Different Day, Same Shit.

You'd figure the Ku Klux Klan would be a nascent relic of the bad old days long gone. In spite of the sheer terror inspired by these and countless other groups at the height of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights era, it remains hard for many folks to take seriously a bunch of bed sheet and bath robe-wearing imbeciles with a remarkable persecution complex. Nevertheless, the following should give anyone brief pause:

Deal: "Why do you want your face covered here?"
Grand Dragon: "Because I care about my job."
The two claim to be part of an invisible empire.
"We have police officers, paramedics, judges," said the grand dragon. "They're everywhere."
And the members said they're 1,000 members strong and growing.
"You start looking at numbers, start looking at census and you realize whites are the minority," said the other klansman.
That's why he joined a year ago, saying he's interested in preserving the white race.

Unless you're a FBI agent deep undercover within these groups, it's hard to suss out whether or not this is all just hot air. But given the predilection of law enforcement officials to heap abuse on minorities and for legal system representatives to stack the deck against them, it's something that'll undoubtedly occupy the backs of many a minority's mind.

And that's the thing. In many cases, no one knows what lurks in the hearts of men and women, especially when it involves them dealing with black Americans and other minorities. Whereas the Deep South and other places touched by Jim Crow proudly wore their collective racism on their sleeves for all the world to see, today's racism comes in a variety of innocuous and covert forms. With overt racism relegated to society's dustbin, many of the unreconstructed among us have opted for a quieter, more covert form of bigotry involving dog whistles, code words and a simple refusal to air their views in "polite company."

For many minorities, it's nearly impossible to know if the smiling face they see in front of them hides a butcher's knife intended for their back. Black Americans and other minorities have plenty of reason to be distrustful of their white counterparts, often to the detriment of white Americans who mean well but are nonetheless slighted by what they process as "black racism."

When you think about it, there's already an "invisible empire" of police, judges and others of authority, but you won't see them at the next Wednesday night cross burning ceremony - they're not interested in what the Klan has to offer. Instead, its a tangled web of individual prejudices, whether personally held or institutionally or parentally indoctrinated, converging into a matrix of racism that transcends boundaries. Chances are this "invisible empire" has little to no inkling that it's working to maintain the white status quo through millions of individual movements, but that's exactly what's happening.

There's something else that's freaking the hoods right out:

"You start looking at numbers, start looking at census and you realize whites are the minority," said the other klansman.

The writing is on the wall, according to recent U.S. Census studies - it expects white Americans to fall into minority status as soon as 2043. A sobering thought for anyone who subscribes to Racial Holy War (RaHoWa) theory and obsesses over the Turner Diaries. Fears of turnabout being fair play with "Whitey" in the minority's seat is driving what I can only accurately describe as a terminal case of psychosis within the ranks of the unreconstructed and a rush to embrace the same sort of "victimhood" that black Americans get taken to the woodshed over on a regular basis. Better to prepare for the inevitable, I suppose.

Unfortunately, many other Americans are preparing in other ways, namely by hoarding more guns and adopting a quasi-survivalist's mentality that relegates the cities to the so-called "chimps," "thugs" and "liberals," while "real Americans" hunker down in concrete bunkers while burning their own dung and filtering their own piss through expensive water purification systems, all while watching "zombies" descend on the Super Bowl on a flatscreen TV attached to one of several brand-new generators they had stocked up during the last "scare."

As for the Klan itself, exposing many of these hood-doning cowards would quickly thin out the ranks until only the most unrepentant were left. And for all of their bravado, they and other white supremacist groups will never express the desire to take on the likes of the Black P-Stones, Gangsters Disciples, MS13 or any other well-armed and well-seasoned minority gangs. As any sensible predator would have it, only the weak and vulnerable will do.

A private — and likely first — meeting between the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Ku Klux Klan in a small Casper hotel meeting room on Saturday night grabbed the world’s attention.

The Star-Tribune exclusively broke the story of the meeting Monday, telling the tale of how leaders of the Casper branch of the NAACP arranged a meeting with John Abarr, an organizer in Great Falls, Mont., for the United Klans of America.

...

Media reaction to the meeting varied widely. Some media outlets painted the meeting as a historic but awkward encounter — believed to be a first.

Others presented it as a useless publicity stunt, including James Braxton Peterson, the director of Africana Studies and associate professor of English at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, in a column for MSNBC’s The Grio.

This "historic" meeting between two diametrically opposed groups came about after a recent rise of hate crimes towards black Americans and the distribution of Ku Klux Klan recruitment flyers in Casper and surrounding areas.

So, what exactly did both sides get out of the meeting?

“The meeting itself produced little more than the spate of national and local news reports that covered it,” he wrote.

...

But Jimmie Simmons, Casper branch president of the NAACP, justified the meeting to The Associated Press.

“It’s about opening dialogue with a group that claims they’re trying to reform themselves from violence,” he said. “They’re trying to shed that violent skin, but it seems like they’re just changing the packaging.”

In other words, nothing but headlines.

Sadly, the meeting also brought out the internecine slap-fights that often go on between NAACP leaders:

Lytle said she earlier told NAACP Casper Branch President Jimmy Simmons to not arrange the meeting.

“In fact, I did not give it it a green light when it was proposed,” she said when contacted by telephone Tuesday.

“The appropriate chain of command would have started with my approval,” she added.

Simmons indicated to the Star-Tribune on Saturday that he had faced some opposition from within his organization regarding the meeting, but had gotten something of an OK as long as long he hosted the meeting in Casper.

On Tuesday, Simmons was even more adamant that he had the right to arrange the meeting and didn’t have to get permission.

“That’s not how it works. I’ve been a branch president for 13 years; I have never asked for permission to give an event,” he said.

Simmons said he notified Lytle in June of his intent to meet with the KKK.

“I gave her a heads-up the meeting was going to happen,” he said. “If she thinks I was asking for permission, I wasn’t.”

As of late Tuesday afternoon, Lytle and Simmons hadn’t talked since Lytle heard about the meeting.

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Personally, I can't exactly fathom why Simmons would give the go-ahead for this meeting unless he genuinely believed that dialogue would bring the klansmen and similar ilk to their senses. Either that or grabbing the headlines for being the first to bring the NAACP and KKK to the table together, similar to how Malcolm X, under directions from Elijah Muhammad, met with Ku Klux Klan officials back in early 1961 or how a similar gathering of Nation of Islam, American Nazi Party and KKK members played out during that summer.

Whatever Simmons attempted to accomplish here didn't pan out, at least as far as yours truly and others can see. As Southern Poverty Law Center senior fellow Mark Potok put it:

“I think it’s outrageous and counterproductive,” said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, to The Associated Press, referring to the meeting. “It gives legitimacy to the Klan as an organization you can talk to.”

Trying to put a reasonable face on a group devoted to cultivating racially-motivated hatred, whether it be non-violent or otherwise, is doing a disservice to not only those most affected by hate crimes and racial animosity, but also the nation at large.