Note: Some parts of this article are NSFW
The conflagration in Ferguson, Missouri (perhaps rightfully) overshadowed other incidents of racism and bigotry in the country last week. Michael Brown's death and the subsequent reactions by Ferguson and law enforcement have been news fodder for every media: everyone seems to taking a polarizing stance, with very few pundits in the media taking a moderate tone. For example, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson* of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny called Brown a "thug" just like Trayvon Martin.
Rev. Peterson is African-American.
Right Wing Watch
"I've said from day one that Michael Brown is a thug," Peterson declared, using as evidence "the fact that he was running from the cops, period, because good folks do not run from police officers, they follow their instructions."Rev. Peterson has obviously never lived in an inner city.
Of course, we all know that Michael Brown was really a "menacing" giant hopped up on marijuana because Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association says so. But there were moments when Christian pastors (not Christian enough for Fischer) who participated in protests risked arrest and one Christian minister was shot with a rubber bullet trying to mediate.
The Callousness Of It All
But there were other incidents of racism and bigotry, maybe not as notorious as Ferguson, but just as damning ... and callous.
Yes, Pastor James David Manning is still with us in Harlem, spewing hatred via the Word of God (in itself, blasphemous, but Manning certainly doesn't see it that way). He added Ebola for good measure later on in one of his broadcasts.
Not to be outdone in the realm of the callous, Rev. T.W. Jenkins told the mother of a young man that his church would not bury her son because he was gay - over the phone while she was next to her son's casket at the wake the night before.
Huffington Post:
Yes, it's actually on the docket. Kenya has yet to learn from its African neighbor, Uganda, what the consequences are for showing such medieval inhumanity. The idea, of course, was imported from the U.S., but Rev. Scott Lively disavows any involvement.
Anti-abortion Bigotry Tunes In On Robin Williams' Death
From RH Reality Check:
Oh, the lengths to which people will go ...But there were other incidents of racism and bigotry, maybe not as notorious as Ferguson, but just as damning ... and callous.
Yes, Pastor James David Manning is still with us in Harlem, spewing hatred via the Word of God (in itself, blasphemous, but Manning certainly doesn't see it that way). He added Ebola for good measure later on in one of his broadcasts.
Not to be outdone in the realm of the callous, Rev. T.W. Jenkins told the mother of a young man that his church would not bury her son because he was gay - over the phone while she was next to her son's casket at the wake the night before.
Huffington Post:
Kendall Capers found no hope at New Hope Missionary Baptist Church after the death of his husband, Julion Evans, who died at age 42 from amyloidosis. Evans' family are members of the New Hope congregation in Tampa, Florida, and Capers arranged to have the service there.
However, the funeral was abruptly canceled the night before it was scheduled to happen. The family was informed with a phone call from New Hope that said that it would be "blasphemous" to hold the service at the church, reported KCCI.
The cancellation came after members of New Hope noticed Evans' obituary, which named Capers as the "surviving husband," according to WFLA.
Bill to stone gays to death introduced in Kenya
Yes, it's actually on the docket. Kenya has yet to learn from its African neighbor, Uganda, what the consequences are for showing such medieval inhumanity. The idea, of course, was imported from the U.S., but Rev. Scott Lively disavows any involvement.
Anti-abortion Bigotry Tunes In On Robin Williams' Death
From RH Reality Check:
"Kevin Burke [contributor, Pro-Life News]drew the card this week with a repugnant attempt to blame the suicide of comedian and actor Robin Williams Monday on, you guessed it, abortion. ...In the article, Burke focuses on the fact that Williams had a girlfriend in the 1970s that had an abortion, which Williams brought up in a Playboy interview in 1992. From this information, Burke wildly speculates that pretty much every sad or bad thing that happened to Williams was because of this abortion....The fact that Williams was unabashedly pro-choice is also rationalized away in a nasty manner..."
Bigotry Gone Viral
The following video is certainly NSFW and probably the most virulent anti-Muslim rant to go viral. It spawned a plethora of shocking comments, but it may have spawned a social media star: her name, Debra Wilkerson has become synonymous with hatred and so has given birth to some supportive video responses. The one below may be a parody, of course, but there are still people out there who actually believe that the victim of Debra's hate could have been a terrorist because he was Muslim. (This did, of course, happen in the state of Alaska where one former governor espoused waterboarding as baptism).
Since the video has gone viral in only the last 48 hours (1.2 million views), there is no word from Debra as to how she is dealing with the notoriety. While some say she was under the influence of something other than pure hate, any explanation for this kind of behavior would be considered lame. "The crazy racist lady" may be in hiding for some time.
Hatred No Longer In Hiding
Thanks to technology and the openness of social media, hatred has been hard to hide: responses to bigotry like the Ferguson situation are vivid and immediate. Cover-ups are more difficult. Tempers are shown as raw and unrelenting. Even politicians have to be very, very careful of what they do and say: the ones that don't care (like Sarah Palin), pay the price in scorn and humiliation while trying for their "niche".
The only thing we have to fear today is becoming numb to the bombardment of hatred that still fills the country.
From Wikipedia:
On September 21, 2005, Peterson penned a column for WorldNetDaily, in which he suggested the majority of the African-American people stranded in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina were "welfare-pampered", "lazy" and "immoral". ... Peterson has also thanked "God and white people" for slavery—adding that if it weren't for the slave trade, blacks might have never made it to the United States—and described traveling on slave ships as akin to "being on a crowded airplane".[8]
