B.M. Brogden: Inapt comparisons

One could generate a respectable academic article dissecting the moral deficiencies, historical errors and the nature of cultural bias demonstrated in Edwin Yoder’s June 5 Point of View piece on the renaming of academic buildings. Suffice to say, all of his errors and bias are amply demonstrated by his comparison of the Reconstruction-era KKK terror against African-Americans and their white allies to the French partisan resistance to Nazi genocide and conquest in WW II.

A better analogy for the KKK would be the private armies of outlaws and thugs maintained at the same time in the 19th century by timber barons, cattle kings and the “robber barons” of pre-Sherman Anti-Trust Act America. These groups were used to suppress homesteaders, small-time competitors, farmers, people campaigning for political rights and decent working conditions and anyone else who stood in the way of unbridled economic oppression.

The early churches in pre-Revolution America and the early days of our republic split over the endorsement of slavery by those churches desiring to attract the wealthy property owners who benefited from it and those churches that embraced the teachings of Jesus to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” The KKK and Jim Crow politicians left us wounds that are far from healing today.

This story was originally published June 13, 2015 at 2:00 PM with the headline "B.M. Brogden: Inapt comparisons."