Subscribe
The Daily Grind Video
CLOSE

Could we really be on our way to a post-racial world?

In the first meeting of its kind, the Wyoming chapter of the NAACP and an organizer for the Klu Klux Klan met over the weekend to have an open dialogue about race and violence.

Yeah, we can’t believe it happened either.

According to USA Today:

The meeting between Jimmy Simmons, president of the Casper NAACP, and John Abarr, a KKK organizer from Great Falls, Mont., took place at a hotel in Casper, Wyo., under tight security, theCasper Star-Tribune reported.

Abarr told The Associated Press that he met with Simmons Saturday and ended up filling out an NAACP membership form so he can get the group’s newsletters and some insight into its views. He said he paid the $30 fee to join, plus a $20 donation.

Abarr, however, didn’t offer membership forms to the NAACP for them to join his organization.

“You have to be white to join the Klan,” he said.

But of course. 

The meeting was called after it was reported that KKK literature was being distributed in Gillette, about 130 miles north of Casper, and that African-American men were being beaten while out in public with white women. But Abarr claimed to know nothing about the beatings or the distributed literature.

Even still, he agreed to meet with Simmons to have a talk about the two race-based groups.

“It’s about opening dialogue with a group that claims they’re trying to reform themselves from violence,” Simmons said in a telephone interview Tuesday, saying the meeting went well. “They’re trying to shed that violent skin, but it seems like they’re just changing the packaging.”

Abarr had this to say about the meeting.

“I don’t know if we accomplished too much,” Abarr said. “We’re not about violence. We’re about being proud to be white.”

I guess all hope for that post-racial world is out the window now.

SOURCE: USA Today