University of North Carolina Issues Pathetic Hate Crime Conduct Code

Having staunchly protected a group of its racist students at North Carolina State University in Raleigh in late 2008, the UNC educational system is back at it: protecting the status quo while making itself seem like it's taking progressive, thoughtful measures. Specifically, on February 12, 2010, The University of North Carolina Board of Governors approved a uniform code of conduct to address hate crimes on the 16 campuses in the UNC school system. It's a pathetic, meaningless code of conduct, and it comes as no surprise to us. In our February, 2009, blog we predicted a white-wash job by the UNC administration, and earlier this month, they delivered. No, we're not psychic; we just saw the writing on the wall.

On election night in 2008 four North Carolina State University students spray-painted violent, racist messages about Barack Obama in the campus' Free Expression Tunnel. Although these messages would not be considered constitutionally protected free speech by anyone other than dyed-in-the-wool racists because they called for the assassination of an elected president—one statement read, "Let's shoot that N----r in the head" and another said, "Hang Obama by a noose"—the NC State's administration refused to classify the grafitti as a hate crime, refused to expel those responsible for writing the death-threat directives aimed at President Obama, and refused to release the names of the students. The message from the school was clear; threatening, racist language by its students is acceptable at North Carolina State University.

Phase One of UNC's political white-wash of the graffiti incident came when UNC President Erskine Bowles created a "panel" of people to look at campus hate crimes and the issue of what constitutes free speech. Phase Two came on February 12th when the UNC Board of Governors approved a uniform code of conduct that (clutch your pearls ladies) prohibits on-campus actions defined by federal and state laws as hate crimes while expressing support for free speech on campus. Wow, it took a panel of higher education experts and a large public school system's board of directors to lower itself to state it will now recognize state and federal hate crime laws. They threw in support for the First Amendment as a patriotic bonus. What next from Erskine Bowles and the UNC Board of Governors? A position statement about the Declaration of Independence? Pathetic.

We're still left wondering who those four racist NC State students are who spray-painted the threats on President Obama's life in 2008 and who these students are connected to. Either white privilege hit a new low in the state of North Carolina or the four NC State students who got a free-pass to threaten the president without being charged with a hate crime and without being expelled from school are somehow well-connected. Since white privilege and well-connectedness often go hand-in-hand, perhaps both were at work.

Hate Crime Incidents: From Election Day to Inauguration Day

We've never before known hate crimes to be lubricated by our nation's presidential choice. Being the first elected African-American identified president, however, Barack Obama's success aroused the hateful passions of more than a few Americans. His run for the White House sparked hate incidents which we described in one of our November, 2008, blogs. In addition, his election provoked some to commit criminal acts of hate; and, his inauguration provoked others. Going beyond the headlines, we examine here in detail those hate crime incidents that have come to our attention that were fueled by Obama's election victory and by his assuming the office of the president. After reading this, you’ll learn that there was no randomness to these crimes; rather, similar forces were operating in places with similar histories regardless of where and when they occurred.

In the 78 days from November 4, 2008 through January 20, 2009, we've tallied 14 hate crime incidents that were significantly provoked by the election or inauguration of President Obama. On average, that's about one hate crime every six days, although the crimes did not occur at regular intervals. Ten of the 14 crimes occurred within 48 hours of GOP presidential candidate John McCain conceding defeat. Another Obama-related hate crime occurred on November 14, 2008, and the remaining three occurred four days before, two days before, and on inauguration day. For all we know, there may have been more Obama-related hate crimes, but they did not come to our attention. In these 14 incidents, there were 15 persons arrested; 12 of those arrested were white males, one was a white female, one was an African-American male (said to have posed as a white male on the Internet), and one was a Latino male who worked in concert with three white males. In five of the 14 incidents the perpetrators are unknown with this exception. On election night on the North Carolina State University campus in Raleigh, four N.C. State students spray-painted violent, racist messages about Barack Obama, including two assassination remarks that read, "Let's shoot that N----r in the head" and, "Hang Obama by a noose." Instead of having the students arrested as they should have—calling for a head of state's head is an act of domestic terrorism—the mostly white school's administration instead protected the students. By refusing to take any legal action against them, the school protected the identity of the students, and it refused to discipline them or to expel them from school (although the NAACP demanded expulsion). N.C. State's administration thus sent a chilling message to its current and future black students. Bizarrely, the four cowardly students issued a written, anonymous apology, which of course is meaningless since no one but the N.C. State administration knows who they are. In other words, they said in essence: you don't know who we are, we aren't going to tell you who we are, we're not withdrawing from N.C. State, but now that we've been caught we want to say we are sorry we said we wanted Barack Obama murdered, now shut up and let our college educations be unmarred by our threats of domestic terrorism so that we can use our college privilege to eventually gain well-paying jobs. N.C. State administrators are "studying" the issue of on-campus hate speech, and we can expect their white-washed report out in March.

