Don't you just love living in post-racial America? You know, that country where, according to our conservative and centrist friends, all the racial, ethnic and religious divisions of the past have been buried in the avalanche of the election of our first African-American president?
I'm sure these folks down in Mississippi just love it:
CRYSTAL SPRINGS, MS (WLBT) - It was to be their big day, but a Jackson couple says the church where they were planning to wed turned them away because of race.
Now, the couple wants answers, and the church's pastor is questioning the mindset of some of members of his congregation who caused the problem in the first place.
They had set the date and printed and mailed out all the invitations, but the day before wedding bells were to ring for Charles and Te'Andrea Wilson, they say they got some bad news from the pastor.
"The church congregation had decided no black could be married at that church, and that if he went on to marry her, then they would vote him out the church," said Charles Wilson.
The Wilsons were trying to get married at the predominantly white First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs -- a church they attend regularly, but are not members of.
"He had people in the sanctuary that were pitching a fit about us being a black couple," said Te'Andrea Wilson. "I didn't like it at all, because I wasn't brought up to be racist. I was brought up to love and care for everybody."
You may say, "Aw, that's the South." But how about these innocent Jewish kids in Pennsylvania?
Five people face charges for allegedly terrorizing a Jewish summer camp in Pennsylvania.
In three separate episodes earlier this month, three adults and two juveniles caused property damage as they sped dangerously through Camp Bonim in Wayne County in a pickup truck, shouting anti-Semitic epithets and firing paintball guns at campers and staff, District Attorney Janine Edwards said in a press release. The three adults were arrested Wednesday morning and face felony and misdemeanor charges, including ethnic intimidation, terroristic threats and assault.
"These children were terrorized and in fear for their lives by the actions of this group," Edwards said in the release. "The vicious, cruel and obscene nature of the language hurled at the campers is unspeakable. Luckily none of the children suffered any serious physical injury, however, the emotional damage is immeasurable."
A judge arraigned Tyler Spencer, an 18-year-old from Linden, Tenn., and set his bail at $200,000. Spencer is accused of attempting to hit campers as he drove the Ford-350 pickup truck carrying the group. Spencer's alleged accomplices, Mark Trail, 21, and Cassandra Robertson, 18, both of Wayne County, were held on $20,000 bail. A 17-year-old and a 16-year-old face juvenile court cases.
In the first episode on July 14, Spencer told police that he drove in circles at a high speed to damage several fields on the Bonim campus, according to a police affidavit obtained by ABC News. When he returned with the same group of passengers the next day, Spencer said they ripped the camp's mailbox out of the ground before driving into the camp.
Police said Mark Trail then yelled racial slurs such as "You f***ing Jews go back where you came from" and "I'm gonna kill you, you f***ing Jews." During that episode, 18-year-old camper Alan Rosen was struck in the leg by a shot from a paintball gun while walking near the camp's synagogue, according to the affidavit, filed by Pennsylvania State Trooper John Decker.
And hey, let's not forget: Now that our post-racial president has also blessed gay marriage, we have also buried all that old anti-gay bigotry of the past. Why, no one believes that stuff anymore, do they?
Let's ask this woman in Omaha, Nebraska:
Raymond Strozier heard sirens outside his house early Sunday and looked outside to see his neighbor bleeding in the street, the victim of a reported hate crime in which her attackers carved anti-gay slurs into her skin and tried to light her house on fire.
Strozier said he ran to her just before paramedics pulled her away.
“She had blood streaming down her body,” he said. “She was crying. She was shaking. She was terrified.”
The 33-year-old woman said she was attacked early Sunday by three masked men who barged into her house, bound her wrists and ankles with zip ties and cut her all over her body before dumping gasoline on her floor and lighting it with a match, said a friend who spoke to the Journal Star.
The victim’s friend said the woman crawled from her house, naked and bleeding and screaming for help, before reaching the doorstep of a neighbor's home.
The woman told police three masked men came in but gave no further description, Lincoln Police Officer Katie Flood said. Investigators have no suspects.
Right-wingers like to accuse people who work to address systemic and institutionalized bigotry of just dwelling in the past, because "racism is a dead letter," dontcha know, and there's nothing particularly "right wing" about racism or ethnic or religious or sexual bias, dontcha know.
Right.
