Ku Klux Klan

is not to be casually equated with reverend wright's racialized tirades about inequality, because, among other reasons, the KKK is not representative only of ideas, but, rather of actions such that today there are living breathing Americans with relatives who were killed by the KKK. There are also Americans who, in their lifetimes, have been kept from voting by those who were sympathetic to the kkk's causes or endorse policies aimed at disenfranchising large number of minority voters today.

To pretend that the two are somehow equal or even remotely similar in the damage or influence that they have and continue to cause would be just plain silly if it weren't for the fact that there are living, breathing Americans with relatives who were killed by the KKK. There are also Americans who, in their lifetimes, have been kept from voting by those who were sympathetic to the KKK's causes or endorse policies aimed at disenfranchising large number of minority voters today. It would all be almost laughable if there were not also a man running for president in 2016 on a platform that seeks to codify group suspicion, exclusion, surveillance and punishment once again.

is an organization that was, it is true, formed largely by Democrat confederate soldiers but it is equally true that these same voters and their descendants became members of the republican party when the democratic party and its establishment made the decision to become a progressive party, advancing the full social, political and economic inclusion of non-white Americans.

Let us be clear: When the group of former Confederate soldiers who founded the KKK began their bloody tirade, many if not all of them were, in fact, Democrats. They were members of a party that at that time counted among its central goals the wholesale oppression, control, disenfranchisement and exploitation of black Americans. As such, the Democratic Party at that time and for nearly 100 years more did not include black voters but was the political home of much of the most virulently and violently racist white Americans. It is also just as true that a substantial portion of these same voters and their descendants raised in homes where they were presumably exposed to the aforementioned ideas or their modern political progeny are today members of the Republican Party. They moved to the modern-day Republican Party as the Democratic Party and its establishment made the decision to become a progressive party, advancing the full social, political and economic inclusion of non-white Americans. And when the Democratic establishment did so, it caused an inter-party war and a mass departure of many, but not all, white voters, which continues to shape the nation's politics today.

Janell RossThinkers

Janell Ross