From Pine View Farm

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Over at ASZ, Steve muses about what the phrase “overtly white” means, as the antonym to the phrase “overtly nonwhite,” as used below:

OK, maybe it is the English teacher in me, but that “overtly” is bugging me. I found it in this usage in the Washington Post this morning, in a quotation from a White Supremacist. The Post article is about the explosion of activity by racist groups on the internet in the last year or two, and how that explosion is being spurred by the candidacy of Barack Obama. Here’s the quote from the WaPo:

    Neo-Nazi, skinhead and segregationist groups have reported gains in numbers of visitors to their Web sites and in membership since the senator from Illinois secured the Democratic nomination June 3. His success has aroused a community of racists, experts said, concerned by the possibility of the country’s first black president.

    “I haven’t seen this much anger in a long, long time,” said Billy Roper, a 36-year-old who runs a group called White Revolution in Russellville, Ark. “Nothing has awakened normally complacent white Americans more than the prospect of America having an overtly nonwhite president.”

What the heck does that mean? If I’m having a hard time figuring out what “overty white” means, I’m having the devil of a time figuring out what “overtly nonwhite” means, especially as concerns Barack Obama. Let’s not parse this too much, but Obama is just as much white as he is black. Is that What Roper refers to, afraid that people will come back at him with the line I just used? “Overtly nonwhite,” then, means to him the mere color of his skin? Well, duh! That’s exactly what Roper means as he mangles the language, something the Harvard educated Obama is not likely to have done.

Well, this looks to me like what “overtly white” means in the context of Mr. Billy Roper’s statements and beliefs:

Racial epithets were spray-painted on the lawns of two houses and a playground in the Colton Meadow community near St. Georges on Friday night and Saturday morning.

Racial slurs in bold, yellow print were found on the lawns of homes of black and Hispanic families sometime Friday night, said county police spokesman Cpl. Trinidad Navarro.

The nearby children’s playground was marred with the words KKK, Jews and racial epithets as well as toilet paper.

Link to the full Washington Post story here.

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