Engraining culture

There's something afoot in the country; the purveyors of hate are feeling emboldened and are crawling out of their holes. Let's stop dressing it up as un-PC behavior or 'racially insensitive' incidents.

It manifests itself openly first with speech, with things that can be passed off as jokes--but at root, it's hate, and racism, and arrogance, plain and simple.

People who think otherwise, who say it's no big deal, just laugh it off, are themselves part of the problem.

In the end, the haters will lose; the goal, of course, is to isolate the damage they do on their way to seeing the light, or dying. Aside from the hard-core, a lot of the people going along and naively exhibiting racism openly in this day and age are young and can still be educated. If nothing else, by hanging out with and becoming friends with or dating their erstwhile targets.

Of course, this requires consciously deciding to send your kids to schools where everyone doesn't look like them (and you).

Pee Wee teams to quit over racial insults

AP via MSNBC: Teams in two Cleveland suburbs are quitting a youth football league because of racially insensitive actions by fans, coaches said.

Shaker Heights and Euclid planned to leave the North Coast Youth Football Conference after the championship game this weekend.

The president of the Hudson Hawks Youth Football Association, John Elffers, has apologized for fans who wore Afro wigs and painted their faces black at a playoff game Sunday. Shaker Heights coach Jeffrey Saffold said Hudson fans also used a racially offensive word during Sunday's game and at two other times.

Mac Stephens, the commissioner of Euclid's three teams, said they are pulling out of the league, partially because of the Hudson fans. But he said he's also unhappy with the league's board, of which he is a member, and its unresponsiveness to complaints about officiating. ...

Pregame Hitler speech stirs fury

Charlotte Observer: When Charlotte Catholic's boys' soccer team got to Forestview High School in Gastonia on Saturday night for an N.C. 3A playoff game, the Cougars heard something over the public address system they never would've expected:

A 90-second portion of a speech from Adolf Hitler.

"We were warming up," said Catholic coach Gary Hoilett, "and all of us stopped and looked up at the booth. We were just real shocked. It was obviously a Hitler speech. The voice was coming across clearly. Everybody knew."

Forestview's players took the field after the speech ended.

But before the game, Hoilett said, some Forestview players were chanting something in German that means "On to victory," according to one of his players who speaks German. Hoilett, who is black, said that during the game some Forestview players directed racial epithets at his two black players.

"It was one of the worst things I've seen," Hoilett said of the speech and the racial epithets.

It's not just the kids, and their parents, of course. They're in some cases taking their cue from the government, one that at times seems almost unwitting if deliberate in its racism.

Much ado about nothing: FBI determines Heinz Field break-in only a prank

AP, via CNNSI.com: Two college students charged with trying to break into Heinz Field over the weekend were pranksters, not terrorists, the FBI said.

"This appears to be two kids who did something stupid, and it came on the heels of the threat last month to blow up football stadiums," FBI Special Agent Jeff Killeen said Monday. "Any suspicions that were raised concerning terrorism were addressed and dismissed."

Sudeep Paul, 21, and Anand Durvasula, 20, both Carnegie Mellon University students, remained jailed Tuesday, unable to post $1 million bond each. Police said they were caught trying to climb into the stadium about 2 a.m. Sunday, 14 hours before the Pittsburgh Steelers played the Denver Broncos.

Authorities believe the men were trying to sneak into the stadium so Paul, a film student, could videotape Durvasula for a homemade music video.

A city magistrate imposed the high bail because the incident triggered a response by the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which includes federal, state and city officials.

The men's bond could be reduced at their preliminary hearing on Thursday. It was not immediately clear if they had attorneys.

Paul, of Woodbury, N.Y., is charged by city police with conspiracy while Durvasula, of Morgan Hill, Calif., who allegedly climbed the fence before the men were caught, was charged with conspiracy and criminal trespass.

Thomas Farrell, a Pittsburgh defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, said it seemed like authorities reacted strongly because of the men's ethnic background. Both are of Indian descent but are American born; however, they were described as "Middle Eastern males" in a police affidavit.

"It's the kind of prank that college students do all over the country every week," Farrell told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "It really does sound like people went overboard because of their ethnicity."

Million-dollar bail cases, Farrell said, "are for serious offenses, or if people have no ties to the country."

Killeen said the National Football League and federal authorities had been on heightened alert since a Wisconsin grocery clerk allegedly hatched a hoax last month threatening terrorist attacks on stadiums.

You know, like half the country could be described as looking 'Middle Eastern'--at some point, you'd think that would no longer be the trigger for a terrorism probe.

Whichever cop said they were 'Middle Eastern males' should be punished--I can see some rube confusing someone who's an American and of Indian descent with someone from the Middle East, but the proper response is to figure out if you're right or wrong, and if wrong apologize to them for an understandably overreaction once you've determined the truth--not to swear it out in an affidavit!

The racist element here is in assuming their appearance as determined by your ignorant mind dictated their actions, rather then seeing them for what they were--a couple of dumb college kids.

Kids who look middle-eastern should still get to do the normal dumb young things and learn without being brought up on terrorism charges. Ethnicity isn't destiny--and if it were, the cop should've assumed the kid was a peace-loving Hindu.

An inability to properly assess the situation and over-reacting is a known flaw among cops; but this seems to me a near-structural flaw that keeps happening again and again, and that law enforcement needs to correct.

Photo of victorious Jesse Owens at the 1939 Berlin Olympics from MedalofFreedom.com.