from accusations of racism by highlighting the racial identity of their Afro-Cuban chairman, Enrique Torres, in the organizational equivalent of "I can't be racist—I have Black family members!" But considering the fact that a previous Proud Boy member posted a whole screed about staging a coup in the group to officially recognize it as anti-Semitic white nationalists...welp.

Besides, it's pretty hard to argue that you're not racist when you gleefully vandalize Black churches, tearing signs that say "Black Lives Matter" off of them and then celebrating as you desecrate them. The Proud Boys engaged in this vandalism at two Washington D.C. churches, including the oldest Black Methodist church in the city. They ripped down large Black Lives Matter banners, breaking some apart, stomp all over one of them, and setting another one on fire.



Asbury United Methodist Church issued a statement from Senior Pastor Rev. Dr. Ianther M. Mills that highlights the history of racism with the church, which was founded decades before the Civil War. It's a beautiful message of resilience, but it's infuriating that it had to be written in the first place. It reads:

Since 1836, Asbury United Methodist Church has stood at the corner of 11&K Streets NW, Washington, DC. We are a resilient people who have trusted in God through slavery and the Underground Railroad, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement, and now as we face an apparent rise in white supremacy.

Last night demonstrators who were part of the MAGA gatherings tore down our Black Lives Matter sign and literally burned it in the street. The sign burning was captured on Twitter. It pained me especially to see our name, Asbury, in flames. For me it was reminiscent of cross burnings. Seeing this act on video made me both indignant and determined to fight the evil that has reared its ugly head. We had been so confident that no one would ever vandalize the church, but it has happened.

We are a people of faith. As horrible and disturbing as this is for us now—it doesn't compare with the challenges and fears the men and women who started Asbury, 184 years ago, faced. So, we will move forward, undaunted in our assurance that Black Lives Matter and we are obligated to continue to shout that truth without ceasing. We are assured that our church is surrounded by God's grace and mercy.

Sadly, we must point out that if this was a marauding group of men of color going through the city, and destroying property, they would have been followed and arrested. We are especially alarmed that this violence is not being denounced at the highest levels of our nation and instead the leaders of this movement are being invited to the White House.

Asbury United Methodist Church abhors violence of any kind. We call upon all to join us in prayer for our community, church, and the people who are responsible for this hateful behavior. We believe this is a wakeup call for all to be more vigilant and committed to anti-racism and building a beloved community, and we invite you to join us. Our congregation will continue to stand steadfast—"we will not be moved." We press on in the name of the Lord!"

The question of whether these acts are racist isn't up for debate. If your understanding of Black Lives Matter is so skewed that you decry it as a "Marxist" organization or movement—which is how Tarrio himself describes it—then you either haven't been listening to enough voices in the anti-racism world or you've been taken by racist propaganda. And if you do understand that the phrase Black Lives Matter literally just means that Black people's lives do not matter less than other people's, and you choose to destroy any and all expressions of that phrase, that's most definitely racist. There's a reason the incidents are being investigated as hate crimes.

For those who feel tempted to say, "Well what about the destruction of property that ANTIFA/BLM engaged in?" here are some thoughts on that whataboutism:

First, let's be clear that the Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA movements are two entirely separate things. And Black Lives Matter isn't one monolithic thing, but rather a broad movement that includes some organizations that bear the name, and a whole lot more people who support the message of anti-racism. As far as violence, the BLM protests this spring and summer were enormous, widespread, and almost entirely peaceful. The individual spates of rioting and looting, despite being broadcast all over the media and pushed hard by certain right-wing outlets, were not a defining feature of the BLM movement at all—especially considering how much of the violence was actually carried out by white supremacists and Boogaloo Bois intent on undermining the BLM message.

ANTIFA, on the other hand, is its own movement with its own ideology and methods. For those who don't understand what those are, the gist is "Fascism needs to be fought by whatever means necessary." You don't have to agree with their methods—I myself don't—but being against ANTIFA's ideology is basically like saying "Nah, fascism is fine!"

While all acts of violence and destruction are wrong and ultimately counterproductive, they're not all equivalent. Some acts of violence are just dumb humans being dumb humans, regardless of identity or ideology, but some are purposeful statements. There's a difference between a historically oppressed people making a statement about ongoing injustice by desecrating a symbol of their historical oppression, and a group of people making a statement by desecrating messages of equality and justice from the churches of historically oppressed people. One is an expression of liberation from the chains of injustice; the other is an intimidating rattling of those same chains. While I don't condone violence or destruction of any kind, it's disingenuous to create false equivalencies between people who are fighting for equality and justice and people who are fighting against it.

