By 2042, whites will no longer be the American majority. As immigrant populations–largely people of color–increase in cities and suburbs, more and more whites are moving to small towns and exurban areas that are predominately, even extremely, white. Rich Benjamin calls these enclaves “Whitopias” (pronounced: “White-o-pias“).

His journey to unlock the mysteries of Whitopias took him from a three-day white separatist retreat with links to Aryan Nations in North Idaho to the inner sanctum of George W. Bush’s White House–and many points in between. And to learn what makes Whitopias tick, and why and how they are growing, he lived in three of them (in Georgia, Idaho, and Utah) for several months apiece.

A compelling raconteur, bon vivant, and scholar, Benjamin reveals what Whitopias are like and explores the urgent social and political implications of this startling phenomenon.

The glow of Barack Obama’s historic election cannot obscure the racial and economic segregation still vexing America.

Obama’s presidency has actually raised the stakes in a battle royale between two versions of America: one that is broadly comfortable with diversity yet residentially segregated (ObamaNation) and one that does not mind a little ethnic food or a few mariachi dancers–as long as these trends do not overwhelm a white dominant culture (Whitopia).

   By: Rich Benjamin [ Enlarge ]
The headlines snared my attention over the last several days. “White Americans’ Majority to End By Mid-century,” announces The Associated Press. “Projections Put Whites in Minority in U.S. by 2050,” declares The New York Times.

The Census Bureau has been churning some provocative press releases between its last head count (2000) and the one next year. Why, I wonder, the palpable anxiety? And why don’t these headlines announce a positive reading of this statistic? Why not: “By 2050, People of Color Will Be a Majority”?

Already, 40 percent of Americans under the age of twenty-four are not white. Between now and 2050, the Latino population is projected to triple, the Asian population to double, and the non-Hispanic white population to flatline.

Meanwhile this week, two white police officers in Shenandoah, PA were indicted in federal court for filing false reports about the beating death of Luis Ramirez, a 25-year old undocumented worker. (When the immigrant was murdered in 2008 in the Pennsylvania hamlet, one of police officers was dating the accused teenage assailant’s mother.) And the Justice Department announced this week that federal hate crimes cases are at their highest level since 2001.

“Do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, of which you’re a part, and so am I,” said Bill O’Reilly to John McCain in 2007, complaining about the number of undocumented Latino immigrants. “They hate America, and they hate it because it’s run primarily by white, Christian men. They want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have.”

Sealing the Mexican border would not significantly disrupt the Latino population increase. Nor does a sour economy. Domestic births currently outpace immigration as the key source of Latino population growth. In bellwether California, for example, births to Latina mothers outnumber births to all other races combined.

Racial demographics singe my thinking like a slow-burn fuse. When exactly did I grasp white people’s proportional population decline? When, at last, did I realize what explosive emotions Latino immigration triggers? Was it reflecting on the many Census-related headlines, or while noticing other media’s metaphors for Latino immigration (“flood,” “tidal wave,” “overrun,” “invasion”), metaphors firmly in the vernacular of catastrophe, the idiom of natural disaster?

   Black Woman Burns Herself in Protest of Racism

Was it absorbing all the reports in March of 2001 that announced black Americans’ declining population share, a news flash that hit me more like an eviction notice. Hey, effective immediately, the Hispanics have ousted the blacks as America’s largest minority! Or was it watching deposed Alarm King Lou Dobbs’s “Broken Borders” segments, or clicking through the competing doomsday scenarios on cable TV, or noticing the spate of panicky best sellers, like Peter Brimelow’s Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster, Patrick Buchanan’s State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, and Samuel Huntington’s Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s Identity. I can’t put my finger on any moment, no. It has been a ten-year drumbeat, a rat-tat-tat, of quickening alarms alerting drastic, unprecedented cultural changes to our nation, complete with compression intervals.

By 2050, White People Will No Longer Be the Majority. The next census is being conducted against this backdrop, what I call “The White People Deadline.”

Our country’s Obama-era racial politics rarely mentions race in debate, though it lodges race just under the surface of “nonracial” issues: taxes, health care reform, immigration, public spending. There is a slim silver lining to the economic slump: It may inspire a greater commitment toward our nation’s common good and more confidence in the public sector. For too long, an anti-government, race-tinged mindset has corroded belief in “one nation for all,” while fertilizing conservative myths that “explain” the economic meltdown and rebuke President Obama’s recovery agenda: “too much government regulation,” “high taxes,” “wasteful spending,” and “undeserving welfare recipients.”

Tea party protests. Combusting town-hall forums. A nativist Birther movement. Rising hate crimes against Latino Americans and immigrants. “You lie!” Right-wing calls to boycott the 2010 Census. Pockets of white America are suffering an existential crisis.

As the Census “time bomb” ticks, fear mounts over a perceived loss of whites’ raw power – demographic, social, economic, and political.

