Some things simply defy one’s ability to comprehend.
Such as whether you should in any way, shape or form honor the existence of a certifiable hate group.
An East Texas newspaper, the Longview News-Journal, did what I — and many others — consider to be the unthinkable when it published a front-page story commemorating the 150th year since the founding of the Ku Klux Klan.
The paper had a big front-page picture of a cross-burning with hooded Klansmen standing around.
The outrage in the community has been profound. It also was expected. Residents in the town tucked in the Piney Woods of Deep East Texas are calling for a boycott of the paper.
Indeed, this is a remarkable thing to witness in the second decade of the 21st century.
The Klan deserves only to be condemned for the violence it has brought to Americans over the past century and a half.
I once lived and worked not too far from Longview. The southeast corner of Texas has a community or two perceived by many to be havens for Klan-type activity. You mention the name of the town Vidor to anyone near Beaumont — where I lived and worked for more than a decade — and you often get a sort of knowing glance and wince.
The town, about 10 miles east of Beaumont on Interstate 10, is full of fine folks. But they all live with the knowledge of what their town symbolizes to many people.
Indeed, East Texas has been scarred — as have many regions throughout the South — by the Klan.
As the Dallas Observer reported: “After the story — which was adapted from an Associated Press wire story — ran on Saturday, reader Hillary Sandlin laid out the case against the paper on Facebook. ‘This makes us look like a bunch of backwoods racists and only further reinforces incorrect stereotypes about most of the people in this area. These ‘chapters’ could be six guys who made a group, but the map makes it appear like it’s a thriving organization,’ she says.”
For the newspaper of record in Longview to single out a hate group has opened up some deep and festering wounds.
Simply unbelievable!