Turning to the election-to-inauguration hate crime incidents where something is known about those arrested and what they are accused of doing, we've found that in addition to 93% being male, 87% being white, and 80% being white males, the vast majority (93%) were young. The average age of the 15 arrestees is 22.2 years; their ages ranged from 18-42 at the time of their arrests, with five being in their late teens (18-19 years), and nine being in their early twenties (21-24 years). Additionally, only four of the 14 hate crime incidents occurred in former slave states (two in Mississippi and one each in Georgia and North Carolina). The other Obama-related hate crime incidents occurred in New York (where there were four), New Jersey (where there were two), Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, California, and Utah. In other words, those arrested don't fit the stereotype of old, white Southerners clinging to hopes of a resurrected Confederacy. But, of course, American racism was never regional as James W. Loewen has taught us.

Of those arrested little is known about any possible prior criminal history; that is, in only two hate crime incidents where arrests were made was something reported by the media about past criminal activity. In the case of Steven Joseph Christopher, 42—a white man who was arrested in Brookhaven, Mississippi after allegedly planning to travel to Washington, DC, to assassinate President Obama during the inauguration ceremony on January 20th—we know that while living in his native Wisconsin, Christopher was charged with knowingly violating a domestic abuse restraining order in February, 2008 out of Walworth County, Wisconsin—a county whose population is 94.5% white, and one of only 13 counties of Wisconsin's 78 counties to give John McCain the nod over Barack Obama. Forty-eight percent of Walworth County voters picked Obama in a state where he garnered 56% of the vote. According to the laudable research of James W. Loewen, Walworth County, Wisconsin is no stranger to racism; it has one probable and four possible sundown towns—entire communities that have a history of banishing blacks from living there or even being present after dark (hence the term sundown town). It's places like Walworth County—historically racist, currently and historically disproportionately white, and largely Republican—where you would expect hateful seeds to germinate into a plot to assassinate Barack Obama.

In the other hate crime case where something is known about the criminal records of those arrested, in Hemet, California, Justin Tyme Hayes, 21, Crystal Lee McCann, 22, Derek Shane O'Brien, 22, and Darrin Peter Thibault, 24—who were all arrested for allegedly being involved in the brutal race-based beating of a 19-year-old Latino man causing him permanent and severe brain damage ten days after the presidential election—are said to be members of a white supremacist hate group, the “COORS Skins”. In addition, Hayes has been charged with drug dealing. What makes the Hemet hate crime connected to the election is the fact that the COORS Skins had a website which included angry messages railing against the election of Barack Obama. Clearly, Obama's race and his victory on November 4th appeared to further enrage the gang. Thankfully, the website was shut down after the November 14th attack on the Latino victim whose name has not been released to the public. Not so coincidentally, Hemet, California—a city in Riverside County with an African-American population totaling just about 2.6% and with a white population of about 80.5%—also has a history of racism: it is a probable sundown town according to James Loewen's research. Hemet's white population far exceeds that of Riverside County (65.5%), and its black population is about two-and-half times lower than Riverside County (6.24%) which is itself about half the national average. Also not coincidentally, the voters of Riverside County were much less likely to have voted for the winning presidential candidate in 2008 (Barack Obama got 51% of the vote in Riverside) when compared with the entire state of California (61%).

