May it was a few or maybe it was a majority that supported or encouraged the racist attitude. But we have no way of knowing who or how many spoke out against it or condemns such conduct unless the press covers it.
Further, small town newspapers can be very selective about which side they print.
I’m not from that particular community or that state. Just consider this an “editorial” from an eleventh generation Southerner who has tried to do my part to make things better.
Did everybody miss the kidnapping, or is the Texas law much more lax than California’s? Here if you take a person from point A to point B against his will you have committed kidnapping. That young man didn’t end up “where he shouldn’t have been” on his own volition. That’s kidnapping, plain and simple.
This town is an outrage to decency. But Stuffy makes a good point. Bigotry isn’t found only in Texas.
I’m originally from Lousiana, Zoe, Shreveport to be exact, maybe an hour’s drive from Cass County Texas. I’ve lived in the deep south, I know what it’s like and I specifically said I didn’t want to generalize about all, or even most, southerners. But I also know damn well that there are little towns and pockets here and there that are considered more “redneck” than most, places that are sort of considered to be not so safe for black folks. As recently as the 80’s my hometown of Shreveport held the dubious honor of being the most segregated city in the US. I can remember as recently as the mid 80’s, the area of the city casually referred to as “Niggertown” by many (not all) white people, where the paved roads stopped and there were trailers and shacks parked along dirt roads.
I have relatives from down there who say the n-word and complain about white women dating black men. I know that this crap still exists down there, that many people still feel comfortable about espousing racist views and language in front of strangers.
In the larger cities, the majority of whites have outgrown that stuff and are embarrassed and disgusted by the idiots who haven’t, but it’s not completely gone and if you know where to look you can find some whole reservoirs of it in little nooks and crannies.
And yes, you can find it up north as well. There’s a modest white supremacist movement in the midwest and I’ve encountered it in rural North Dakota. I guess the difference between this kind of racism and what I called “Old South” racism, is that in places like North Dakota it’s almost completely theoretical since there aren’t any black people. It’s part of a disenfranchised ideology and it’s completely diseased, but it isn’t part of a longstanding tradition of practice like it is in the south.
I’m a transplant Southerner, and give good quarter to the complexity of race issues.
But this, from, Diogenes’ link:
“As the party wound down after midnight, evidence showed, Christopher Colt Amox, who was 20 at the time, punched Johnson in the mouth, toppling him to the ground. As Johnson lay unconscious, vomiting and gagging, Amox and three other young men - James Cory Hicks, then 24; Dallas Chadwick Stone, then 18; and John Wesley Owens, then 19 - debated whether to call an ambulance, authorities said. Instead, they loaded Johnson into a pickup truck and drove him 2 miles down a little-used dirt road, tossing him next to a public dump, on top of the nest of fire ants.”
leaves me speechless. Mr Johnson was injured enough that the good ole boys even “debated” to call for medical help, andchose to dump him in the middle of nowhere. That’s the hinge of their fate, and that decision is one of, if not hatred, cruelty based on incomprehension of humanity. I hope this case is brought up and tried again, set up as an example. It’s disgusting on so many levels.
There are "Bumfuck"s in almost every state. 
Am I the only one who thinks it’s even more horrifying that they may have picked on him for being retarded, rather than because he was black? Because, from what they say, they took someone who’s pretty much a permanent 12 year old boy. (NOT that I’m condoning racism, just that to pick on someone who’s retarded and not as able to fight back is pretty damned psychotic).
I can’t claim eleven generations, but my family fought for Marse Bobby and later worked at Stratford Hall (as recently as 1980 my grandfather ran the mill at the plantation and my Nana the kitchens–great googly, that was a fine place to be a kid).
AFAIC, by condemning that town and all who live in it, I’m also doing my part. Until I see the people of Linden rise up against hatred and injustice I will happily call each and every one of them complicit.
If only out of self-interest.
I’m going to have to go with a big “fuck you” to Linden, Texas. There may be a few other towns in this nation where four peckerheads might beat a retarded man into a coma and dump his body on an ant pile. But I doubt there’s too many towns where the mayor would publically defend the bastards and blame the victim for getting himself kidnapped in the first place.
I think Don Henly’s home town is Lindon, Tx.
True perhaps… but it just seems that it is found in Texas so much more frequently and egregiously.
