Maybe we should remind this wise man who is and was the KKK?

Shadilay Brothers

 

 

Follow him on Twitter at @fh3franktalk.

 

 

Frank Harris III: What MAGA hats mean to me

 

 

I was a college junior at Southern Illinois University when I almost bumped into a guy wearing the white robe and hood of the Ku Klux Klan. It was the late 1970s at a university-sponsored campus Halloween party.

This was my first time seeing someone wearing KKK regalia in person. I remember being startled by him and his identically attired friend. Though they were the only two I saw who chose to costume themselves this way among hundreds who did not, their costumes vanquished any semblance of Halloween spirit within me and the other blacks who saw them.

 

The world knows what the white robe and hood of the KKK symbolizes, particularly to Americans of African descent: anti-black hate, terrorism, violence.

 

 

Yes, the people under the hoods that Halloween night could have been in any of my classes sitting next to me who just chose to wear this outfit with no bad thoughts or intentions.

 

 

 

But the symbol precedes and supersedes the thoughts and intentions.

 

All I can and must go by is what I see — the symbol of hate and violence that this attire represents.

The second time I saw those with white robes and hoods was at a Klan rally in Meriden in 1983. It was not Halloween.

 

The First Amendment gives everyone the right to wear such outfits, even when they are symbolic of hate and violence. It only becomes a crime, a hate crime, when the words or symbols of hate are accompanied with violence.

 

Such as Dylann Roof, who before he shot nine people to death in a church in South Carolina in June 2015 posed with the Confederate flag. Such as Robert Bowers, who followed his numerous anti-Semitic posts by reportedly shouting the words “All Jews must die” as he shot and killed 11 worshippers in October 2018.

 

 

 

Whether it is the white robe and hood of the KKK, the stars and bars of the Confederate flag, or the swastika of the Nazis — they are to me, as a black person, symbols of hate and hostility, terror and violence.

 

 

I add to this list the red “Make America Great Again” hats.

 

From the start, the words conveyed negative energy, akin to the wistful words “The South will rise again.” What would such a thing mean to those black like me, 156 years free?

 

There are those who will argue against my equating the MAGA hats of President Donald Trump with the robe and hood, swastika and Confederate flag. But they are all symbols that to me, as a black person, represent hate.

 

The symbols tell me I am not welcome. My life is devalued. I must be on the ready.

 

The MAGA hats represent the hate embodied in America’s President Trump. His words convey hate. His presence exudes hate. His policies carry out his hate. Together they contribute to the atmosphere of hate that has led to the rise in hate crimes in America.

According to FBI statistics, hate crimes in 2017 increased 17 percent from the previous year. Nearly 60 percent of victims were targeted due to their race, nearly 21 percent because of their religion, 16 percent because of their sexual orientation.

Of those targeted over race, nearly half were attacked due to anti-black bias.

 

This is not to suggest that every wearer of the MAGA hat will become violent toward blacks and other groups, but it is to say that the wearers of these MAGA hats explicitly reveal, align and endorse their heads and hearts with the ilk of these symbols of hate.

 

 

Accordingly, these MAGA hats, which can be purchased from such places as Walmart, Amazon and e-Bay, should be treated the same as these other symbols of hate.

 

 

In juxtaposition with these and other businesses’ right to sell the MAGA hat comes the right of the good people of America to ask why these merchants would align, endorse and distribute these hats, which symbolize the moral equivalent of the KKK robe and hood, flag of the Confederacy, and the Nazi swastika.

 

 

Frank Harris III of Hamden is a professor of journalism at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven. His email address is frankharristhree@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter at @fh3franktalk.