In the 14 hate crime incidents we tallied that were sparked by President Obama's election and inauguration, what exactly is said to have occurred? As we've mentioned, in one case a young Latino man with his future ahead of him now will spend the rest of his life severely brain-damaged and the ward of the state of California; and, as we've said, four college students spray-painted a threat and a directive to kill our president at North Carolina State University on election night with no consequences to them, and one white man, who had also allegedly verbalized threats to assassinate President Obama, was apparently making plans to go to Washington, D.C., to carry out his act at the inauguration. In the other eleven hate crime incidents either someone was assaulted (or otherwise intimidated face-to-face) or a fire was set—with the exception of the case of the only black person arrested. Dyron Hart, 19—a former Nicholls State University student and 6-foot-3-inch, 350-pound Nicholls State football player wannabe—allegedly sent to black students at four schools a message via Facebook stating he planned to kill 3,000 people, including them, the day after the November 4th election. Hart stands accused of sending the electronic threats to students at his old school in Thibodaux, Louisiana, as well as to students at Louisiana State University, the University of Mississippi, and the University of Alabama. Hart, of Poplarville, Mississippi, allegedly was posing as a white man when he is said to have sent the emails. He was arrested by the FBI on November 12, 2008, and if convicted, Hart could receive up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and three years of supervised release. Not unlike Walworth County, Wisconsin, and Riverside County, California, the voters in Pearl County, Mississippi, where Poplarville is located, were significantly less apt to vote for Barack Obama (19%) than the rest of the state (Obama won 43% of the vote in Mississippi).

THE ARSONS

Six of the 14 election-to-inauguration hate crime incidents we've tallied involved purposefully setting a fire. In some instances, the physical damage was minor. For example, in South Ogden, Utah—a place where whites make up 91.5% of the population, where African-Americans constitute only 0.74% of the population, and a place that in 2002 had an active Neo-Nazi hate group according to the Southern Poverty Law Center—the American flag flying at the home of a black family who had just returned home from volunteering at their local polling station on November 4th was torched. The family was publicly known as being supporters of Barack Obama, and the incident was investigated as a hate crime (no arrest was made).

Similarly, in Hardwick Township, New Jersey, on November 6, 2008, while taking his eight-year-old daughter to school, an African-American man, Gary Grewal, 51, discovered that someone had burned a six-foot tall cross on his yard near his political banner that declared Barack Obama president. The banner was torched also. Although no one was arrested in that hate crime incident, nine days after the fire, townspeople marched in unity against hate crimes. Like some of the other places where there were Obama-related hate crimes, Hardwick Township is almost exclusively white (97%) with a very small, relative African-American population (0.6%). And like nearly all of the other places where these community-destroying crimes took place, fewer people in Warren County, New Jersey (of which Hardwick Township is a part) voted for Obama (42%) than the state where it is located (57% of Garden State voters chose Obama).

Then there was the cross-burning on the lawn of the only black man in Apolacon Township, Pennsylvania, the night after the election. In that small town in Susquehanna County, Archie Johnson, 71—a retired architect—and his partner, Ruth Cohen, 63, who is a Jewish retired school principal, discovered the cross-burning on their property, and one week later police arrested two white men, Stephen James Barrett, 22, and Forrest Michael Ashcraft, 19, both of Friendsville, Pennsylvania. The two were charged with criminal conspiracy to commit ethnic intimidation (a third-degree misdemeanor), ethnic intimidation (a third-degree misdemeanor), and trespassing out of the Montrose District Court. Unlike Harwick Township, New Jersey, there was no anti-hate crime rally in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, where just 0.3 % of its residents are African-American and 98.5% are white, and where on election day, its voters—unlike Pennsylvania—gave the nod to John McCain (55% of voters in Pennsylvania chose Obama, but in Susquehanna County, he received only 44%).

