Watch Out For the Terrorists Within

Two neo-Nazi skinheads were reportedly arrested in a plot uncovered by The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to assassinate Barack Obama and kill 88 black high school students in Tennessee.

I hope this is not a symptom of a greater ill.

I was asked recently by a very prominent attorney what did I think would happen after Obama won. I told him there would be a rise in overt racism in this country, perhaps something like we haven't seen since the 1950s.

While race has obviously become less of a factor in this country, which seems to be heading toward its first African-American president, there are still pockets and factions in this country that are still very much stuck in the past.

And while many of us are rightfully focusing on the economy or perhaps an assault by terrorists from another country, history tells me we have to check the terrorists within...

This latest neo-Nazi plot is a symptom of a cancer that exists in this country. And I believe it will grow uglier if and when Obama wins. There have a been a few indicators: During some McCain/Palin campaign rallies there have been shouts of "kill him!" and "off with his head!" referring to Obama.

There have been references to "fried chicken and watermelon" and other derogatory ads. There was even a McCain "volunteer" from Pennsylvania who claimed that a 6-foot-4 black man assaulted her outside of an ATM, fondling her breasts and carving a B for Barack into her cheek.

That one turned out to be a hoax (I knew it was when I heard it... but we can discuss that later). But there's history here.

Susan Smith accused a black man of carjacking her and stealing her two kids. We later found out that she drowned her own children in a South Carolina lake. In 1989 in Boston, Charles Stuart sent police on a statewide chase of a black who he claimed stopped them at a light, demanded money and then shot his pregnant wife in the stomach. We later found out he had his own pregnant wife and unborn child killed.

When the going gets tough, people look for a scapegoat. Blacks have filled that role for some in the past.

This week vandals tore down a sign marking the site where Emmett Till's brutally battered body was dragged from the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi. In Texas, just last month a 24-year-old Texas man, Brandon McClelland, was going on a beer run across the state line into Oklahoma when he was hit and run over by a truck and dragged for 70 feet under the truck, his body parts shredded along the way. One of the attackers is part of a white supremacist group.

Sound familiar? In Texas in 1998, James Byrd was dragged behind a pickup truck by a gang of white supremacists until his torso came off.

I believe we have a very short memory. If we fail to remember our history, we are doomed to repeat it.

It was not so long ago-less than 50 years ago-when blacks were forced to sit on the back of buses, couldn't vote, couldn't go to schools alongside whites, couldn't eat at lunch counters and were relegated to second-class citizenship. When blacks fought for equality, there was a reign of terror unleashed on them that included lynchings, being burned alive, castrations, the bombing of churches with little girls inside and a host of horrific acts.

In 'Without Sanctuary' there are pictures of lynchings of blacks and others in this country. In these pictures you see white folks with their children on their shoulders, pointing and smiling. It's chilling to think that human beings would bring their children to witness such horrific acts and do so with glee, sending post cards with pieces of the remains of the victims attached.

But it happened. And those children are now adults in America somewhere.

As we attempt to turn the page on all of that, we must also be careful, watchful and vigilant to not let a few evil, hateful, ignorant beings ruin the possibility and the hope of what American can be. To borrow a phrase, we must never forget.

United we stand. But the other part of that is real: Divided we fall. Just as those planes didn¹t distinguish white from black, Republican from Democrat, rich from poor on September 11th, nor will the next terrorist attack or this current economic crisis choose sides.