In an instant, they can do it with a click of a button.
They can even schedule their remote racism and get real-time reporting.
White supremacists, with or without their hoods, in the comfort of their dwellings, can disseminate the vilest messages around the country with ease. They can weaponize technology to send hateful messages to the masses by speed dial.
And both the simplicity and the complicity enrage me.
Recently, a white supremacist sent robocalls in Florida against Andrew Gillum, the Tallahassee mayor who is the state’s first Black Democratic candidate for governor.
And I have one question, and you already know what it is:
America, why are white supremacists allowed to make robocalls?
Well, there’s no mystery for the officials, they know who made these robocalls. His name is Scott Rhodes, 49, also known as Scott Platek, from Sandpoint, Idaho. Rhodes is a white supremacist, podcaster, and everyday hateful harasser. America allows him to run the company “American Discovery Publishing.”
He’s the man responsible for the racist robocalls in California and Virginia too. His white supremacist group “Road to Power” pays for these calls which have included recordings of Adolf Hitler.
A sampling of his sound bites against Gillum, invaded the ears of callers with monkey noises, drums, and a voice impersonating Gillum:
“Well, hello there, I is Andrew Gillum. We Negroes . . . done made mud huts while white folk waste a bunch of time making their home out of wood an' stone."
Then, a voice says Gillum will allow Blacks to elude the police:
“if the Negro know fo' sho' he didn’t do nothin’."
After the murder of Mollie Tibbetts by an undocumented man, Rhodes sent a menacing message to Iowa residents with these words:
“If, after her life has now been brutally stolen from her, she could be brought back to life for just one moment and asked, 'What do you think now?' Mollie Tibbetts would say, 'Kill them all. Well, we don’t have to kill them all, but we do have to deport them all. The Aztec hybrids known as mestizos are low-IQ, bottom-feeding savages and is why the country they infest are crime-ridden failures."
And, Rhodes has barreled down this road to hell many times. A school in Idaho banned him after he placed flyers filled with hate speech on 56 cars.
Rhodes also called an Idaho man the n-word, and then taunted the man by snail mailing him single letters — from N to R — which altogether spelled America’s original sin.
Despite his long hate sheet — that’s despicable enough to wire his mouth shut, and lock his hands with the tightest cuffs — no one has charged Rhodes with a crime.
Officials say it is unlikely they will charge Rhodes with a crime. In his own words, Rhodes wrote Idaho’s newspaper and said he has never committed a crime. Even a spokesperson from Iowa’s Attorney General’s Office said they are still trying to determine if the calls broke any laws.
Well, America, if Rhodes has broken no laws, we are lawless, and we need new laws.
And I know someone has a finger ready to type and recite a monologue about free speech.
But this isn’t free speech. This is costly speech; this is expensive speech; this is speech no one can afford because every hateful word takes a toll on anyone with ears to hear and eyes to read.
And as I search my mind and history to figure out why this speech is protected, I must conclude:
Hate speech has never threatened straight Christian white men.
Only that white man, with long sticks and heavy stones in his hands, can say words will never hurt him because — they never have.
That’s the only reason these hateful messages flood phone lines. These automated attacks fall and hide under the unabated ability of white supremacists to spew their racist rhetoric with impunity.
But none of this is new; hate speech has always flowed with a native fluency from the veins and vernacular of America’s body.
When I review the historical writings and ramblings of this country, I see hate speech.
It was hate speech when white America defined and confined this country for free white persons.
It was hate speech when white America instituted the one drop rule.
And it was hate speech when white America mixed pseudo-science and religion to justify its racism.
America has always been comfortable with hate speech against people of color.
Hate speech is a wrong right-of-way in America.
And we must draw the line somewhere. White supremacists should not have a lifeline to other life forms.
Yet, racists broadcast their racist messages every day. We have hate speech blown through dog whistles and shouted through bullhorns.
And afterward, I hear and read the same words again and again — “racism and racists have no place in our society.”
But hear me when I say — for the physical and mental blows inflicted by America’s well-protected racists — that line is the clichéd “thoughts and prayers” when we need racism control.
Look at what Governor Rick Scott said about the robocalls — “there’s no room for racial politics in Florida — none. THIS STOPS NOW.”
But my people that is a lie! That mission statement is impossible without action.
Because this is America where white supremacists have always roamed free and brave.
These racists have leg room, breathing room, and all kinds of room. You can see how they gloat and float while laughing every day because America aids and abets its homegrown racists.
Sure, some of them get fired, and people denounce them, but they have plenty of places in society.
They have a place with Fox News.
They have a place on Twitter and other forms of social media.
And they have a big place in the Republican Party as they recycle and regurgitate racism in unison.
Because America says one thing and still lets white supremacists keep on ticking.
And as America sanctions other nations that taint our already tilted elections, it’s an insulting hypocrisy that America won’t act against its own warmongers.
America needs firewalls to stop America’s terrorists.
These terrorists aim at people and then blast people with hate speech from everywhere. They are snipers, at every level, from the highest offices to the lowest corners.
And while it’s a nice phrase, I’m exhausted from going high when they go low.
I’m through the roof! There’s no oxygen at the heights I must go to stay above America’s hate speech. I’m out of space because they have too much room.
That’s why I say, when they go low, they should get a final blow.
So, I call for America to cut its cord to racism because America should not allow white supremacists to make robocalls — or any other calls in life.
This is a call for change that America is awfully quick to dismiss. People’s lives are on the line. And I’m ready to hang up because I’m tired of waiting and the hating.
Will someone answer the damn call?
