The Southern Poverty Law Center released its annual hate group report and the numbers are staggering.
‘ The SPLC is a nonprofit civil rights organization from Montgomery, Ala. and, according to its Web site, www.Splcenter.org, the number of hate groups in the U.S. on the rise.
‘ ‘The SPLC identified’ 926 hate groups active in 2008, up more than 4 percent from the 888 groups in 2007 and far above the 602 groups documented in 2000,’ according to the report.’
Most of the 926 hate groups are in the South, but California has the highest number of documented hate groups with 84. Texas has 66 identified hate groups, seven of which are in Houston.
The center’s report, ‘The Year in Hate,’ shows the number of hate groups has risen 54 percent since 2000. A list and interactive state-by-state map of these groups can also be viewed on the center’s Web site.
For the past 10 years, hate groups have been fueled by the increasing number of Latino immigrants into the United States. More recent motives for racism are the economy, which continues to plummet, and the inauguration of America’s first black president.
Don Black, a 55-year-old former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard and white nationalist, boasts a large increase of readership and membership to his Web site since Obama’s inauguration.’
A plan to assassinate President Obama was hatched in Tennessee before he was even elected.
The two suspects also planned to shoot and decapitate dozens of black people, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said.
Jack Glaser, associate professor of public policy at the University of California-Berkeley, said the fear of non-whites gaining too much power drives the growth of these hate groups.’
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s comment that America is ‘a nation of cowards’ when it comes to racial issues might have put many Americans on the defensive and dissuaded many of us from actually discussing race openly. Now is the time to do so.
Racism stems from ignorance and people need to be informed. We, the people – not the politicians – must be the ones to make the difference.
