Tracking racial extremism

Two reports out recently which shine light on areas no one wants to know about, but which need to be exposed:

In Leave Or Die: America's Hidden History Of Racial Expulsions, Cox News Service's Elliot Jaspin, a pioneer in computer-assisted research and reporting, studies Census data to find an appalling record of counties, mostly along the Mason-Dixon line, where blacks were forcibly or otherwise made to leave. These counties showed black populations during the decades following the Civil War, which disappeared in subsequent decades. Among them, a couple counties near here, Polk in Tennessee and Mitchell in North Carolina, where black workers arriving to work in mines and on roads were forced out.

The Southern Povery Law Center released a study the other day, A Few Bad Men, which tracks efforts by white supremacist groups to insert their members into the U.S. military. It's scary to think our soldiers may include some who think like this:

"Ever since my youth -- when I watched WWII footage and saw how well-disciplined and sharply dressed the German forces were -- I have wanted to be a soldier," Fain said in a Winter 2004 interview with the National Alliance magazine Resistance. "Joining the American military was as close as I could get."

But unfortunately, not surprising considering the reports of some soldiers' actions in Iraq and other places. Among the information here, a Timeline of Extremism and the Military going back to 1953.

(Thanks to The Scoop for the Cox link.)