We’ve written quite a bit about worsening race relations in America over the past several months. As Robert Putnam recently made clear with "Our Kids”", the real threat to the fabric of American society may be the growing class divide and indeed, the post-crisis monetary policies that have served to exacerbate the disparity between the rich and everyone else have a polarizing effect, as Main Street watches helplessly while the very same bankers who took taxpayer money in 2008 become billionaires on the back of the Fed’s printing press.
And while it might very well be that America’s future is defined more by class differences than by contentious race relations, there’s no question that multiple high profile cases of African American deaths at the hands of law enforcement have brought race relations back to the fore and the massacre at South Carolina’s Emanuel AME church didn’t help matters, nor did rumors about a subsequent string of "arsons" (some of the incidents were not proven to be related to hate crimes) at African American churches across the south.
The renewed debate about race in American society came to a head earlier this month when the Confederate flag was removed from the South Carolina State House.
Now, trouble may be brewing in South Carolina because as Reuters reports, the KKK and the Black Educators for Justice are planning simultaneous rallies outside the State House on Saturday. Here’s more:
A Ku Klux Klan chapter and an African-American group plan overlapping demonstrations on Saturday outside the South Carolina State House, where state officials removed the Confederate battle flag last week.
Governor Nikki Haley, who called for the flag's removal from the State House grounds after the killing of nine African-Americans in a Charleston church last month, urged South Carolinians to steer clear of the Klan rally.
"Our family hopes the people of South Carolina will join us in staying away from the disruptive, hateful spectacle members of the Ku Klux Klan hope to create over the weekend and instead focus on what brings us together," Haley said in a statement posted to her Facebook page.
The Charleston shooting rekindled a controversy that has long surrounding the Confederate flag. A website linked to suspected gunman Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white man, contained a racist manifesto and showed him in photos posing with the flag.
Opponents see its display as a painful reminder of the South's pro-slavery past, while supporters see it as an honorable emblem of Southern heritage.
The Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a Pelham, North Carolina-based chapter that bills itself as "the largest Klan in America," expects about 200 people to attend its demonstration, planned from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Calls to the chapter, one of numerous unconnected extremist groups in the United States that have adopted the Klan name, were not immediately returned.
A Jacksonville, Florida, group called Black Educators for Justice expects a crowd of about 300 for its rally, planned for noon to 4 p.m. The group is run by James Evans Muhammad, a former director of the New Black Panther Party.
The Black Educators group wants to highlight continuing racial inequality, which Muhammad says endures despite the Confederate flag’s removal.
And while it seems the groups are in agreement as to not "interfering" with one another, we have to believe (and this is a phrase we don’t often get to use outside of financial markets but probably applies here) that "this may not end well."