On inauguration day in Jersey City, New Jersey, someone burned the front door of a woman's apartment after first taping Barack Obama newspaper articles on it. Thankfully, the woman who had apparently taken the day off of work to watch Barack Obama's inauguration on television smelled smoke at her front door and discovered it was on fire before major damage or injury occurred. No arrests were made to our knowledge in this case which took place in the only location—of all the Obama-related hate crime communities—where the president fared well in the election. Hudson County, New Jersey, where Jersey City is located, overwhelmingly supported Obama (73%) as compared to the rest of New Jersey (57%).

Two of the election-related hate arsons, however, were devastating. First there was the Springfield, Massachusetts church fire. Just hours after the nation elected its first non-white president, the Macedonia Church of God in Christ, a predominately black church, burned to the ground, and authorities launched an investigation as to whether the Tinkham Road church fire was a hate-related arson set in retaliation for the election of President Barack Obama. They concluded it was, and on January 16, 2009, authorities arrested Benjamin F. Haskell, 22, Michael F. Jacques, 24, and Thomas A. Gleason Jr., 21, all of Springfield, Massachusetts. Haskell is said to have bragged to an uncover police officer that he set fire to the church and was responsible for five other arsons. On January 27, 2009, the three white men were indicted on federal civil rights charges. Each faces up to ten years in prison and three years of supervised release, if convicted as charged.

Then in Cumming, Georgia (Forsyth County) two days before Barack Obama was sworn in as our first African-American identified president, the home of Pam Graf was destroyed by fire as she was in Washington, DC, to attend his inauguration. Arson was the cause, and it was related to Ms. Graf's public support of the president. Referring to president Obama, someone had spray-painted a racial slur and the phrase "your black boy will die" on a fence along her Lanier Drive property. Prior to the suspicious fire, Ms. Graf took down an "Obama for President" yard sign after she received a threatening letter. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was called to aid in the investigation. At the time of the suspicious fire, Cumming, Georgia was overwhelmingly white (89% versus 67% for the state of Georgia), and Forsyth County had significantly fewer votes cast for Barack Obama (20.4%) than Georgia (47%) or nationally (53%). A known sundown community, Forsyth County is well-known for its racism, including incidents as recently as the 1990's.

THE ASSAULTS

As of this date, four of the 15 arrested have pleaded guilty; the remaining have not had their criminal cases adjudicated. The three white men and the one Latino man who pleaded guilty went on a race-based terror-spree on Staten Island immediately following—and because of—the election of Barack Obama. In all, four men were assaulted. Ironically, the victim most seriously injured was white. From our This Date in Hate calendar at our website, here is the account of those assaults:

"In the early morning hours on Staten Island, New York, just hours after the 2008 presidential election outcome was known, four men were attacked in separate race-based hate crime incidents by four Staten Island men—three white and one Latino. First, a black Muslim teenager who emigrated to the United States in 2000 from Liberia, Alie Kamara, 17, was attacked with a pipe and police baton by four men who shouted "Obama" in the Park Hill section of Staten Island. Bloodied by the attack, Mr. Kamara was able to escape from his attackers and he made his way home where he then called for help. The four perpetrators also assaulted a black man in the Port Richmond section of Staten Island by pushing him to the ground, and then accosted a Latino man and demanded who he voted for for president. After those three attacks, a white man, Ronald Forte, 38—who was mistaken to be African-American by his perpetrators—was run over and then left for dead on Blackford Avenue in the Port Richmond section as he was walking home at night from his job as a Shop Rite manager. Mr. Forte, a father of five, who had items stolen from his body allegedly by the perpetrators as he lay clinging to life, was in a coma for days following the attack. He suffered significant brain injury, is no longer able to work, and is being cared for by his mother. Two white Staten Island men, Ralph Nicoletti, 18, and Bryan Garaventa, 18, were arrested for attacking Mr. Kamara, and on November 16, 2008, they pleaded Not Guilty to state charges of assault as a hate crime and weapons possession charges in a Staten Island court. Two other suspects—Michael "Dominican Mike" Contreras, 18, and Brian Carranza, 21—were arrested on January 6, 2009, and were arraigned the following day on federal civil rights charges along with Nicoletti and Garaventa in Brooklyn Federal Court for their roles in the election night hate crime attacks. Police discovered Nicoletti, Garaventa, Contreras and Carranza were involved in the attack on Mr. Kamara, and in the hit-and-run attack/robbery of Mr. Forte, because police found items belonging to Mr. Forte in the possession of Nicoletti and Garaventa during their investigation of the two. All four pleaded guilty to federal civil rights violations (federal hate crimes) for their roles in the post-election attacks which they admitted were prompted by their race-based anger about the election victory of Barack Obama. Garaventa pleaded guilty on January 6, 2009, Carranza pleaded guilty on January 26, 2009, Contreras pleaded guilty (also in January, 2009), and Nicoletti pleaded guilty on February 2, 2009. Nicoletti, who was the ringleader and who was the driver who hit Mr. Forte, could get up to 12 years in federal prison plus fines of up to $250,000; the other three could receive up to 10 years in federal prison each and fines of up to $250,000 each."

