In Defense of...Cecil Rhodes?!

Fighting Klanophobia

I'm always hurt when I see bigots offend groups of people.  All too often, people paint a group, "the other" with a broad brush and stereotype them as being evil, even though the crimes that are associated with them are only committed by a tiny minority fringe element within the larger group.

Such is the case with the Ku Klux Klan.  Most people don't like to associate with them.  There is a lot of prejudice directed towards that group, particularly among blacks and Jews, but this hate is widespread.  If you see a klansman wearing his cultural garb, how do you feel?  Do you become nervous?  Do you think that he'll do something violent?  If so, you're part of the problem.

The KKK is an organization of peace.  Most of its members are peaceful and only want to go about their lives without being harmed...like most people in this world.  Sure, there are a few members who preach hate, but that's true in almost every group.  Let's look at the numbers to see how peaceful they are.

According to "The Reader's Companion to American History" (1991), by Robert L. Zangrando (as quoted by another), in the United States from 1882 to 1968, there were 4,743 lynchings, of which 3446 were black.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070913141027AA7qjS3

That's 4,743 in 86 years, or just over 55 lynchings per year, on average...in the whole country.  In the peak year, 1892, there were 230 deaths (161 black).

In contrast, in just the year 2010, there were 32,885 traffic fatalities in the United States.  That's a low number.  In 1972, the peak year, there were 54,589 traffic fatalities in the United States.

If you do the math, you'll find that even if lynchings occurred at the all-time peak rate (230 per year), this would have to go on every year at that rate for 237 years to equal the peak traffic fatality rate (32,885) of just a single year.

Now, how many people have been part of the klan?  Millions.  At its peak, there were 6 million members.

Not all lynchings were done by the klan, and other crimes besides lynchings were performed by the klan (such as arson of houses and shootings).  But even if we say that the total number of people the KKK killed was as high as 10,000 from 1882 until the present, and we only say that 6 million people ever joined the klan (which is an undercount, as this number of people existed at one single time in the klan), and if we further say that each of the 10,000 murders was committed by a different klan member, then that still means that 5,990,000 klansmen were completely innocent and peace loving.

To make it clear, at least 99.83% of klansmen have been completely peace-loving, and this is a conservative estimate!  Yet I bet you look at them as thugs and murderers.  You show your prejudice when you do so!

Let's get back to that 10,000 figure (a probable overestimate of total klan-related murders throughout history).  In its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has killed more than 10,000 people, and in a single decade.  This makes the United States more dangerous than the KKK.

So, why did I write this?  Well, here is the point:

I'm an advocate of free speech, but not when it's used to offend groups such as the KKK, which I have shown are a peace-loving people with only a tiny fringe of extremists which bigots use to sully the name of the whole group.  Please support me in my efforts to make offensive slurs against the KKK illegal.  People should not have the right to spew hatred against any group.  And anytime you criticize the klan as a whole, you are being a hateful bigot.

Below is a video (sorry about the quality) that shows how a black man, when he gave up his prejudices, was able to see klansmen as the peaceful people that they are.