If I had to define my role as "parent," one of the first subsections would be "teacher." My children's educations don't begin and end at the schoolhouse door. Every day has been an amalgam of teaching moments.
When my girls were little, there were nature walks and sprouting sweet potatoes balanced in Mason jars on the window sill. Innocent questions like, "What was on TV when you were a kid, mom?" led to impromptu history lessons.
Sometimes, the teaching moments have blindsided me. One Sunday about 20 years ago, I decided to take my toddler daughter, Molly, to an ecumenical Martin Luther King Day service that was held each year in Cornelia. It always started with a fellowship walk from a historically black church to a historically white one (or vice versa) accompanied by lots of singing. Then there would be a service, more singing and food, glorious food. In attendance were Christians of every stripe, Muslims, Jews, even members of the Bahá'í Faith community. It was always a major feel-good experience.
On this particular Sunday, as I turned off the highway to go to the Presbyterian church where the walk was scheduled to begin, we were met by a half dozen or so men. Some were in white robes bearing KKK patches on the chest and some were in full camouflage garb. They held crudely lettered signs bearing even cruder slogans. They were yelling something I couldn't make out. Apparently, they took exception to the establishment of a federal holiday honoring Dr. King.
Molly started to cry.
I hit the automatic door lock, stared straight ahead and kept driving. I was trying to comfort Molly, struggling to find words to explain what we'd just witnessed when she whimpered accusingly, "Mama, you didn't tell me I could wear a costume."
The Ku Klux Klan isn't just history. The Klan is now and the Klan is here. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center's Hate Map, there are eight active organizations in Georgia. Two are as close as Blairsville and Ellijay. Those are groups with "Klan" in their titles.
There are also groups of neo-Nazis, neo-confederates and white nationalists. Factor in the black separatists, anti-gay and skinhead groups and you have plenty of hate to go around. There are a whopping 37 festering clusters of hate in Georgia, more than Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana or either Carolina.
Georgia may hover near the bottom of the list in SAT scores or high school graduation rates but by gosh, when it comes to hate, we're the gold standard.
That's why I find the incident at Lumpkin County High School, in which four AP History students dressed as KKK members for a class project, so distressing. Certainly, when you're in high school, any day that you get to put on a costume and parade around in front of your peers is a good day. I just think those cartoonish Klan robes were an abysmally poor choice. Dressing up like Hitler doesn't help you learn about the Holocaust.
If you want to dress up, dress up like Morris Dees of the SPLC, who took on the Klan and hit them where it hurt — in the pocketbook. He's won numerous civil judgements and stripped groups of their finances, putting them out of business.
Dress up like Beaulah Mae Donald, whose 19-year old son, Michael, was picked at random off an Alabama street and lynched by Klansmen in 1981. Her insistence on justice for her son led to the arrest, conviction and 1997 execution of the killer. Additionally, she and the SPLC sued the United Klans of America, Inc. and won a $7 million wrongful death judgment, bankrupting the Klan in Alabama.
In fact, if you want to dress up like a Klan member, put on jeans and a T-shirt or a business suit or capris and a sweater set. That's what they look like. They're skin wrapped around a slimy core of ignorance, hate and bigotry. And they look just like the rest of us.
This is a teaching moment for us all.
Teressa Glazer is a Gainesville businesswoman. Her column appears biweekly on Fridays and on gainesvilletimes.com.