Never a sundown town and racially diverse with 15% of its population Latino and another 15% black, Staten Island nonetheless has in common with nearly all of the other sites of Obama-related hate crime incidents election results out of sync with its surroundings. While 62% of New York voters chose Barack Obama for president, less than half (47%) the residents of Staten Island (Richmond County) voted for him. Additionally, two presidential election cycles ago, in 2000, Staten Island had two active white racist hate groups (a neo-Confederate group and a white nationalist group). In fact, 7 of the 11 locations where the hate crime incidents we examined have occurred have had an active hate group or currently do have an active hate group, according to data from the Southern Poverty Law Center. An additional community has a history of overt racism aimed directly at African-Americans (Forsyth County, Georgia) in the form of being a sundown community.

CRIME SITE-SPECIFIC ELECTION RESULTS

Although Barack Obama won the popular vote in 6 of the 9 states where there occurred an Obama-related hate crime, the communities in which those hate crimes happened were very often not hotbeds of Obama support as we've shown throughout this report. In only 2 of 11 hate crime communities did Barack Obama garner significantly more votes than in the state in which those crimes occurred (viz., Hudson County, New Jersey, and Wake County, North Carolina). When examining the president's election results, by state-versus-community percentage differences, we discovered that the hate crime communities were very often places significantly opposed to Barack Obama. As listed below, 7 of the 11 communities were places where Obama had relatively weak support. For example, in Richmond County, New York (Staten Island), Barack Obama had 15 percentage points fewer votes than in the state of New York as a whole. Additionally, in only 3 of the 11 communities where an Obama-related hate crime occurred did he have more of the vote than his opponent, John McCain (highlighted in blue).

Forsyth County, GA: -27

Pearl River County, MS: -24

Richmond County, NY: -15

Warren County, NJ: -15

Susquehanna County, PA: -11

Riverside County, CA: -10

Lincoln County, MS: - 9

Hampden County, MA: 0

Weber County, UT: + 1

Wake County, NC: + 7

Hudson County, NJ: +16

In summary, we've found 14 Obama-related hate crime incidents most all of which occurred in clusters around the time of Barack Obama's election victory (10) and around the time of his inauguration (3). In most of these incidents (93%) the known or alleged perpetrators were men, white (87%), or both (80%); and, the vast majority (93%) were young with 14 of the 15 persons arrested being between the ages of 18 and 24 years. These 14 hate crime incidents occurred in ten states, but the places where the crimes occurred and those arrested for them do not fit stereotypes of old, white Southerners clinging to hopes of a resurrected Confederacy. That the majority of those arrested are young tells us that the nation continues to transmit its beliefs of white supremacy. That less than 30% of the hate crime incidents occurred in former slave states, and that 20% of all states had an Obama-related hate crime incident (and these occurred coast to coast) tells us that the transmission of white supremacy from generation to generation is a national problem. The communities where Obama-related hate crimes occurred generally were places of relative weak support for the president. Finally, in general these communities were historically racist places to live; and, they were and are today disproportionately white communities.

