The week started with news that Adam Driver (might know him as Kylo Ren) claimed that he remembered KKK rallies here in town (he grew up where I now live). Right away an IU history professor and local history expert here both jumped all over it. Saying he was wrong, of course they are experts, and he is just an actor right? Well then the correction to the correction came, a drove of news stories, personal recounts, and photos of all the KKK activity that did occur in this area when Adam Driver was growing up. News story: Indystar Article
Why were people so anxious to discredit Adam Drivers recount of seeing racism?
The week continued with the news about the immigrant accused in the murder of Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts. It was like a racist field day, even the official White House media channel was putting out anti-immigrant propaganda as a result of the news. Like there wasn't any other criminal news this week, for example a handful of the President's good friends who got found guilt of major crimes... What was nice was to see all the news and media outlets point out the fact that immigrants commit less crimes than Americans. I mean my picture of the USA Today front page was my most popular post since my selfie with Anderson Cooper.
Why were people so excited to get to blame an immigrant for a high profile crime?
Today (8/24/18) in the ND Observer there was a nice little racist inspired article about how bad Dreamers are... it was an editorial and it well written (grammatically). The problem was the opinion on the value of immigrants, specifically dreamers, and then the "facts" used to prove the point. At first when I read it I thought, man I want to break down all these facts and prove them all wrong. Then I thought, that won't make a difference, but what will make a difference? Here is the article: ND Observer Article
Why did these three stories get me thinking? Here we see a difference to me is in who is what.
Who is saying what and how they say it matters. An actor says he remembers KKK activity and academics jump in quick to discredit him. An immigrant commits a crime and all the racists are ready to jump all over it. A Notre Dame student writes their opinion on dreamers and people start to think... maybe he has a point? Why?
There is a change now in who people think are racists, and the change in that narrative is throwing people off. The narrative was easier to discredit when we thought it was only skin heads; we labeled them misfits, uneducated, outcasts, violent, bitter... but now things have changed. The people who are spouting this today are educated. They wear khakis, they march with tiki torches, they attend ivy league schools. It was an IU Professor who tried to discredit Adam Driver, it is the White House spouting nonsense about immigrants and crime, and a well educated Notre Dame student spread fake news and skewed "facts".
As activists we got lazy. We used to easily discredit skin heads and he crazy anti-immigrant ranters. Now we have a more sophisticated opponent. We have to be vigilant. We have to continue to fight the narrative regardless of where it comes from... because people are getting others to believe them. We can't just label these people as crazy, we must find ways to engage people in the middle to our side, not just try to discredit the other side.
We must resist. We must resist smarter.