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In the New Yorker, Sam Tanenhaus, in his review of Palin’s book — “Going Rogue,” writes: “….Palin, though notoriously ill-travelled outside the United States, did journey far to the first of the four colleges she attended, in Hawaii. She and a friend who went with her lasted only one semester. “Hawaii was a little too perfect,” Palin writes. “Perpetual sunshine isn’t necessarily conducive to serious academics for eighteen-year-old Alaska girls.” Perhaps not.

But Palin’s father, Chuck Heath, gave a different account to [Scott] Conroy and [Shushannah] Walshe [authors of 'Sarah From Alaska']. According to him, the presence of so many Asians and Pacific Islanders made her uncomfortable: “They were a minority type thing and it wasn’t glamorous, so she came home.” In any case, Palin reports that she much preferred her last stop, the University of Idaho, “because it was much like Alaska yet still ‘Outside.’” [ READ MORE ] [ REFERENCES: PALIN QUESTION OF THE DAY | HUFFINGTON POST ]

Palin Uncomfortable With Asians

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Why Idaho? — The retirement home of Mark Furman, the former LAPD detective whose racism literally unhooked O.J. Simpson from the jaws of justice, and of Bruce Willis — the macho Republican movie actor who harbors the delusion that the United States should invade Colombia to end drug trafficking. When 27 year old Ashton Kutcher stole Bruce’s wife, 40 year old Demi Moore, “tough guy” Willis bought a house next door to the couple. It is also rumored that Demi Moore’s daughter (with Willis), Rumer Willis had a crush on her Stepdad Ashton Kutcher. Talk about deviance in Idaho, John McClane!

Idaho is a tiny little (96 percent white) pacific north west state with a stinking racist culture. With Ruby Ridge to the north of Sandpoint (The birthplace of Sarah Palin) and the former Aryan Nations to the south, Idahoans are sandwiched in between the most filthy elements of racism in the United States — propped by gun-sucking Republican politicians — from top to bottom.

Idaho is state where bigots and “frightened” right-wingers go to retire — to keep safe from leprosy, pedophiles, Spanish and rampant godlessness; far away from blacks, liberals and “diseased” immigrants. It is a state where “white folks” home-school their children to avoid the “corrupting effects” of liberalism and homosexuality.

Idaho is sweet home Alabama in the pacific north!

From the 1970s until 2001, the Aryan Nations had its headquarters in a 20 acre (81,000 square meters) compound at Hayden Lake, Idaho. In September 2000 the Southern Poverty Law Center won a $6.3 million judgment against the Aryan Nations from an Idaho jury who awarded punitive and compensatory damages to Victoria Keenan and her son, Jason, who were attacked by Aryan Nations guards in 1999. Bullets struck the Keenan’s car several times then the car crashed and an Aryan member held the Keenans at gunpoint. As a result of the judgment, Richard Butler turned over the 20-acre compound to the Keenans, who then sold the property to a philanthropist, who subsequently donated it to North Idaho College, which designated the land as a “peace park.”

Apparently Sarah Palin couldn’t stand the “smell” of Hawaii and its racially diverse peoples, hence the move to Idaho, to mingle comfortably with REAL AMERICANS.

Therefore, claims of Sarah Palin’s links to white supremacists may well be true, in any case, daddy has admitted it! [ READ MORE ABOUT HATE IN IDAHO HERE ]

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This was NOT a grassroots movement as Fox and right-Wing news outlets might want you to think. It was the re-emergence of the WHITE POWER MOVEMENT incorporated into the Republican Party — targeting the president of the United States Barack Obama, a black man.

Unfortunately, there are still millions of white supremacists out there — rednecks doing the bidding of rich bigots in suits, both who believe that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds.

This is not a political ideology — it is PURE HATE.

Let no one convince you that this was an economic protest — three quarters of those protesting know nothing about the economic history of this country, other than what they are spoon fed by the Republican Party.

They are being used as usual by the fat cats of the GOP — who have used race to scare up votes since the civil rights era began.

From the end of Reconstruction until the beginning of the civil rights era, the national Democratic Party made room for segregationist members — and as a result dominated the South. But in the 50s and 60s, Democrats embraced the civil rights movement, costing them the white Southern vote.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party successfully wooed disaffected white racists with a “southern strategy” that championed “states” rights. This strategy failed, finally, during McCain’s run for the White House, but it seems the G.O.P instead of re-tooling, have decided to entrench deep into Bigot America.

White Republicans on average are less educated that their liberal counterparts, and therefore are more likely to be led to the slaughterhouse like brainless sheep. Conversely, a Pew research last October found out that Republicans are generally happier than Democrats.

Why not? The majority of Republicans live in the “bush” anyway, away from the hustle and bustle of large cities. They live in small towns ruled by sheriffs and a handful of town committee members. I know because I grew up in the countryside too — There is not much to worry about, except how spooky Jesus will treat you next Sunday.

I have engaged some in political conversations before, and it doesn’t take too long to discover how inadequate and warped their reasoning is. Add their racist feelings to the mix, and there you have suckers — ready to be played by rich Republican Fat Cats — like a Yo-Yo.