Note: This blog is available as a pdf at our website (see our Trend Reports and The Politics of Hate).

The Week in Hate: November 9 - 15, 2008

Please read the other hate-related news stories at our This Date In Hate calendar.

Sunday November 9, 2008: In rural Sun, Louisiana (St. Tammany Parish), Raymond "Chuck" Foster, 44, allegedly shot and killed Cynthia C. Lynch, 43, of Tulsa, Oklahoma who was recruited via the Internet to participate in a Ku Klux Klan ceremony. Her murder took place after an argument erupted when she attempted to leave the ceremony after changing her mind about joining the Klan. Ms. Lynch was to have participated in the ceremony and then return to Oklahoma to recruit Klan members. Foster, who lives in Washington Parish and who is the leader of a local Klan chapter called Dixie Brotherhood, was charged with second-degree murder, and seven other Klan members, all from Washington Parish, were charged with trying to help conceal the murder. These Klan members were charged with obstruction of justice in the case: Random Hines, 27; Danielle Jones, 23; Frank Stafford, 21; Alicia Watkins, 23; Timothy Michael Watkins, 30; Andrew Yates, 20; and, Shane Foster, 20, the son of Chuck Foster. The victim's body was found dumped on a roadside the day after her murder. Ms. Lynch's murder underscores the violent nature of America's oldest domestic terrorist organization.

Monday November 10, 2008: The Greenville, North Carolina chapter of the NAACP demanded a "strong response and punishment" for the four North Carolina State University students who spray-painted "Let's shoot that N----r in the head", and, "Hang Obama by a noose" in the school's Free Expression Tunnel on election night. Other than the NAACP, no one is taking any action against the students: the Secret Service has deemed there was no threat to the President-elect; campus police have said no crime occurred (even though communicating a threat to kill someone is not protected free speech and the use of a racial slur would qualify the threats as a hate crime), and school administration is keeping secret the identities of the four students who admitted painting the threats. With the presidential election votes still being counted in Missouri, the nation, with the aid of North Carolina State University police and administration, has just lowered the bar for the safety of a nationally elected official by allowing someone to publicly call for the murder of our president-elect.

Monday November 10, 2008: Although expanded hate crime legislation failed last year in the United States, on this date the Hungarian Parliament passed two measures designed to curb hate crimes and hate speech. One law allows victims to civilly sue perpetrators for engaging in degrading or intimidating behavior directed toward a person or a group of people based on the victims' nationality, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation. The other law prohibits hate speech directed at someone based on their nationality, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation, speech that is designed to "incite hatred of a group of people."

Wednesday November 12, 2008: Alexander Edward Ou, 20, of Rochester, Minnesota, who was charged out of the Olmsted District Court with gross misdemeanor fourth-degree assault motivated by bias (a hate crime) for allegedly assaulting a 48-year-old man early on June 6th because of the man's race, was scheduled for an evidentiary hearing. Alexander's brother, Anthony Shieha Ou, 17, was been charged out of the Olmsted District Juvenile Court with the same crime.

Wednesday November 12, 2008: In Poplarville, Mississippi, former Nicholls State University student, Dyron Hart, 19, of Poplarville, is alleged to have sent, via Facebook, black students at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana, Louisiana State University, the University of Mississippi, and the University of Alabama, a message stating he planned to kill 3,000 people, including them, following Barack Obama’s presidential victory on November 5, 2008. Hart, who is himself African-American but who was posing as a white man when he sent the emails and who was a Nicholls State University football hopeful, was arrested by FBI agents on November 12, 2008. If convicted, the 6-foot-3-inch tall, 350-pound man, could receive up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and three years of supervised release if convicted.

Thursday November 13, 2008: On the campus of North Carolina State University over 500 people attended a rally to demonstrate opposition to the life-threatening and racist graffiti written by four known, but unidentified N.C. State students. The four spray-painted "Let's shoot that N----r in the head", and, "Hang Obama by a noose" in the school's Free Expression Tunnel on election night.