And for a final look at how the Proud Boys operate, check out how they reacted when they thought people who actually think Black lives matter were coming toward them.

If this is what "being proud of Western Civilization" looks like, that's a sad statement about Western Civilization. These actions should be condemned by all.

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Fired North Carolina cops are a reminder of how white supremacists have infiltrated law enforcement

Photo by Jacky Lam on Unsplash

Three officers were fired this week from the Wilmington, North Carolina police department after dash cam footage revealed horrifically racist conversations between them.

But before we delve into that, let's look at a brief timeline of select white supremacist incidents in police departments across the U.S.—and the FBI warning that came in the middle of them—to add some context to this story.

In 1991, a group of Los Angeles sheriff's deputies were discovered to be part of a "neo-Nazi, white supremacist gang" known as The Vikings—membership that department officials knew about and did nothing to address.

In 1999, an unknown number of officers in three different Cleveland, Ohio police districts were found to have scrawled racist or Nazi graffiti throughout police quarters, including restrooms and locker rooms.

In 2001, two officers in Williamson County, Texas were fired after they were discovered to be members of the Ku Klux Klan.

In 2006, the FBI detailed the specific threat of white supremacists purposefully infiltrating police departments. Though largely (and frustratingly) redacted, an intelligence bulletin describes how white nationalists and skinheads try to blend into police departments by hiding their true beliefs (a practice known as "ghost skinning") with the purpose of disrupting investigations into supremacist groups and recruiting other white supremacists.

Moving right along, in 2014, a Florida deputy police chief and another officer were fired after an FBI informant outed them as members of the Ku Klux Klan.

In 2015, a ProPublica article describing copious racist messages in a New York cop blog also pointed to other racist incidents around the same time in various U.S. cities' police departments.

And now, here we are in 2020, watching three Wilmington, North Carolina officers lose their jobs after accidentally recording their blatantly racist and violent conversations.

This is by no means a full list, and North Carolina incident is by no means any less egregious than those that preceded it. In a routine review of dash cam footage, former officer Kevin Piner was heard talking to another officer about the protests for racial justice. He said the police department was only concerned with "kneeling down with the black folks." He called a Black officer in his department "bad news" and a "piece of shit," saying, "Let's see how his boys take care of him when shit gets rough, see if they don't put a bullet in his head."

In a conversation with another officer later in the day, Piner called a woman he arrested the day before a "negro" and "n----r." He referred to a Black magistrate judge as "fucking negro magistrate," saying, "She needed a bullet in her head right then and move on. Let's move the body out of the way and keep going."

As if that weren't bad enough, the two officers talked about the possibility of a "civil war" coming, with Piner saying he was going to buy an assault rifle. "We are just gonna go out and start slaughtering them fucking ni—–. I can't wait. God, I can't wait," he said, followed by saying that such a war was needed to "wipe 'em off the fucking map. That'll put 'em back about four or five generations."

The full report of what was recorded can be found here.

And a news conference with the city council and the new Wilmington police chief, Donny Williams, who had to deal with this mess on his first day on the job:

There's a lot of talk about implicit racial bias—racial prejudices that we don't even know we have—in policing. While that's an important consideration, we can't overlook the fact that there are also actual white supremacists within some police departments. How many? No one knows. Those mentioned here are just some of the ones who have been caught and identified. But there have clearly been enough of them that the FBI felt the need to issue a bulletin about it and warn that it was a threat. And what was done with that information in that warning after it came out? Did police departments change the way they screen recruits or do a deep dive into their own ranks? Unclear.

No one is saying that all police officers are blatant white supremacists, obviously. But we've seen far too many stories of officers voicing white supremacist beliefs and far too many officers and officials turning the other way instead of outing them and ousting them.

In 2016, Samuel Jones, professor of law at Chicago's John Marshall School of Law, told PBS News Hour that neither the FBI or police departments had established systems for vetting people for white supremacist ties.

"I cannot imagine that the FBI today could issue a report concerning any kind of threat without people being alarmed and wanting immediate action," he said. "But in this case there seems to be almost an acceptance of it. The thought is 'it's just ideology and they have a right to believe this.'"

The problem is "just ideology" isn't a small thing when we're talking about people with the means, power, and authority to take people's lives. A police officer cannot serve and protect the public if they believe that a large percentage of the public isn't worth serving or protecting. No matter what our personal beliefs are about policing, we should at least all be able to agree on that.


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