It’s 2013. That’s what I have to keep reminding myself every time that a story about someone like Paula Deen, Riley Cooper or Richie Incognito surfaces with some clueless, ignorant scumbag still dropping the N-bomb like it’s no big deal, despite the fact that we, as a society, know better. But today’s big story of “I can’t believe this is happening” racial intolerance comes to us from Virginia, where a mom is under fire after not only allowing her son to dress as a member of the Ku Klux Klan, but also defended it as “tradition.”
According to WTKR, 7-year old Jackson Black actually asked his mother if he could wear the hate group’s infamous white sheet and hood, citing the movie Fried Green Tomatoes as his KKK inspiration, because that sounds just like something a 7-year old would watch and then request. In fact, I can remember when I was seven and I watched Back to the Future for the first time and asked my mom if I could dress as a Libyan terrorist for Halloween. Oh, what a glorious time that was!
You see, the hatred and vile behavior is okay, according to the mom, because the KKK donates money to St. Jude’s.
Now, I don’t like to be one of these guys without a child of his own that offers up parenting advice like I have any clue what I’m talking about, but a good thing to do would be to take this kid far, far away from this woman. Otherwise, he’s going to get his ass kicked a lot as he grows up and he’ll grow to resent the people who are delivering those beatings, which will just perpetuate this horrible cycle of racism. Instead, maybe he should be forced to watch a movie like White Nights that will not only teach him tolerance and acceptance, but maybe also the cultural value of dance.