A Chilling Note From a Student: Classmates Discuss Shooting Obama

Over at my magazine's site, starting over a week ago, we have been chronicling local anti-Obama incidents, many far from the national spotlight, usually involving racist attacks of a verbal, physical or even criminal nature. A few days ago, the Associated Press and some other news outlets picked up on it. But at Editor & Publisher we are still receiving tips and personal accountsv every day, often from small towns in both red and blue states.

Here is the latest just this morning from a student in Iowa (I have her name and address but won't release it here), a state Obama carried rather easily. It is much in line with reported incidents of other school kids, some as young as 7 or 8, talking about "assassinating" Obama. Of course, they couldn't carry that out themselves but what is chilling is that they are likely just repeating language or threats they hear at home.

Here is today's note:

I'm not sure who to email on this, but there have been several derogatory things said about Obama in our school, and one of them got a student suspended. I go to a school in a little town called Letts, Iowa. We are pretty down home, country road farm kids out here. But never, in my 11 years at the school, have I ever heard the conversation take such a negative turn.

The remark that the student was suspended for was this, "Well, it's called the White House for a reason. We need to get that God damn N----- out of there."

There were other remarks, mostly by students who hunt. They were discussing how far a shotgun could shoot, and decided that they could get to a high enough vantage-point to shoot Obama from at least 2 miles away, without anyone ever knowing where the shot came from.

"Another Kennedy" they were saying.

Last night a reader tipped us off to an incident in another Obama-friendly state, Michigan, in the town of Buchanan. Members of the South County Democratic Club woke up Saturday to find their building vandalized with swastikas and racist comments, spray painted on the side of the structure. These kind of incidents have been too common to list all of them.

And to show the true national, if scattered, character of this, I woke up this morning to find this editorial in my local paper, the Journal News, here in deep-blue New York State. The official is from the city of Ossining (the TV home of Don Draper of Mad Men):

Anyone naive enough to believe that Barack Obama's landmark victory would mean an end to racial bigotry and stupidity need look no farther than Ossining for proof positive that we still have a ways to go. Americans made history by electing Obama the first black president; what they didn't do, by any stretch, is wipe away years of ingrained racial prejudice, insensitivity and, once again, stupidity.

Thomas Reddy, assistant village fire chief, deserved a swift boot to the curb for circulating a "knock-knock" joke that ends with a caricature of Obama and the words "Eyes Yo New Prezident." As a former police detective and top fire official - someone who many people want to respect and admire - Reddy is supposed to be a leader in racially diverse Ossining, not an embarrassment. He's supposed to set the bar for better conduct, not lower it. He let all of us down.

Then there's this: Just this morning, the Mount Desert Islander in Maine reported that a third effigy of a black man had been found hanging from a tree in the area since the election. This was was in Somesville, following reports of others in Tremont and Bar Harbort. The paper observes: "State police also are investigating the incidents, which are believed to be in response to the election of Sen. Barack Obama as president."
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Greg Mitchell is editor of Editor & Publisher and its popular new blog. His most recent book, on Iraq and the media, is "So Wrong for So Long."

Comments

[XME]

I'm so disgusted by such people. I just have to keep reminding myself that over 50% of voters supported Obama, and I know for a fact that many who voted for McCain did so because they are hard-core Republicans (i.e. one-issue voters), not because they are racists.

So, we have a long way to go, and there are a lot of very hateful (and scary!) people in this country...but they are fewer than they used to be, and there of fewer of them every year.

[BeltwayBette]

Inspiring blind hatred in an innocent child is abusive to the child.

I have been shocked to hear quickly muttered racist remarks in my presence -- an openly Obama supporter -- now that he has won the election. I know I will never see those neighbors the same way again.

.

[Lady Rose]

There is a brave teen who spoke out about the hate and racism she experienced in her Alaska high school - link below. She wore an Obama tshirt to school and the other kids spoke of shooting Obama and other hateful speech and NOT one single teacher or adult said anything to stop it. This brave young lady needs to know she has lots of support and appreciation from the lower 48!
Link to article:
http://www.frontiersman.com/articles/2008/11/17/opinion/columnists/doc491d0c71aa9b4424387056.txt#blogcomments

[Shrinath]

Thanks for the link.

