Personally, I am viewing as this election as a referendum of America's soul.
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Now that John McCain has decided to attend Friday night's debate, Ole Miss should be able to breathe easy. The presidential debate, after all, is supposed to be Ole Miss' big moment. Hosting the first such forum of the general campaign, administrators hoped, would help the school shed the racial-backwater image that has clung to it since its embattled 1962 integration, when 120 federal marshals could barely hold back the violent riots that left two civilians dead and dozens injured. The fact that the debate participants will include the nation's first black presidential nominee of a major party, Barack Obama, would only add to the symbolism. The high-profile event is a chance "to invite the nation and the world to visit us and see Ole Miss today," says University Chancellor Robert Khayat. "This is a very different place from 1962. I'm confident that they will see that."
That might, however, be very hard to see if, as the University's Daily Mississippian newspaper reported on Sept. 12, the audience of thousands right outside the debate hall watching by simulcast includes some unwelcome guests: the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klansmen won't be wearing robes or hoods or making "a big hoopla," says Imperial Wizard Richard Greene, 46, who refuses to divulge how many members the Mississippi chapter has. Nor will they take advantage of the designated protest zone outside the debate theater to stage one of their typical demonstrations — which include fiery speeches and a cross burning — for fear of causing riots. "We don't want anybody to get hurt," says Greene, who insists physical violence is no longer part of the Klan way of doing things. But Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, which studies hate groups and extremism in America, disagrees: "That's hogwash," he says, citing a lawsuit underway against a different Klan branch, the Imperial Klans of America, for allegedly assaulting a teenager at a county fair in Kentucky.
The Klan will, however, have pamphlets and membership applications on hand for any audience members who happen to share the Klansmen's views. Some examples of those views: Obama's election "could be the destruction of America," says Greene, who states categorically that he would not vote for a black candidate. Adds the Emperor of the Mississippi White Nights (the group's ritual leader), who asked not to be identified: "Locally, every place that has come under black rule has declined, and has declined sharply." He cited Jackson, Mississippi, and Washington, D.C., as examples. "Not all black people are particularly bad people," the emperor adds. But leadership, he asserts, "is just not in their character...it's just not in their ability." The Obama campaign did not return requests for comment.
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1844872,00.html
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