Friday November 14, 2008: In Syracuse, New York, Moses Cannon, 20, of Syracuse, was shot and killed while sitting in a car with his 18-year-old brother, Mark, allegedly by Dwight R. DeLee, 20, also from Syracuse, because DeLee did not like that Moses was openly gay. Police have charged DeLee, who allegedly left a party where anti-gay slurs were being directed at the Cannon brothers to get the murder weapon, with second-degree murder. Mark Cannon was slightly injured in the lethal anti-gay attack of his brother.

The 2008 Presidential Election Unleashes Rage

Politics is ugly. This presidential season, it got uglier. Some Americans responded to the first seriously viable black presidential candidate with hate speech; others responded by taking hate-fueled action, or at least by making plans to do so. In West Hollywood, California, ChadMichael Morrisette hung in effigy the likeness of vice-presidential hopeful, Sarah Palin. A life-size doll of presidential candidate John McCain sitting in a chimney surrounded by paper flames was perched nearby. The real GOP presidential candidate was booed by some of his own supporters when he announced at a campaign trail stop that Barack Obama is someone "you do not have to be scared of", a statement apparently the Arizona senator felt he had to make to quell media buzz about McCain-Palin rally attendees shouting "Kill him" and "terrorist" (referring to Obama), about GOP supporters making Barack Obama monkey dolls, about news reports of "Obama for President" signs being stolen from the lawns of his supporters or vandalized with racial slurs, and about vehicles sporting "Obama '08" bumper stickers being vandalized with racist graffiti. Unlike the issue of how to turn our failing economy around, Jesse Jackson's oft-quoted remark that in the United States "race matters" was hardly debatable this national election season.

From the beginning of his bid for the White House, during the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama's ground game team had been subjected to overtly hostile—and racist—remarks from the public. They would never vote for a n----r, some registered voters told Obama volunteers. Barack Obama, who is Christian and a member of the United Church of Christ in Chicago, was repeatedly and erroneously called a Muslim by some detractors, and the 28 million DVD distribution two months before the election by at least 70 newspapers in swing states (such as the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio) of the hate-filled propaganda piece titled Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West no doubt fueled Islamophobia and Obamophobia. Additionally, hate-filled emails found their way into the inboxes of Obama supporters; in at least one case, the FBI was contacted. One Republican blogger posted a poster of Barack Obama next to a noose with the headline that read: "Asphyxiation/The Fucking Solution." Evangelical minister Steve Foss, along with Homer Owen, spammed folks with a dire warning about how evil Barack Obama is. (Owen is an Evangelical guy who hawks born-again intolerance—and lip balm and soap—at his strange website, all in the name of Christ, of course). Although Foss said God was speaking to him about Obama and that it was God who was warning him about an Obama victory—Foss thereby disowning himself from his own hatred and throwing God under the bus at the same time—we predict that in four more years another right-wing Evangelical Christian will read tea leaves, hear God's voice, or stumble across something in the Bible that states, to them, that the next Democratic presidential candidate is—like Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and now Barack Obama—someone akin to the anti-Christ. As revelations from God go, pitching a Democratic presidential candidate as demonic is a pretty tired and overworked one.

Receiving less media attention, but occurring against the same history-making presidential election backdrop, was the Duval County Florida School Board's 5-2 vote along racial lines to retain the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School, this despite the facts that (a) Nathan Bedford Forrest (to quote Brenda Priestly Jackson, one of the two black board members who voted for a school name-change) "was a terrorist and racist" (Forrest was a member of the Ku Klux Klan) and (b) the majority of today's Nathan Bedford Forrest High School students are black.

Then there were the hate-crime incidents. In Denver in late August, four white men were arrested for plotting to assassinate Barack Obama when he was to give his party nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. Next, within weeks of the election two white supremacists—Daniel Cowart, 20, of Bells, Tennessee and Paul Schlesselman, 18, of West Helena, Arkansas—were held without bond in Tennessee after authorities alleged that the pair had planned to rob a Tennesse gun store which was to supply the men with the means to carry out a killing spree against African-Americans. According to law enforcement officials, the two white supremacists also planned to assassinate Barack Obama while wearing white tuxedos and black top hats. On election day in South Ogden, Utah, an African-American family hung the American flag from their home after returning from the polling station where they had worked; within a half an hour, their flag had been set ablaze.

