Education Racism

Bedfellows

If you find yourself on the same side as the Klu Klux Klan, that’s as good of a sign as any that you should reconsider your position.

Local residents in Jacksonville, Florida are urging the Duval County School Board to rename Nathan B. Forrest High School, and the school board, which voted against changing the name in 2008, is receiving moral support from the KKK.

All seven members of the board received a letter from the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan urging them not to consider a name-change. It calls the school’s namesake a “valiant man of honor,” and justifies the KKK as “a group of vigilance to protect defenseless southerners from criminal activities perpetrated against them by Yankee carpet baggers, scalawags, and many bestial blacks and other criminal elements out for revenge or just taking part in criminal mischief.”

It would be hard not to notice that the KKK’s description of itself is not entirely different from how a member of the Tea Party may describe themselves; vigilant watchers protecting defenseless southerners from the northerners in Washington and the bestial blacks.

The letter also includes links to revisionist history and even a reference to the biased “mainstream media” and the “uninformed masses” who clearly don’t understand what really happened during the “radical reconstruction” period.

kkkletter

The school’s superintendent spoke out against the letter they received from the KKK, but it remains to be seen if the school’s name will be changed.