America’s closet klansmen are trying to take an LGBT anthem as their own. The Diana Ross tune I’m Coming Out is a favorite for people who want to reveal their sexuality. And it is equally a favorite for people who want to expose their hidden racism.
Many people around the world are upset with a public relations executive who used social media for an ugly post about the AIDS problem in Africa. However, you can find far worse Twitter tweets, Facebook and Instagram posts every day you go online.
Nowadays, white separatists, white segregationists and white racists, along with black bigots and other biased Internet users can say any distasteful, disparaging, disrespectful and negative comments
they want to and about people whom they don’t care for.
One might say that I, too, as an editorial columnist, say some colorful things about people in The Gantt Report but there is one huge difference.
Gantt Report columns are not based on racial motivations.
The Gantt Report discusses both the good and bad things about all people. I’ll criticize my own kind just as quickly as I’ll criticize people who are not like me. I try to write the truth about people and I don’t care if you’re black, white or sky-blue pink.
My problem is this: It is not necessary to hide behind a sheet, a mask or some other disguise to say hateful things about people. Today, all you have to do is hide behind a fake Internet name.
I personally claim all of my writings even though I’m aware that every now and then The Gantt Report readers will really let me know if a column is published that they disagree with or they just don’t like.
I have to take the bitter with the sweet. If I’m going to accept any praise, I’m also going to have to respect the criticism.
The Internet has created a whole new generation of digital closet klansmen, digital neo-Nazis and digital domestic terrorists.
We all have “friends,” neighbors and co-workers who hate President Barack Obama but they will seldom, if ever, share their dislike for the president with you face to face.
But they will use home and office computers, tablets and notebooks to create fake Internet names to spew all of the hate and bias they want to. But the president is not the only black person whom people with fake Internet names love to post about.
The digital sheet-wearers hate the Rev. Al Sharpton, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Minister Louis Farrakhan. People using fake Internet names hated Trayvon Martin and they also hate Michael Vick.
I love media organizations but America’s newspapers encourage Internet hate by allowing people to use fake names to post any hateful or wrong thing they want to.
If people were required to use real names and real contact information, like I do, some of this new-age digital hate would be mitigated.
Real people in America are entitled to free speech but fake people with fake Internet names are not entitled to any Constitutional rights, in my humble opinion.
*Lucius Gantt, a political consultant based in Tallahassee, is author of the book Beast Too: Dead Man Writing which is available at Amazon.com. You can like The Gantt Report page on Facebook and contact Gantt at www.allworldconsultants.net
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