Okay, Younger People who have come forward to make changes in all things justice and Race related, not all racism is just right out there. Some is subtle and only easily recognized by “fellow travelers” who get the meaning and know, because no one else gets it, it is their intellectual joke on everyone not in the know.

It’s a sophisticated form of gang sign and serves the same purpose.

So pay attention. You may not only learn something, but becoming aware of this subtle intrusion of white supremacy right in front of you, a dog turd wrapped in a gift bag topped with multi-colored, festively fluffed up tissue paper, you might see where your energies could go.

I may have lived in Oklahoma for 18 of my, so far, 70 years, the longest I have lived in one place, but that does not mean the Dust Bowl was part of my heritage. It is part of the heritage of those who were born and raised there, not mine, except in a tourist sort of way. In this regard and any aspect of what is standard thinking and behavior in that state, it would not be a part of me by accident of birth and nurtured attitudes based on generational experience, but a part of me by conscious choice to adopt them.

I confess I didn’t do much with opting in.

According to the sister of Sheriff Hodgson of Bristol County, Massachusetts in her biography, their father arrived in the United States from England at the end of WWII on a special visa, not the usual “they need to come here the right way, like my parents did, not getting exceptions” way of entering the country. He also brought a young boy from a government posting in the Middle East, getting it done through an exception to immigration requirements by falsifying the boy’s actual nationality, so, obviously, the father didn’t, or at best shouldn’t, have had an anti-Immigrant, anti-non-white streak he would have passed on to his son, unless he had an extreme case of I-Got-mine.

So, whatever happened in the Civil War, before, during or after it; whatever good or bad that came of it; whatever the why; no matter how profound or inane any of it was, none of it is part of Thomas Hodgson’s  heritage. He would have had to have chosen what in the area of Maryland in which he lived he liked and what attitudes he would support.

Those who favor the way he treats people housed in the Bristol County House of Corrections will claim he is not a white supremacist and that, although he gave a speech at a white supremacist conference about law enforcement and immigration, it does not make him a white supremacist. I will grant that, as my having spoken to a Southern Baptist gathering did not make me a Southern Baptist. But, if it is a near annual appearance and if he serves on the board of an anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim organization founded by an avowed and well known white supremacist, that defense evaporates, just as my claiming not to be a Southern Baptist would if, along with the talk I gave, I joined the church and got on the church’s council.

Hodgson is on the board of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), an anti-immigrant hate group founded and led by John Tanton, an avowed white supremacist who once said,

 “I’ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.”

Tanton, who is associated with a former Klan lawyer, leading white nationalist thinkers, and Holocaust deniers, promotes the idea that racial conflict will be the outcome of immigration, and believes Whites would inevitably develop a racial consciousness because most people don’t want to disappear into the dustbin of history, and that once Whites become racially conscious, the result would be “the war of each against all.”

Among other FAIR luminaries there is Dan Stein, president of FAIR, who believes “Immigrants don’t come all church-loving, freedom-loving, God-fearing. Many of them hate America, hate everything that the United States stands for. Talk to some of these Central Americans”, and Joseph Turner, FAIR’s former Western field representative, who once accused Mexican immigrants of turning California into a “third world cesspool.”

The sheriff has made radio appearances with Mr. Stein, supporting his ideas like the claim that Central American immigrants are engaged in “competitive breeding”. 

Among FAIR’s suggested readings are Alien Nation by Peter Brimelow, whose central theme is that America should remain a country dominated by whites, and Pat Buchanan’s State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America that explains that America’s shift away from being white-dominated is “one of the greatest tragedies in human history.”

But Sheriff Thomas Hodgson’s being on the board of such an organization is somehow okay because he doesn’t believe in what the organization does?

In 2011 FAIR stated in its annual report that they had identified sheriffs who expressed concerns about illegal immigration and met with these sheriffs and their deputies, supplied them with a steady stream of information, established regular conference calls so they could share information and experiences, and invited them to come to Washington to meet with FAIR’s senior staff.

Sheriff Hodgson was one such sheriff.

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Considering the racial make-up of the County he is supposed to serve as sheriff, when he is not off giving racist lectures or plaques of appreciation to Trump, is heavily immigrant and descendents of immigrants, it would stand to reason that a good number of those in his jail are from that stock. He knows these people. He lives among them. He goes to events with them.  Yet he consistently abuses those of them in his custody by volunteering them to help build Trump’s wall, creating an environment in his facilities that has resulted in more inmates dying  in them than  in any other county jails in the state, attacking detainees  in the Bristol County ICE Detention Center on May 1, 2020, and collaborating with ICE  through the 287(g) agreement as if that was the reason the people of the county elected him sheriff. 

All the while, he constantly speaks of stereotypes closely following Trump’s playbook and anti-immigrant rhetoric even having his own dog whistle term for immigrants, “Criminal Illegal Aliens”.

These are his, and yours, and my neighbors.

The sheriff’s white supremacy proclivities have been brought up in the past, but have been denied in spite of their being verified mainly because it takes time and effort to read reports, and, while people may feel comfortable dismissing these connections with white supremacists because they didn’t hear them, there is the problem of the picture in the lobby of the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office in Dartmouth in which he is wearing a Confederate flag motif tie covered in Confederate battle stars and bars.

Long reports can go unread, but an actual white supremacist related picture can give all the necessary information in an instant, and that can change things.

The picture of him wearing the confederate motif tie first appeared on the official website for the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office in 2003 accompanied by a message that said in part that the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office is contributing “to the betterment of our country.”

Confederate flag tie in a Northern state, and stating his intent was to better the country?

There are a number of vendors of such ties along with flags, mugs, and belt buckles with some iteration of the confederate flag on them, and more than one carries the tie proudly worn in the picture whose style is referred to it as an “anglo-Confederate society tie”, It is worn by  people affiliated with the broader neo-Confederate movement.

While he denies any connection with or having any sympathy toward Confederate causes, he offers as part of his defense for having worn it is that it

“represents what it means to be American.”

Really?

The establishment of the Confederate States of America for the purpose of defending slavery and then firing on Fort Sumter beginning a civil war with the existing United States “represents what it means to be American”?

Considering the upheaval these days and the “discussion” of race relations, one would think that given the opportunity to, perhaps, acknowledge a fashion faux pas as a mistake done back when people weren’t as “woke” as now, one which, in light of the present awareness, would not be repeated, the sheriff doubled down on his defense of the tie by stating when he was asked if he would wear the tie now, knowing how the design may be construed, Hodgson admitted he would because

“It represents the colors of a country that’s given me the opportunity to serve.”

Apparently he thinks the Confederate States of America is still a country. If so, how has a foreign country given him the opportunity to serve in another country, the United States.

As the son of an immigrant himself, this certainly would bring up the question about his loyalty to the United States.

So even if you don’t take the time to read all the reports on his white supremacist leanings and actions, the picture with him wearing the tie and his claiming it represents his country as a way to defend the tie, tells you something about the foundation of his obsessively negative attitudes toward Black and Brown people, and should help you understand how white supremacy works in the shadows to the detriment of our family, friends, neighbors, and selves.

There is no need to leave the area to correct white supremacy seepage. What’s necessary is knowing it is here, and there is a spider in the web.

He is wore a white supremacy tie, and says he would do it again.