Try this brainteaser as a post holiday, post lunch, exercise. Takeaway the hats. Takeaway the garb. Takeaway the masks and the strident nocturnal voices and the burning crosses. And what is presently naked in the street and dancing in the middle of it? Whoever said the Ku Klux Klan reclothed and rearmed and ready for 21st century business just got a ticket as a contestant to the next free Jeopardy slot. Whoever said the return of Jim Crow America, starting from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and as empowered by six-robed figures in the US Supreme Court won for themselves equal billing, and a place on Saturday Night Live.
Bull Connor must have a moment to smile in whatever circle of sheriff’s hell Dante Alighieri reserved for him. So, also rabid racists like Cotton Ed Smith of Mississippi, the well-named Pitchfork Ben Tillman of South Carolina, who boasted of killing Black Americans, and Governors George Wallace of Alabama and Orville Faubus of Arkansas, among others of that notorious hanging gang. Chief Justice Roger Taney held the line, and gifted the demagogues what they desired with the specious, a palpably vacuous legalistic holding. Then the Warren and Burger Courts went in the other direction, and gave minorities, especially Black Americans, a sense of being, of hard-fought dignity, only for that tide to reverse course in 2026.
MLK is gone, along with many of that rare breed of courageous, luminous, stalwarts. The memory of Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, now faded, must now be reincarnated and reburnished for another era of grueling fighting for a respected place in American society. Imagine the irony: a shaky, dodgy, crabby New Yorker is the architect, the driving force, behind the John Roberts revolution that is only now gathering strength, showing its true colors. Sparring with clever words that still reveal more than they conceal. Social justice teachings and doctrines, plus the magisterium of the law, all set aside as a matter of political expediency. Coming out to hang out are those roiling, despicable, signs, with one prominent the others understood: Don’t Apply. Don’t show face. Don’t get uppity. And don’t forget place. From Jim Crow America, welcome to Miller Time in America. Pull over. Up against the wall, muddah….! White power! Ah, it’s the Aryan Complex unvarnished and not in the least self-conscious, or embarrassed. What’s next, Miranda? This is not the dismantling of America. It is setting the stage for the remaking of America, now well underway. The present reversing steps to reconnect with the past, and swap old war stories of good time and good ole boys now high in the saddle, and back with whip in hand, and a sneer on the lips.
From White Citizens’ Council to the Heritage Foundation. From the departed Roger Taney and Antonin Scalia to the very much alive John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh. The new man said that race is a spent factor, a passion of the past. He must be wiser than the rest of a watching world put together. Thus, men live in a fool’s paradise, and influence the gullible to join them, of which there are millions.
Minorities have the fight of their life on their hands. Neither a Martin nor a Marshall to lead the charge. But the last four from the thin line of Black US Congressmen are on their way out. Why stick around and trouble with the color scheme? The season of the deranged, the deformed, and the demagogue is in full swing. Its sunset shouldn’t be long in coming. I foresee the pendulum swinging back, new champions and battlers springing up from the always fertile American ground. Extremists, fundamentalists, and fanatics in Congress’ ranks and Church pews have their day, and are best advised to use it pray. Perhaps, I should say: God bless America. For there is a battle brewing and great sacrifices will have to be made again, to confront these ill winds blowing across America.
