re: Ole Miss police looking for men who defaced James Meredith's statue

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Pathetic how Ole Miss gets used by racists from far and wide for their purposes.....

Equally pathetic to see the righteous indignation in this thread from certain individuals who will turn right around and use homophobic slurs without a second thought on this message board and others.....and not see or care about how profoundly hypocritical they are and how superficial their "concern" about racism is.....

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I think Ole Miss and Mississippi in general will always have it worse than the rest of us when it comes to being stereotyped and in terms of racists thinking it's the perfect place to revive the racism and that's because of the fame garnered due to various civil rights murders, particularly the murders of James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael "Mickey" Schwerner that OM had nothing to do with.

What has always perplexed me is that E. TN which has a better but still imperfect history regarding race than the rest of the South and even the North still seems to draw KKK groups that come down from Michigan and Ohio every now and then only to be run out of town, often to their own shock, by angry Knoxvillians. They think they'll spark something here despite the fact that we were considered the freest soil in the entire US to speak on abolition, were pro-Union, and the fact that in more modern times Highlander (located in E. TN) provided training for Rosa Parks before her bus boycott and served as the safe meeting place/training center for Civil Rights Leaders/organizations like Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Septima Clark, Anne Braden, Martin Luther King, Jr., James Bevel, Rosa Parks, Hollis Watkins, Bernard Lafayette, Ralph Abernathy and John Lewis starting in the 1950s and continuing throughout the Civil Rights Era.

Then again... racists aren't too bright nor do they know the history of a region let alone a sub-region. They live in stereotyped past. I suppose they stereotype E. TN as being the same as the rest of the South (which they have that old image of) or exactly like Middle and West TN (history wise). NONE of them seem to understand that as a whole the South has changed - some areas are further along than others but I can think of very few places that would actually welcome their evil racist views with open arms.

I can only imagine how 'perfect' they must Mississippi and OM are to act out and spread their disgusting views.