On Saturday, April 4, I will be speaking in Washington DC at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool Steps from 4 to 6 PM. I will be addressing the rise of racial supremacism in America and what we must do about it as a free people. I will be asking Americans to be counted in defiance against racial supremacism by signing our petition. I will be asking Americans to join me in prayer at 6 PM to pray for those whose hearts are hardened by hate and who minds reject our universal human rights of equality and liberty.
April 4 is the day that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated at 6 PM in Tennessee in 1968. We honor Dr. King in many ways today. But we must remember that he gave his life so that we as a nation could gain the courage of our convictions as free men and women today. We must also remember that he gave his life so that the words “all men are created equal” were not just on paper and not just in our memorials, but were a part of how we live as Americans and as free people. On April 4, I ask you to take a moment at 6 PM, wherever you are, whatever you are doing, to say a word of thanks, and to say a prayer for those who have yet to learn this lesson in humanity. On April 4, I ask you to live your life being responsible for equality and liberty, so that Dr. King’s sacrifice will never be in vain.
This April, also in Tennessee, we will see the court appearance of two white supremacists who had stated that they sought to murder 88 black Americans and to murder Barack Obama. These two accused white supremacists in Tennessee, Daniel Cowart and Paul Schlesselman, showed their hate in October by shooting at a church in Tennessee, simply because black Americans worshipped there. A year ago last April, Daniel Cowart joined his white supremacist Nazi friends in a birthday party for their idol, Adolf Hitler. Like many racial supremacists, these two met via hate groups on the Internet. Daniel Cowart was a member of that “veritable supermarket of online hate,” the white supremacist Nazi StormFront group. Such hate groups and racial supremacist groups are growing in America today, and it is time that we publicly reject them.
There are some in America who are angry simply because a black American man became president. They want to bring back the days when such a thing was just a dream. Now many of us have differences on politics. We have differences on policies. We have differences on the right approach to take America and the world in the future. As a democratic nation, we need to work out those differences – together.
But the people I am talking about today don’t merely have a difference in politics. They don’t merely have a difference on policies or programs. They have a difference on the meaning of what it means to be a human being. They have a difference on the very idea that “all men are created equal.” But to those who still think that “all men are created equal” is a question, I have news for those people. “All men are created equal” is not a question. It is a declaration.
Our shared human rights of equality and liberty are universal, not just for all Americans, but for all humanity. Those who attack others because of their race don’t just attack that race – they attack all of humanity. Their racial slurs are slurs against all people. Their defacing of property is defacing of all our homes. Their racial hate is hatred against all of humanity.
You can’t hide behind your race and believe that this growth of racial supremacism is not your problem. As we will also see this April in a trial in New Orleans, a white supremacist Ku Klux Klan leader Raymond Foster will be on trial, not for killing a black woman, but for killing a white woman who was recruited to join the Ku Klux Klan and who changed her mind. The penalty for rejecting such white supremacism by the Ku Klux Klan was DEATH – even if you are white.
Hate is color-blind. Supremacism is color-blind. We must consistently reject hate, we must consistently reject supremacism, because hate and supremacism consistently rejects humanity itself.
I have supported black American politicians in the past, and I know about the hate that I have seen from others for doing so. I have had a brick thrown through my car window for daring to publicly support a black American for elected office. They didn’t ask me what my race was before they threw that brick. They didn’t care about my race when they showed me hate in person. Hate is color-blind. Even in this 21st century America, such racial hate and supremacism still exists, and now it is beginning to grow.
As the Southern Poverty Law Center has reported, there are 926 hate groups it has found in America today. Those are 900 good reasons to defy racial supremacism. I ask you to take a moment to look at this map of hate groups. It is an important visual to see with your own eyes to grasp the magnitude of the racial supremacist problem before us today. You will the many white supremacist Ku Klux Klan groups, the many Nazi groups, the many black supremacist groups, and others. This growth of racial supremacism is a national disease and a national disgrace.
I have a copy of this map of these 900 hate groups on my wall to remind myself that the terrorist problem we face is not only just one kind – it is a supremacist kind of every type. While we are well aware of terrorist plots of other kinds against America, many forget the racial supremacist plots of violence and terrorism. Many forget the goals of white supremacists to build a cyanide bomb to use on the American homeland. Many forget Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh’s links to white supremacist, Nazi organizations. Many are unaware of reports in February 2009 of a white supremacist Neo-Nazi’s plot to develop a radioactive “dirty bomb” in Maine. And if a plot to kill nearly one hundred black Americans by those on trial in Tennessee is not a “terrorist plot,” then what is a terrorist plot? Those who spread hatred and supremacism are always a threat to our security, as well as to our equality and liberty. Their goals of hatred and violence have no racial boundaries as to their victims. Their war of hate is a war against all humanity.
So if anyone wonders if there is a good reason to defy racial supremacism, you can point to this map of hate groups and show them 900 good reasons today. You can tell them what racial supremacist organizations have done and continue to do in spreading hate and plotting violence in America.
But we don’t need 900 reasons, we only need one reason – our universally shared human rights of equality and liberty.
The threat of racial supremacists to all of humanity is the same threat that every other supremacist group poses to all of humanity. They are no different. They are not an afterthought to other threats. They are the same threat, the same problem. They demand the same response and attention from all of us.
That response must be a consistent defiance to those who seek to promote supremacism and hate – whether they are people at work, people we know, people we meet, or people in our own families. We can only honor Dr. King’s sacrifice by showing zero tolerance for supremacism and hatred, and by telling those who we see that would promote such ideologies – that we support humanity. We support humanity’s inalienable human rights of equality and liberty.
We must NEVER try to match hate with hate. Our defiance of supremacism is not hate. Our unwillingness to submit to those who would destroy our freedoms is not hate. Our resolve is our refusal to give in to fear. Our determination is to say to supremacism in America – never again. But we must never hate supremacists — we must hope for the redemption of supremacists in accepting our shared human rights of equality and liberty.
We need to teach those who hate that our support for the universal truths of human equality and liberty, and our respect for the dignity of humanity, is greater and larger than hate.
So on April 4 at 6 PM, I will ask you do to the right thing, the human thing, for those who are misguided and angry, for those who are consumed with rage and anger, and for those whose vision has been blinded by hate so much that they no longer realize that there is not a white America and a black America – that there is not any racial America – that there is only ONE America. That America – is our United States of America.
Do the right thing about those consumed by hatred and supremacism — and forgive them. Seek their redemption back into the family of humanity. Show that humanity’s love is greater than its hate. Demonstrate that we have learned the lessons from the past, and that we will forge a better future.
Show them that we are not afraid.
