Election spurs 'hundreds' of race threats, crimes

By JESSE WASHINGTON – 8 hours ago

Cross burnings. Schoolchildren chanting "Assassinate Obama." Black
figures hung from nooses. Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars.

Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama
are dampening the postelection glow of racial progress and harmony,
highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America.

From California to Maine, police have documented a range of alleged
crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical
attack. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college
students and second-graders.

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.

One was in Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the
school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: "I
hope Obama gets assassinated." That night, 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, Millner said.

She described her emotions as a combination of anger and fear.

"I can't say that every white person in Snellville is evil and
anti-Obama and willing to desecrate my property because one or two
idiots did it," said Millner, who is black. "But it definitely makes you
look a little different at the people who you live with, and makes you
wonder what they're capable of and what they're really thinking."

Potok, who is white, said he believes 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 white Georgia native, 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.

"If you had real change it would involve all the members of (Obama's)
church being deported," he said.

Change in whatever form does not come easy, and 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."

"Someone once said racism is like cancer," Ferris said. "It's never
totally wiped out, it's in remission."

If so, America's remission lasted until the morning of Nov. 5.

The day after the vote hailed as a sign of a nation changed, black high
school student Barbara Tyler of Marietta, Ga., said she heard hateful
Obama comments from white students, and that teachers cut off discussion
about Obama's victory.

Tyler spoke at a press conference by the Georgia chapter of the NAACP
calling for a town hall meeting to address complaints from across the
state about hostility and resentment. Another student, from a Covington
middle school, said he was suspended for wearing an Obama shirt to
school Nov. 5 after the principal told students not to wear political
paraphernalia.

The student's mother, Eshe Riviears, said the principal told her:
"Whether you like it or not, we're in the South, and there are a lot of
people who are not happy with this decision."

Other incidents include:

_Four North Carolina State University students admitted writing
anti-Obama comments in a tunnel designated for free speech expression,
including one that said: "Let's shoot that (N-word) in the head." Obama
has received more threats than any other president-elect, authorities say.

_At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read:
"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. At the bottom of the marker board was written
"Let's hope someone wins."

_Racist graffiti was found in places including New York's Long Island,
where two dozen cars were spray-painted; Kilgore, Texas, where the local
high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where
swastikas, racial slurs and "Go Back To Africa" were spray painted on
sidewalks, houses and cars.

_Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho,
chanted "assassinate Obama," a district official said.

_University of Alabama professor Marsha L. 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. "It seems the election
brought the racist rats out of the woodwork," Houston said.

_Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island,
Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported. The president of Baylor
University in Waco, Texas said a rope found hanging from a campus tree
was apparently an abandoned swing and not a noose.

_Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and
Apolacan Township, Pa.

_A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on
election night by four white men who shouted 'Obama.'

_In the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills, a black man said he found a
note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying "now that you
voted for Obama, just watch out for your house."

Emotions are often raw after a hard-fought political campaign, but now
those on the losing side have an easy target for their anger.

"The principle is very simple," said BJ Gallagher, a sociologist and
co-author of the diversity book "A Peacock in the Land of Penguins." "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. We saw it happen after the
Rodney King verdict, when Los Angeles blacks erupted in rage at the
injustice perpetrated by 'the white man.'"

"It's as stupid and ineffectual as kicking your dog when you've had a
bad day at the office," Gallagher said. "But it happens a lot."

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Those pesky Republicans...