[ohioan73]

The only answer to this dilemma of passing down generational bigotry is proper education. The entire public school education system needs to be revamped and drastically improved. Its very, very hard to brainwash a child who's more educated than his/her parents. I see the examples in my own family. Even though we are black, there is a colorism problem in our family that exists with a lot of older generation blacks. My mother was influenced by it. As a light skinned black person, she used to think nothing of using the worst epithets against fellow black people who were darker skinned. My grandfather was much worse. Me, I was having NONE of colorism. There was no way I was going to think I was better or different than any other black person just because I didn't look that "African".

Education is the key. Teach the children they way we were taught back in the 80s against littering and pollution. Look around. The world is much cleaner.

[bwilder]

We've made history in this election. Now we need to make history in the hearts and minds of all
citizens. History is a look at the past and involves studying the ways and the changes that occurred in times gone by. We have taken a big step here and it is historical. But we are far from erasing the
struggle of race and prejudice and that history is yet to be written.

It's up to all of us to do our part, just like we did in the election.

[BCubedReg]

I keep asking myself are we really that barbaric a country and then I read stuff like this and say.. YES!

[vippy]

children are the mouth pieces of their parents. Time to put a stop to this and show some respect
and respect for other humans like they are taught in church but then again, they may preach the
opposite as I have noticed lately.

[myke3000]

Yes, what they are taught in church.... but when the churches say "no communion for those who voted for Obama", as one southern church has said, then what does that imply? That he is evil or impure or not worthy?

Again - it is fear that is played up in the most ignorant and uneducated parts of our nation, and that fear was trumped up as much as possible by both the Clinton campaign and then the McCain campaign. Although they didn't win the elections, they won in preying upon people's fears and that isn't so easily wiped away with a photo op and a shaking of hands after a concession. That is embedded and takes a lot to dig out.

I just hope our educators have a big enough shovel to help with the students who need to be dug out of this.

[knowBuddhaU]

Our intentions materialize our realities; my intentions are materializing these words; your intention, o reader my Reader, keeps you passing your eyes over them, intending to hear what I have to say.

Intentions materialize reality. Whose intentions are now materializing this wave of hate?

Nobody told all these people to do all these hateful things. Listen, even though these words, right here, have never been spoken, nevertheless you now hear them within you. So whose voice is this?

This is what Scott McClellan called "manipulating the media narrative." As a poet, I call it myth-jacking.

Take a close look at McCain's concession speech. Right at the start, at the mere mention of our next president's name, the crowd starts booing., doing violence even to Obama's name.

McCain holds out his hands, attempting to tamp down the hate realized by his intentions, to jack the nation with hateful lies about Obama's faith, patritotism, and person.

Propagandists use words in only a mechanical fashion, shooting message pellets at target demographics with the violent intention of forcing changes in behavior in the direction they dictate.

Compare the Pentagon's Message Force Multiplier program to deploying snipers: Hide intentions; shoot mouths off; and kill just as directly as pulling a trigger, dropping a bomb or launching a rocket-propelled grenade.

Who had the intention to jack the election? By the principle of command responsibility, we must now hold them accountable for the foreseeable--and abundantly predicted--effects of their deliberate actions.

[Shrinath]

Hi, all goof with you?

Conditioned is a word that springs to mind. Programmed is another term. The very name is supposed to trigger an event (booing, shouting obscenities, violent thoughts). And who is to blame? I put it squarely on the neocon apparatchiks who festered this environment.

This is not exactly like Clockwork Orange and even an analogy, but the last 8 years has been peppered with hate and general bias against anyone but their likes. The very simplistic mindset ( U generously use the term mind here) of Bush has been the first shot. Us and Them. Black and White. Good vs Evil. The voices of reasoning and intelligence took a grand leave for the years 00-06. The awakening happened thankfully in the nick of time. It is going to take long time to heal the ruptures created in the fabric of this very colorful society. Though they evoke the names of the founding fathers very generously I wonder if they ever read the Declaration of Independence. In fact this particular line was made famous in a movie too.

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." - from the Declaration.

[Shrinath]

Sorry, cannot seem to type properly. It is to be read as "Hi, all good with you"

[Freesia2]

This is so hard to read. I'm glad you're writing it and keeping on top it all Mr. Mitchell, but this is so hard to look at.