An ugly resurgence:
McCarthy, Abigail
AN UGLY RESURGENCE HATE CALLS OUT OUT HATE IT WAS a hot night in midsummer, hot as only a night in the mid-continent can be, there where no breezes come from the ocean to coo! the land and the...
...All these things are there, but they are no excuse for hate and the violence bred by hate...
...Speculation ran rife...
...Perhaps it is not strange that the current criticism of the state of Israel, and concomitant expres-sions of concern and sympathy for the Palestinians seem sometimes little more than convenient cloaks for the old preju-dices...
...Fear and & frisson of excitement was in the air...
...Truckloads of local men - some in their old World War I uniforms - had gone to the town line to head the Klansmen off, or so it was said...
...When it flourished in the past it was because of indifference and cultural blindness - it was not bolstered with a pious rationale...
...Yet surveys show that Maryland is one of the most tolerant states in the union...
...And the Klan in that year was large and powerful, a force to be reckoned with...
...It is up to us to find Christian and creative solutions to old problems returning in new forms...
...Yet the sin of racism in terms of color is one even the most ignorant of Catho-lics can acknowledge...
...Arab investment is beginning to dominate some of our fi-nancial institutions...
...Now the Klan marches again - not in great numbers but hate calls out to hate and numbers can grow...
...ABIGAIL MCCARTHYBIGAIL MCCARTHY...
...My brother, my sisters, and I were standing on the front walk in our night clothes, waiting...
...Rumor had it that they were on the march from a nearby town...
...Whole immigrant groups came to this country bearing with them the poison of the active and violent form of anti-Semitism which flourished in their native countries...
...For years afterward we used to take unbelieving visiting cousins to the Protestant cemetery to look at the tombstone of the grey little man who requested that it be emblazoned with KKK, the emblem of the proudest asso-ciation of his life...
...All over the country synagogues are being vandalized and defaced with dis-graceful graffiti and swastikas...
...It must have been the year of the Al Smith campaign because Catholics were the chief target of the Klan that summer...
...Perhaps they did...
...Most understandable is the fear that mis-guided Israeli policy will embroil us in war in the Middle East...
...international corpo-rations have been tainted with the Arab-required boycott of Jewish employees...
...And we did not genuflect during the prayer for "the perfidious Jews" on Good Friday...
...Worst of all was the knowledge that some of our neighbors - possibly the very ones so affable and smiling by day - marched, masked, in those robes at night...
...well wish that the American Jewish community were more critical of Israel...
...They" were the Klan...
...Historically the scapegoating of minorities - especially those minorities which are seen as pros-perous or taking jobs from others - has accompanied economic crisis...
...There are racists - and have been throughout our history in this country - and there are anti-Semites among us...
...It is up to us recognize the resurgence of prejudice for the ugly and dangerous thing it is - as harmful to the hater as to the hated...
...We may...
...All up and down the street little groups of people were gathering, milling about...
...Or perhaps the sheriff, a staunch Catholic, stopped them...
...we can also feel that they should resort to more tactful, less strident means of expressing their dis-pleasure - as when the pope met (it would seem unwisely) with Arafat...
...It was a sobering sight...
...Ours are our own...
...The lynchings and flog-gings with which they terrorized the South had not reached the upper Mid-west, but the virulence of prejudice and hatred had its outlets in the threatening rallies, cross burnings, and bullying of small town merchants and officials...
...Desecrate the church...
...All the hard-won reciprocity be-tween Christians and Jews working to-gether for better social conditions and for the oppressed, all the progress in ecumenism and the affirmation of our common spirituality, all we were taught by the horror of the Holocaust - all that seems to be yielding too easily to a new historical situation...
...Unfortunately Catho-lics are not strangers to hate...
...the land and the land continues to radiate the heat of the day far into the night...
...At any rate, the Klan did not march in our town that night...
...It is something to which both Catholics, and all Christians, as well as our Jewish brethren must give the closest attention...
...Most shameful, of course, is the unspo-ken acknowledgment behind some American policy - the Arabs have oil, the Israelis do not...
...I re-member that the sidewalk felt warm to my bare feet and the leaves on the bridalwreath bushes near the front porch seemed to droop in the heat...
...Abuse our pastor...
...We read that in states like Louisiana they are actively recruited...
...Would it not have been better to express hurt and incomprehension rather than to admonish...
...And now Catho-lics march with them - the ban against Catholic members has been lifted...
...But those are Jewish prob-lems...
...And a just con-cern is the plight of the Palestinians, as is also the intransigent Israeli policy of West Bank settlement...
...We need to inform ourselves - much of the commentary on the Mid-dle East which has appeared in the dioce-san press is superficial and shows little background in the modern history of the region...
...I returned from a trip in the west, where anti-Semitism is beginning to cause concern, to find that here in the Washington area, in the most prosperous of suburban Maryland countries, the Anti-Defamation League has appointed a full-time staff member to work on racism, so numerous have hate-filled incidents be-come...
...From inside the doorway my aunt nervously urged us to come back in before "they" came...
...Under-standing and mutual trust are weakened by the pressures of narrow national inter-ests with which they seem in conflict...
...they were in turn the rejected people...
...But crosses had been burned before the churches in the towns around us, and they had blazed from the hillsides above the river - fiery reminders of liv-ing violent hate...
...All sorts of things are fueling this re-surgence of bad feeling...
...Our father stood nearer the street talking in low tones with a neighbor...
...If the truth were known there are probably more anti-Semites than there are racists...
...Most of all, we need to work hand in hand once again with Jews, and any others who are the targets of hatred, to resolve conflict and restore mutual re-spect and friendship...
...Hate activity of all kinds seems to flourish with each ap-pearance of Klansmen...
...Some of us are Klansmen at heart...
...The Jews, it was said, had rejected Jesus...
...They were coming to burn a cross before our church, burn a cross and do who knows what - far worse things, perhaps...
...But anti-Semitism was, hard as it is to admit...
Vol. 109 • December 1982 • No. 22
