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Prejudice is sneaky. It creeps up on you like The Shadow and
clouds your mind with a multiplicity of faces. Unfortunately, the worst
sort of prejudice isn’t the easily dismissed, mouth-breathing skinhead
variety. The most devious tentacle slithers in initially smelling like
logic. Barbara Richardson-Crouch, executive director of the
Moscow/Latah County Economic Development Council, recently announced
that she and her husband were leaving Moscow because our town had
grown, and was growing, increasingly racist. The thing is, Richardson
is absolutely right; Moscow has changed since my arrival. At the risk
of assigning blame unfairly or intolerantly, I’ll try to be diplomatic
about this. The catalyst of this change, indirectly or not, is Christ
Church and its direct affiliates. For those of you
unfamiliar with Christ Church, it is a local fundamentalist
denomination whose umbrella shelters a collection of businesses and
schools. The capo de capo of Christ Church is Doug Wilson, a
neo-Confederate minister and publishing gadfly. Wilson has enjoyed a
great deal of local infamy over the past several years due to the
publication of a booklet titled “Southern Slavery as it Was.” “Southern
Slavery” defends its titular institution as an interracial utopia
peopled by happy, content slaves and their good Christian masters. It
included the following gems: “Slave life was to them (slaves) a life of
plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care,”
and “There has never been a multiracial society which has existed with
such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world.” The
booklet is a devious, mini-magnum opus of manipulation employing
cherry-picked, distorted citation and decades-defunct history, defended
by Wilson as a Biblical justification of slavery. The co-author of the
booklet is Steve Wilkins, a founder of the League of the South (LOTS),
a group advocating the re-secession of the South. Incidentally, they
are labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Despite
the absolutely blatant assertion that white people owning black people
was not only acceptable, but a paradise of subservience to Caucasians,
the authors are quick to point out that they’re not supremacists. It’s
true that nowhere in “Southern Slavery” are racial slurs or
beat-you-over-the-head declarations of white power present, but the
lines leave a wide enough berth to be read between, that one could
drive a truck through them. As an indicator of LOTS’ politics
regarding race and history, check out the “suggested reading” section
on its Web site. There are three books suggested; two of them are
revisionist love letters to Nathan Bedford Forrest, confederate general
and principal founder of the Ku Klux Klan. The other is an attack on
abolitionist John Brown and, according to the review, the “fanatacism
and cowardice of the Abolitionist movement by their use of others to do
their dirty work.” It’s odd to think of a man who gave his
life to free human beings from slavery and those who supported him as
“fanatics” and “cowards,” but I guess I’m just an intolerista. Once
again, for those of you new to Moscow, the word “intolerista” is
Wilson’s creation. It’s A Rush Limbaugh-esque (Feminazi) frantic
flailing for some pithy addition to the local lexicon. I’m
sorry, but this tired, double-speak semantic tap-dancing that
broad-strokes anyone who calls him on his ugly bigotry is worn out.
It’s not intolerant to call for tolerance. Refraining from
using the n-word or declaring white supremacy is not an absence of
racism. Maybe Doug Wilson isn’t a racist; maybe he believes it’s God’s
will that people of all colors and creeds should be able to own, beat
and rape each other as long as they pay lip service to the Bible. The
fact remains that Southern slavery, as it was a nightmare for the
blacks who were owned by white people, should never be celebrated. And
the celebration of it is drawing a line in Moscow, with those who
sugarcoat and glamorize a shameful American holocaust on one side, and
us intoleristas on the other.
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