It’s Friday, that means that the latest installment from Ammo Grrrl on Powerline is available. She turns her thoughts to the professional race baiters and the various triggering events that raise their ire. She does it with humor and sensitivity that I don’t possess. At the link: Thoughts-from-the-ammo-line.

Her comments led me down my own rabbit hole to investigate is there a cottage industry geared towards manufacturing circumstances for race baiting opportunities? Should we be looking at the facilitators?

Long dead white men accepted commissions throughout the United States to design and build statues commemorating the lives of other long dead white men. Now those statues are a provocation, and their very existence should be erased from the landscape.

That got me to thinking about Martin Luther King Jr. I would like to think that if I could have, I would have been a freedom rider. My mother wouldn’t let me they didn’t have ten-year-old freedom riders, and I couldn’t get a note excusing me from school. I have the utmost respect for Dr. King.

It pains me to say that San Antonio, Texas, the scene of the largest MLK March in the country, has treated the good doctor so shabbily. First, there is the statue, I realize statues are expensive, but this one in San Antonio does not do the good doctor justice. Then there is the race baiting factor. It is of such a proportion that no ladders or special equipment is required to scale the statute. The statute is conveniently located across the street from an HEB. HEB is the largest grocery store chain in South Texas. Even in the depths of winter, watermelon is available.

Look at the statue, the left arm (the one with the book) is perfectly placed to retain and display a watermelon. If the arm had been canted up or down a watermelon would slide out. If the arm were closer to the chest, the watermelon would fall as it is, a watermelon nests perfectly for maximum exposure within the doctor’s arm.

Is this an accident? Was it specified in the design? Do we blame the sculptor for building this feature or the first guy who looked at the statute and said, “bet he could hold a watermelon.” Maybe we ought to go further back and blame the folks that vilified a fruit that so many enjoy on a hot summer night.

It is time for the MLK statue to come down. Not because MLK wasn’t a great leader, but because of the potential for racial disharmony the statue represents.

While we’re at it there are other innocuous items that bear looking into:

No Iron Sheets, what a time saver. The average Klansman could spend hours each week washing and be ironing his “robes.” With no iron sheets, the whole Klavern can be out the door and ready for the next cross burning in half the time.

Any Klansman knows that cross burning can be hazardous. Kerosene isn’t as prevalent with the younger generation.  Some learn the hard way that hi-test is not the way to go when burning crosses (left).

If nothing else Klansmen are show men and realize that the show must go on. Rain or shine that cross burning has got to be there. Rather than risk a soggy cross, you load it up in the wife’s minivan rather than your pick-up and set off for the event. The problem occurs when the vehicle occupants stop smelling the kerosene saturated cross in back and fire up a doobie just to get the right mellow for the upcoming event. Who knew kerosene was that volatile?

Now there is a safe, easy, and economical alternative. All you need is a hot melt glue gun and six boxes of Quick start. No odor, no staining, stable, guaranteed to light first time every time. Make your next cross burning a success!

The seeds of racism are everywhere. We must be ever vigilant.