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ELECTION
After Obama victory, an outbreak of racial anger
Some in U.S. acting out on feeling of loss spurred by election of black president.
By Jesse Washington
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Crosses burning. Children chanting, "Assassinate Obama." Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars.
Reports of incidents such as those across the country are dampening the glow of racial progress and harmony that bloomed after the election of Democrat Barack Obama, an African American, to the presidency.
From California to Maine, police have documented a range of incidents, including vandalism, threats and at least one physical attack. There have been "hundreds" of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.
In Snellville, Ga., Denene Millner said that a day after the election, a boy on a school bus told her 9-year-old daughter that he hoped "Obama gets assassinated." That night, Millner said, someone trashed her sister-in-law's front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door.
"It definitely makes you look a little different at the people who you live with," said Millner, who is black. "And makes you wonder what they're capable of and what they're really thinking."
Potok, who is white, said he thinks there is "a large subset of white people in this country who feel that they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them."
Grant Griffin, a 46-year-old Georgia native who is white, expressed similar sentiments. "I believe our nation is ruined and has been for several decades, and the election of Obama is merely the culmination of the change," Griffin said.
A black president is "the most profound change in the field of race this country has experienced since the Civil War," said William Ferris, senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina. "It's shaking the foundations on which the country has existed for centuries."
The day after Obama's victory, high school student Barbara Tyler, who is black, of Marietta, Ga., said that she heard hateful comments about him from white students. Tyler spoke at a news conference by the Georgia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People during which the group called for a town hall meeting to address complaints about hostility and resentment.
Other incidents include:
• Four North Carolina State University students admitted writing anti-Obama comments in a tunnel designated for free expression.
• In Standish, Maine, a sign in the Oak Hill General Store said, "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool." Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. "Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," the sign said.
• Elementary students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted, "Assassinate Obama," a district official said.
• University of Alabama professor Marsha Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur, she said.
• Alie Kamara, a black teen in New York, said that on election night he was attacked with a bat by four white men who shouted, "Obama." Police said Saturday that two 18-year-old white men were arrested Friday. Ralph Nicoletti and Bryan Garaventa face charges of hate-crime assault and criminal possession of a weapon, police said.
Emotions are often raw after political campaigns, and for some of those on the losing side, black people are an easy target for their anger, an expert said.
"The principle is very simple," said BJ Gallagher, a sociologist. "If I can't hurt the person I'm angry at, then I'll vent my anger on a substitute, i.e., someone of the same race.
"We saw the same thing happen after the 9/11 attacks as a wave of anti-Muslim violence swept the country."
Additional material from The New York Times.
Find this article at:
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/nation/11/16/1116obamaracial.html