What you saw on tax day is far from being called a grass-roots campaign, rather, it was a congregation of whites steaming with racism, bigotry and extreme ignorance, directed at the first black president of the United States — Barack Hussein Obama, ….and the other colored people — Hispanic Immigrants.

The tea-parties were an act of domestic terrorism, as far as I am concerned. A “Talibanist” act. An attempt to eject President Obama from the White House by hook or crook!

The Sad Reality of The Tea-Parties and Janeane Garofalo

Fox News continues with DHS (Department of Homeland Security) freak-out even after Smith and Herridge’s debunking:

On the April 15 edition of Fox News’ Studio B, host Shepard Smith reported that a recent Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report — which concluded that “rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues” — “isn’t about tea party folks” and that “it sounds like just regular old, everyday people who are conservative just got, you know, got their dander up over something that is not applied to that.”

During the same segment, national correspondent Catherine Herridge noted that DHS recently issued “a bulletin that looks at the left-wing groups as well.” Nonetheless, Fox News hosts and contributors have continued to advance the claim that the Obama administration is targeting tea party attendees, as well as conservatives and others, simply because they disagree with administration policies and proposals. [ READ MORE ]

Tea-Parties — Powered By “un-Fair and Totally un-Balanced” Fox News:

From April 6 to April 15, Fox News aired at least 107 commercial promotions for their coverage of the April 15 tea parties. The majority of all the ads — 58 — ran on April 14 and 15.

Page and Robinson Review The Effect of Tea-Parties

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AP: BRANDENBURG, Ky. – A Kentucky-based Ku Klux Klan group was ordered on Friday to pay $2.5 million in damages in a judgment that civil rights attorneys hope will bankrupt the chapter.

The Southern Poverty Law Center sued the nation’s second-largest Klan outfit on behalf of a Latino teen severely beaten in 2006 by two Klan members. The Klansmen were convicted and served two years in prison.

A jury on Friday ordered Imperial Klans of America grand wizard Ron Edwards and two former lieutenants to pay 19-year-old Jordan Gruver $1.5 million for lost wages and medical expenses and Edwards to pay $1 million in punitive damages.

“I’m overwhelmed. I’m victorious,” Gruver said. “And, I’m also sad. I’m sad because those guys are still going to be the same way that they were. That will never change.”

Morris Dees, the lead attorney for the center, said after the verdict he plans to seize Edwards’ property in Dawson Springs that serves as Klan headquarters along with any other assets that can be found. It wasn’t clear what the property is worth.

Click PICS To Enlarge THE VICTIM Jordan Gruver KKK Criminal Andrew Watkins KKK Criminal Jarred Hensley Imperial Klans T-Shirt The GRAND WIZARD — KKK Criminal Ron Edwards

Earlier, in his closing statement, Dees told jurors that a substantial financial award would stop the Kentucky-based group in its tracks.

“It’s all about the money. It’s all about the money,” said Morris Dees. “If you stop the money, you’ll cut the organization off.”

The heavily tattooed Edwards plans to appeal the verdict. Despite the judgment, Edwards said the KKK will remain active.

“We’re not going away,” Edwards said.

Dees had argued during the civil trial that Edwards’ group incited violence against minorities with racist speeches and “hate metal,” leading to the attack on Gruver. Edwards, who represented himself during the trial, denied the charge and said his group’s not generally violent.

The case was similar to nearly a dozen others brought by the center against hate groups. A similar lawsuit bankrupted the white supremacist group Aryan Nations in Idaho in 1999.

The trial centered on a beating Gruver suffered at the hands of former Klan lieutenants Jarred Hensley and Andrew Watkins. Gruver suffered a broken jaw, bruised ribs and permanent nerve damage to his left arm.

The jury ordered Edwards to pay 20 percent of the compensatory damages, while splitting the remaining 80 percent evenly between Hensley and Watkins. The jury laid the $1 million in punitive damages solely on Edwards. Hensley, who had also represented himself, left the courthouse without commenting.

Watkins reached a confidential settlement with Gruver before the trial that will account for his share of Friday’s judgment.

Jurors deliberated for nearly six-and-a-half hours after a three-day trial at the Meade County Courthouse. As Meade Circuit Judge Bruce Butler read the verdicts, several skinheads in the courtroom shook their heads and looked down.

The judgment against Edwards and Hensley is active for 15 years, giving Gruver and the center time to pursue assets, Dees said.

“No matter what he gets, we’ll get a piece of it,” Dees said.

Gruver, who testified earlier Friday about having nightmares and the extent of his injuries, celebrated the verdict by hugging his mother, Cindy. He then joined his family and left the courthouse under heavy security into a cold rain.

References:

1. CNN: Jury awards $2.5 million to teen beaten by Klan members

Writes: Timothy Egan

Obama has made cynics wilt, and stirred the heart of long-dead politicos in places where Democrats haven’t had a pulse in years.
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