election spurns hundreds of race threats, crimes

Cross burnings. Schoolchildren chanting "Assassinate Obama." Black figures hung from nooses. Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars.

Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are dampening the postelection glow of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America.

From California to Maine, police have documented a range of alleged crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students and second-graders.

There have been "hundreds" of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.

One was in Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: "I hope Obama gets assassinated." That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law's front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs, and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door, Millner said

...
Potok, who is white, said he believes there is "a large subset of white people in this country who feel that they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them."

Grant Griffin, a 46-year-old white Georgia native, expressed similar sentiments: "I believe our nation is ruined and has been for several decades and the election of Obama is merely the culmination of the change.




http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iEyLuiVkdd-f1RM5wnoR0kF4WbvgD94FI48G0

In addition to threats, I have been hearing "jokes" about Obama,African Americans specifically.I also heard talk of starting a militia. Who could have known that there was such a fragile sense of self?

Bill Maher had a good point when he was talking about joe sixpacks and hockey moms (the ones who liked Palin because 'she was like them'), these people have huge egos. They think the world revolves around them.

I think they have such huge but fragile egos .They've been eating up this stuff for so long.I don't think I believed any of the lies or spin from the start.I'm not scared like they are when the facade starts to crack.My husband is one of them. He's been a nut case since the election.I'm not superwoman but I think I hate lies worse than anything.

An average (but reasonable) person knows the president has to be the best of the best, and shouldn't be 'average' like them. Joe the plumber and his ilk, however, need someone as unintelligent as they as are. Its so incredibly narcissistic.

Everyone thought Palin's idiocy was her biggest flaw, with these people its her best quality.