Such acts were not isolated to states where John McCain posted election-night victories either. In Springfield, Massachusetts, the Macedonia Church of God in Christ was suspiciously burned to the ground just hours after Barack Obama's victory speech in Chicago's Grant Park. Just hours before that, on Staten Island, a black Muslim teen was beaten while walking home by four white men apparently enraged that a black man had won the presidential election. Although they yelled no racial slurs—a hallmark sign of a race-based hate crime—the four angry white men yelled "Obama" as they descended upon their African-born victim with a baseball bat, and police ruled the unprovoked attack was, indeed, a hate crime. Meanwhile, at North Carolina State University on election night four students there spray-painted violent, racist messages about Barack Obama: one read, "Let's shoot that N----r in the head" and the other said, "Hang Obama by a noose." True to slave-state tradition, the administration has protected the students. According to WRAL Channel 5, the CBS television affiliate in Raleigh, the school's administration has not released the names of the students, and it said the four students will not be charged with a hate crime. For its part, the NAACP has called for N.C. State to expel the four. What would also be appropriate would be for the case to be turned over to the FBI for criminal investigation and prosecution. Since the identities of the racist spray-painters have been cloaked by the school's administration, we're guessing that the incident must be leaving N.C. State's black students with questions about their own safety on campus.

Hate crime incidents were also not limited to election night. On November 5, 2008, in Poplarville, Mississippi, former Nicholls State University student, Dyron Hart, 19, of Poplarville, is alleged to have sent, via Facebook, black students at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana, Louisiana State University, the University of Mississippi, and the University of Alabama, a message stating he planned to kill 3,000 people, including them. The 6-foot-3-inch tall, 350-pound Hart, who is himself African-American but who was posing as a white man when he sent the emails and who was a Nicholls State University football hopeful in the spring of 2008, was arrested by FBI agents. He is said to have confessed to sending the emails in order to get a "reaction." Two days after the election in Hardwick Township, New Jersey, in Warren County, an African-American man discovered that someone had burned a six-foot tall cross on his yard. He discovered the cross, which was near his pro-Obama banner that had also been deliberately charred, when taking his eight-year-old daughter to school.

Hate crime incidents this presidential election season were also not limited to targeting blacks. The unleashed racism brought about by an African-American man's run for the White House also unleased other forms of hatred. In La Qunita, California, Robert Sylk, the only Jewish candidate running for the City Council, had one of his political lawn signs stolen and vandalized—with a swastika. Then there was the California gay hate-crime assault: a man wearing a political button against "Proposition 8", which denies gay/lesbian couples the right to become legally married in that state, was attacked by a man who first directed a gay slur at his victim. Poignently, the attacker allegedly used a pro-Proposition 8 lawn sign as a weapon with which he is said to have beaten his victim. In Irvine, California, a City Council candidate who is Muslim, Todd Gallinger, received a death threat on October 7, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Some say that John McCain and Sarah Palin fueled their base's race-based emotions by attempting to characterize Barack Obama as someone who "pals around with terrorists" (to quote Ms. Palin) and someone who does not think like "we" do. London Telegraph journalist Tim Shipman reported that Ms. Palin's attacks on Barack Obama's character "provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling 'terrorist' and 'kill him' until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric." Mr. Shipman also wrote: "Sarah Palin's attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign." One thing is clear, the McCain-Palin attacks failed them: pre- and post-election polls showed that members of the public—Republicans and Democrats—did not care for the GOP's negative campaign stating that it went too far.

All of this election hatred is illuminating and it leads to two conclusions. One is that racism (and other forms of hatred) isn't killed off easily, even with a bi-racial (and self-identified African-American) president-elect. The other is that for the nation to continue to make civil rights gains—that is, for tolerance to trump intolerance—hate crimes must be dealt with swiftly and decisively by every level of the criminal justice system.