Joplin area winning the battle against hate, bigotry

(The following is my latest Daily Kos blog.)

Fourteen years ago, I defended this area of southwest Missouri on the charge leveled by an expert quoted in the Kansas City Star who indicated our streets are teeming with wall-to-wall racists. He was referring to the type of people who attended the unfortunately named American Heritage Festival in Carthage, a collection of anti-government fringe speakers, fear merchants trying to cash in on Y2K, survivalists, and vendors peddling racist and Nazi literature.

I noted that most of the people who attended the festival were not from this area, but were from the Kansas City/Liberty/Independence part of the state.

I began by writing "A blanket of white descended upon Missouri over the weekend," but the line that brought the $750 million libel suit against me was "They were here on Friday, they were here on Saturday, and those nuts were sprinkled on our Sunday."

Though it was clearly an opinion and was even on my newspaper's editorial page, the lawsuit was still filed by the event organizer (the same man who wrote the Los Angeles Times bestseller Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA). It was eventually dismissed, but the lawsuit led to my departure from a 22-year career in newspapers and placed me in the world of education.

I would write that same column again today if I had the chance because I will not let this area of Missouri be categorized as being a cesspool of racists.

Undoubtedly, we have our share of people who have no tolerance for those who are a different color, a different sexual preference, or a different religion. That was evident earlier this year when the Joplin Islamic Society Mosque was targeted by an arsonist, but the response of this city has proved once again that the brotherhood that was so evident in the days following the May 22, 2011, tornado, still exists.

The religious community of Joplin, people from all denominations, banded together to come to the aid of their Islamic brothers and sisters, and soon they were joined by other Joplin residents and people from all over the world.

Earlier this year, I wrote about the success of the drive to raise $250,000 to rebuild the mosque. When it was launched on the indieagogo.com site, a deadline of September 21 was set- a seven-week time period. It didn't take anywhere near that much time- the money was raised in less than 24 hours and by the time the deadline arrived, a total of $410,962 had been raised.

The spirit of hope had triumphed once more in this city which has become the symbol of the nation.

Joplin and Southwest Missouri are not free of the insidious diseases of hatred and racism that seem to always find a way to seep into our neighborhoods and sow their seeds of destruction and it would be naive to think that we are immune.

All we can do is to continue to fight the good fight, and more often than not, as evidenced by the outpouring of help for the Islamic Society of Joplin and the nearly universal condemnation of the person or persons responsible for the burning of the mosque proves, it is a fight that we will win.