Are People Going Mad?

Something is seriously wrong in America when people are impersonating white supremacists in order to drive a deep wedge between people of colored and white. This is not the America that I know we can be but according to CNN.com, an African-American man has pleaded guilty after being accused of impersonating a white supremacist in a fictitious Facebook account to make death threats against an African-American university student. Dyron L. Hart, 20, of Poplarville, Mississippi, pleaded guilty last month before U.S. District Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt to one count of communicating threats in interstate commerce, according to a Department of Justice statement.

Hart admitted creating the fictitious account in November of last year, pretending to be a white supremacist outraged by the election of Barack Obama as the nation's first African-American president, the statement said. He then transmitted a death threat via Facebook to an African-American student at Nicholls State University in Louisiana, saying he wanted to kill African-Americans because of Obama's election, according to the statement. When I first heard this story, I was like are you kidding me but apparently it is clear that something is seriously wrong with us as Americans when people would go to such extremes to drive the race wedge in this country. Are we going mad people? Don’t answer that because we all know the answer to it.

You can just look at some of the images from many healthcare rallies and tea parties to see that a few people in this nation can’t stand President Obama and some people are showing their true colors in terms of just how they feel about a person of color. However apart of this problem didn’t just start when President Obama was elected but it festered the day when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of George W. Bush to become our nation’s 43rd President thus leaving a group of minorities in Florida disenfranchised because their votes were not counted. Still for 8 years and even before then the race debate in this nation has been ignored because we as Americans have felt it is better to not talk about race than to talk about it.

In fact, some of us have felt that it is better to entice the race wedge and drive the wedge even deeper by going to the dark side of vicious race attacks that can only make one side angry at the other rather than bringing sides together to talk sensibly. Nonetheless the case of Dyron L. Hart is an unusual case because as an African-American man from Mississippi, he admitted that he posed as a white supremacist to send a death threats through Facebook after being charged in federal court with making threats over the internet.

Yes, you read correctly. An African-American man pretended to be a white supremacist and sent death threats to other African Americans. What would possess anyone to create such an account yet alone someone of color to want to drive the race wedge between people of color and whites even deeper than how it is rather than try to work to solve. Then there is the question of when will the nation go after the real white supremacists that are sending death threats to our nation’s presidents and other through Facebook and other website.

Still Hart’s case is very uncommon and to a degree it is a sad case because it makes me wonder why anyone would want to impersonate another group of people in order to send death threats to his own ethnic group. Only someone who is bent on resurrecting the race wars that drove this nation to the brink of collapse would be so possessed to do what Hart did or someone who thought it would be a neat practical joke to play on his own people in order to see how they would respond to the issue of hate and racism.

Nonetheless, Hart created a fake Facebook account last November and he pretended to be a white supremacist who wanted to do violence because Barack Obama was elected as the nation’s first African-American president. He then sent a death threat through the Facebook account to an African-American student at Nicholls State University. He stated that he wanted to kill African-Americans because of Obama’s election. It’s not known why Dyron Hart did this. Hart plead guilty in federal court. He had used a white supremacist’s photo he found on the internet to pretend to be a white man who planned to kill blacks. He sent the threats from a computer in Mississippi.

Hart is facing a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. However what amazed me is that when researching to write this story, I came across the statement below:

“Personally, I think Obama supporters can learn a lot from this incident. This is what Obama would call a “teachable moment.” Dyron Hart is much like a lot of Obama supporters who come on this site and try to play the race card, when the race card does not exist. Dyron Hart is an extreme example of what happens when liberals turn race into an issue where the issue doesn’t exist. It only hurts other minorities.”

Now it is clear that some people in this nation think racism doesn’t exist and let me be clear those people can so wrong. Racism has always existed and will always exist but to what degree is the question. While I will say that racism has not been so overtly over the last couple of decades and years, it has festered its ugly head like never before after being quietly dormant to some degree. Racism is no different than terrorism because when it comes to –isms, they will always exist as long as people on both sides play into it. I do agree with the above statement to a degree that some people on Facebook do play the race card regarding any and everything now days. However what the above author doesn’t understand is that the race card is played on sides on Facebook.

I have seen non-Obama supporters on Facebook speak hateful and vicious words about not just Obama but of people of color while at the same time, some Obama supporters have driven the race wedge by using the race card to try to bring others to their side of the spectrum. I can’t even count how many times in the last 2 weeks I have had debates with people on various issues from both the right and the left and how they quickly invoke race in the debate no matter what the issue is. Therefore the race card is played on both sides and the quote above by a person who shall remain nameless doesn’t acknowledge that non-Obama supporters and Obama supporters play the race card to some degree or another.

Therefore the fact that a fake Facebook racist was prosecuted only makes some like myself ask why not the real ones? I am absolutely clueless as to why a 20-year-old black man, Dyron L. Hart, posed as a white supremacist on Facebook to threaten black students down in Mississippi. What would have motivated this behavior? I have no idea. But some people might say that Hart’s actions are now being used by bonafide white supremacists to cover their own vile contempt for minorities on Web sites like newnation.com.

Hart faces up to five years for his own act of complete insanity. He deserves it. No one should terrorize or threaten anyone, regardless of race. But the question I have is why do real white supremacists and others who commit racist acts continue to escape prosecution for their actions against minorities, all in the name of freedom of speech. As I have mentioned before in previous articles and debates, I am all for free speech but when that free speech regardless if it is written or spoken entices hatred, provokes violence, or spites venomous words that can cause violence toward a person or a group of people than that to me is not free speech but rather hate speech and that is something I don’t tolerate and won’t tolerate.

I have heard the legal argument about free hate speech. And legally speaking, the threats that white supremacists and others make against minorities on a daily basis are more general and do not specifically target individuals as Hart did. So they hate all of us, therefore they are less threatening? If authorities were able to quickly and easily track down this one black man, why is it so difficult to track down real racists who have not just threatened but have acted on those threats? What about the racists who vandalized Rep David Scott’s office?

Why do they choose not to prosecute the white supremacist who verbally assaulted and threatened that black New Jersey mayor, forcing him to not seek another term in office? What about the death threats that a college football player received in Idaho when he announced he was going to marry a white woman? No prosecution there either. Why did the people who threatened to kill actress Halle Berry’s unborn child escape prosecution? Or what about the daily racist threats President Barack Obama receives?

The answer, of course, is there is a double standard in America about race and it has been for years, we all know this and that is why a real national race debate or dialogue needs to happen now more than ever. The other answer is criminal statutes are not always written using the most logical tool available to us — common sense. But does this also illustrate bias? Personally, I can't help but think of how minorities are woefully underrepresented in prosecuting attorneys' offices and on the bench. Personally, I can't help but think that "protect and serve" loses some of its meaning depending upon the race of those involved.

However I don’t want to discourage future lawyers but instead motivate them to protect all people, to stand up for all Americans and make sure all laws of this nation apply to all Americans equally. America we can’t go mad as Hart would want many of us to do or as some white supremacists would want us to do; instead we must use our common sense to fight against the racism, hatred, bigotry, discrimination and prejudice of any kind in order to create that more perfect union that President Obama spoke of on March 18, 2008. This is the teachable moment that all of us can learn from and can become a better group of people as a result of this. We can’t go mad people but instead we must become even more faithful and stronger to want to have a national open dialogue throughout this nation about race in order to decrease this race wedge that exists between many ethnic groups of people in this great nation of ours. This is our charge today.