-Richard
Oh give me a break. First of all it should be pretty obvious that silenus (aka God Emporor of the World) was engaging in hyperbole. Secondly, as noted, it’s not that there were twelve fucktards who did something violent and racist but that the entire mechanism of civilazation that is supposed to protect people from violent and racist acts failed to do so, apparently for racist reasons. Encluding the mayor, who was the chosen representative of the majority of voters in the town.
I would never say that every person in the town was racist, but I would say the racisim there seems to be systemic and institutionalized. Which seems a good enough reason to say “That town is fucked”. And yes that is different than saying all niggers are X.
Don Henley was born in Gilmer, which isn’t too far from Linden (about 40 miles).
[self-correction]but he (Don Henley) did live in Linden before moving to LA[/self-correction]
Just a guess, but might it have something to do with the fucktards who insist on flying the Confederate battle flag? For the most part, you find them in the South. It’s a symbol of the racism of the past, so it’s not such a stretch to make the connection. Oh, the flag is also a symbol of the South? Too fucking bad, it’s tainted with racism. People can pick on the South because the South is genuinely fucked up.
Dag, what percentage of Southerners fly the Confederate battle flag?
People of color are more likely than whites to live in conditions that are hazardous to their health. This is known as “environmental racism.” It may not be as easy to notice as a predominately racist community or a hate crime. But it is just as destructive and very, very widespread.
In New Mexico farm workers are exposed to toxic pesticides that can result in birth defects, nerve disorders, cancer, and even death. In some areas such as South Dakota, companies responsible for waste disposal are trying to get around tight regulations by contracting with Native Indian Reservations for dumping.
Do something.
This is a very interesting part of the world to live in. If this were a Stephen King novel, I’d swear that something lives deep under the earth here.
Linden has long been a nest of racism. This isn’t the first (nor anywhere near) crime against a black person that has been winked at by the local authorities. Two very good examples were cited by Diogenes the Cynic in the first post.
Also mentioned by Diogenes the Cynic, Shreveport, LA. The racism there has escalated over recent years to what I consider police sanctioned murder. The killing by the police of cellphone-wielding Marquise Hudspeth in Shreveport’s sister city of Bossier underscores what goes on there almost weekly. As a side note, whites were asked by the organizers not to attend the city-wide memorial services which followed the funeral.
A tourist town, Jefferson, lies just a few miles south of Linden. It has a huge population of Seventh Day Adventists. My car needed a jumpstart in Jefferson once, and I had the hood up and the cables connected to my battery, waiting for someone to offer a hand. A man approached me, asked about my car. Nodded a couple of times, then asked if I eat meat. When I stammered out an affirmative, he walked away, got into his truck and drove off. While certainly not on par with murder or assault, it does show the “Us against Them” mentality that is so prevalent in this area.
Gilmer, TX. Gained national attention after the disappearance of a young girl and the real life witch hunt that followed, as documented in the Dateline feature “A Touch of Evil”.
All in all, a very disturbing place.
I’ve seen all three of the police car videos of this shooting, and if I remember how this went down, the guy turned around and pointed something silver at the officers. There’s one squad car that was positioned that caught the fact that this man turned around and angrily pointed his cellphone at them, in a manner that could easily be construed by edgy officers as pointing a weapon. Because he was backlit by the convenience store, and because it was night, it would be very easy to mistake a silver cellphone as a gun. Especially after a) engaging the police in a high-speed chase, b) pulling away from the officers and acting belligerant (he was drunk), and c) refusing to stop when ordered to by the police.
I have no doubt that racism is still alive and well in Shreveport, nor that the police force might be (I hesitate to say a definite ‘is/was’) engaging in racial profiling, especially of young black men, but it seems this case might have been merely a coincidence that came after a string of potentially legitimate police incidents. Even the US Justice Dept. cleared the officers.
Here is a site with two of the three videos. The third video link didn’t work for me, for some reason.
I watched two of those videos Deadly, and neither one really exonerates the police.
From the camera pov, it’s a little hard to tell what he was pointing though it looked closer to the noisy cricket from MIB than a handgun. The police were a good deal closer to the suspect than the cameras and should’ve been able to tell that it was a phone.
Also, they shot him in the back as he was walking away. He wasn’t running, power walking, or speed walking. He was just walking.
IMHO, he could’ve been subdued. Lethal force was not called for.