Don’t discriminate against Klan
KKK should be allowed to participate in highway clean-up program

If you are driving along Interstate 55 in Missouri and see someone clad in white sheets and a hood, don’t be scared. It is just a local Ku Klux Klan member participating in Missouri’s “adopt-a-highway” program.

Don’t be scared, that is, if you are a white Protestant male. Come to think of it, I’m not.

OK, maybe the rest of us should be a tad bit scared. But just a tad.

The Missouri chapter of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan won a major ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court March 5 allowing the discriminatory organization to clean up roadside trash along Interstate 55. They even get a nifty little sign for doing it.

I guess the sign is better for public relations purposes than a burning cross, formerly the Klan’s marker of choice.

According to (www.cnn.com), the KKK filed an application to participate in the program in 1994. Missouri turned the organization down, citing the Klan’s long history of violence and racism.

The KKK took Missouri to court, arguing the state was violating its constitutional rights by not allowing them in the program. The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, and the men and women in black ruled in favor of the men in sheets.

As scary or insulting this ruling may be to minorities, it was the right thing to do.

If the racist loonies want to pick up trash along a freeway, let them. I don’t want to do it, do you? Didn’t think so.

The beauty in all this is that the Klan doesn’t prove anything by this. Is the KKK going to be perceived as this gracious service oriented organization committed to cleaning up the environment because it picks up a few beer cans along a half-mile stretch of highway? No.

They will still be seen as a bunch of racist wackos with a strange taste for clothing.

The only way the Klan would have won is if it had lost the Supreme Court ruling.

To discriminate against the KKK would be hypocritical. Are their views hateful, ugly and wrong? No doubt about it. But we cannot discriminate against the Klan just because we do not agree with them. Because when we do, we are no better than they are.

Missouri made a convincing argument that Klan participation in the program violates the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in federally funded programs. But as Georgetown University law professor David Cole told CNN, lots of organizations are discriminatory but are still allowed to take part in similar programs. Cole said the Boys Scouts discriminate against gays, but they are still allowed to participate in similar programs.

We can’t pick and choose what kind of prejudice is bad and what kind is good. Prejudice is bad, period.

To ban someone because they have views different from the norm is no better than banning someone because they have skin color different from the norm.

The moment we do that, we sink to the KKK’s level.

Brandon Ortiz is a freshman news-editorial journalism major from Fort Worth.
He can be reached at (b.p.ortiz@student.tcu.edu).

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