Publisher's Notebook: Signs of hate in the Mat-Su Valley

Where are we as a country when it comes to race relations and tolerance for opposing positions? Better yet, where are we as the Mat-Su Valley community?

A reader called and asked me to take a drive down Knik-Goose Bay Road. Approximately mile marker 16 or so stands a series of signs on what looks like private property. All of the signs are painted white for the background and in red are block lettering in all caps and punctuated with exclamation points.

On one small sign nailed to a birch tree above the others reads GEN. LEE. The other signs appear to be 4-foot by 8-foot painted plywood with the same color and letter scheme. One sign with the Confederate flag hanging above reads, NIGROID FAKE!! HIS STORIES. A second sign reads, BLACK FACE IT MONTH!!, also a confederate flag mounted above the sign. A third sign reads BROWN IS – NOT BLACK!!

The display is at the very least appalling but it also evokes emotions of sadness. Sadness that in our beautiful community such hate exists. And maybe you are thinking it’s an isolated incident or one person’s opinion. Maybe you are right. Unfortunately, we rise in the morning and go to bed in the evening to such divisiveness. All one has to do is check their favorite social media account or national news source.

Last November the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman editorial staff sat with U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan to discuss an array of topics. This was immediately following the Judge Kavanaugh hearings. I asked him if in his opinion we were back to 1968, one of the most tumultuous years in our nation’s history. He added “or 1850?” Both years have been put out there as comparisons to our current state of debate or lack thereof in this country.

He quickly pointed out that there are bi-partisan efforts within congress to move the country forward that doesn’t get reported in the media. He actually took to the Senate Floor and expressed his displeasure last October.

“I was venting to my staff on this issue which I don’t normally do. I went down onto the Senate Floor and gave a speech that wasn’t … usually my staff helps me. Essentially, I gave a bunch of examples of important stuff where there was bi-partisan support. You have some Senators, Republicans and Democrats, who are saying it’s 1850. That kind of rhetoric, I don’t agree with and I don’t think it’s helpful,” Sullivan stated.

I couldn’t agree more with Sullivan. When I asked him to compare this time in our history with 1968, he qualified it as a different era. Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, so was Robert F Kennedy. There was the Democratic Convention riot. So much discourse and destruction but is today much different?

The racial confrontation in Charlottesville, Virginia, is not a distant memory nor is the gunman who walked onto a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, and fired on Republican politicians, wounding five. There is the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting last October that left 11 dead and seven wounded. The gunman who was charged with the assault posted anti-semitic speech on GAB, a self-proclaimed social network for free speech. How about the man charged last fall with sending pipe bombs to President Donald Trump’s critics?

Sans the very controversial Vietnam War it sure feels like what we have read and heard about the year 1968. Prominent figures of our time are not being assassinated but innocent civilians are for no more reason than their political or religious affiliation. It all starts with hate speech or displays.

Maybe legally the property owner, who has allowed or posted these signs, on KGB has a right to express their frustration with whatever national issue has struck this hateful chord. It’s just tough to realize that more than 50 years later this kind of hate still exists, especially in a loving and beautiful community such as the Mat-Su Valley. I know in my heart this person is in a very small minority but hate begets hate when it is ignored. If the person who owns this property reads this column, I have but one request of you. Take down the signs. There is nothing to gain from this display. There is however a tremendous amount to lose.