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Election of Black President Triggers Scores of Racist Incidents

By David Badertscher, PLL

<p><font size="2"><strong>Source: </strong><em>Crime and Justice News, </em>November 17, 2008.</font></p> <p><font size="2">"The election of America's first black president has triggered more than 200 hate-related incidents, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center - a record in modern presidential elections, reports the Christian Science Monitor. And the white nationalist movement, bemoaning an election that confirmed voters' comfort with a multiracial demography, expects Obama's election to be a potent recruiting tool - one that watchdog groups warn could give new impetus to a mostly defanged fringe element." </font></p> <p><font size="2">"Most election-related threats have so far been little more than juvenile pranks. But the political marginalization of certain Southern whites, economic distress in rural areas, and a White House occupant who symbolizes a multiethnic United States could combine to produce a backlash against what some have heralded as the dawn of a postracial America. 'The vitriol is flailing out shotgun- style,' says Brian Levin of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. 'They recognize Obama as a tipping point, the perfect storm in the narrative of the hate world - the apocalypse that they've been moaning about has come true.' " </font></p> <p><a href="http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001GZMJoc6D7aiBzQ19kDWfSXrh7XSdpBH2QaQ9iHUnMmzvl5oOIW1Jw0qLy1C0jwh9nKqAChdB-yRnuf-ku8p11XRgxJ14DrIzkQwS6Qij8DOpAFXSe9PkcO219xQNqXMP7-PcRqtVJ7Y65myj3SnchL8UXxMgX7Up" shape="rect" color="#0000FF" target="_blank"><font size="2">Christian Science Monitor</font></a></p>

Full post as published by New York Supreme Court Criminal Term Library on November 17, 2008 (boomark / email).