..How Little We've Changed...

..A brilliant commentary on the legacy of American racism....

"Make no mistake about it. This will serve to remind us of how little we've changed. Southerners are particularly to blame. They are so proud of their heritage that they cling to the behaviors, beliefs, and the language of slavery. The consequences are direct and unambiguous. Every Confederate flag displayed, every tourist backdrop celebrating the "plantation", every last name of almost every Afro-American citizen serve as a reminder of the ugly past still celebrated by the white culture in the south.

Let's put the dots closer together and see what picture is made clear. The history of the southern states is not merely one of the ownership of human beings. It is also a history that drags a sordid reminder along the years. The southern "charm" is tainted with the ugly stain of rape. Millions of cases of rape. Tens of thousands of children born as a result of rape. The rapists of the slavery era are the great-grandparents of today's southern elite. Yet the children born of those rapes did not benefit from the fact that their owner was also their father.

Count the years. From the early 1600's until well past the Civil War, over 250 years of a culture that secretly endorsed rape as a weapon to secure obedience from women at their disposal; controlling too the male slaves that were allowed to live if they did not revolt against the rape of their women.

The bitterness of the southerner who proudly protects this history lives with the guilt of the era and the knowledge, ultimately, that the people they discriminate against are their own relatives. They are the living DNA connecting today's culture to an unmistakable history of rape.

Even more current examples exist. Strom Thurmond eventually admitted fathering a child with his families maid in the 1930s. In the mean-time, he kept the sordid history secret with bribery. Make no mistake about it. It was rape.

The history of rape in the South continues to be the stain they cannot wash out"

Steven Kale - Eugene, Oregon