Marian Wright Edelman: Poison in America: The growth in hate groups and the use of their divisive and negative language in the mainstream political and media arena is cause for national alarm. Already this year several horrendous hate crimes, possible hate crimes, and crimes committed by people with ties to hate groups have received national attention.
In the first week of May a sixteen-month-old girl was shot and killed along with her mother, grandmother, and her mother’s boyfriend allegedly by Arizona white supremacist, border vigilante and longtime neo-Nazi J.T. Ready. The murders were the apparent result of domestic violence but were tragically little surprise from a man the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mark Potok called “a violent thug who typifies the very worst element in the American nativist movement.” In Tulsa, Oklahoma, hate crime charges were filed in April against two white men who went on a Good Friday shooting spree in a black neighborhood randomly targeting and killing three black victims and injuring two more.
