White supremacist, J.T. Ready, is one of the key players behind Arizona’s new anti-immigration law. J.T. Ready lead a recent neo-Nazi rally in Riverside, CA. Ready, a resident of Mesa, Arizona, is also one of the leaders of the anti-immigration movement in Arizona and a key figure behind the recent legislation. Rachel Maddow reported some of this in her segment on April 22 (clip is 9:08, bit about J.T. Ready is at about 3:20):
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As John Carlos Frey noted earlier in April, hate crimes against Latinos in Arizona are up 40%, yet John McCain and his primary challenger, JD Hayworth, claim they are tough on undocumented immigrants and neither of them have the courage to denounce the racially motivated legislation.
The involvement of J.T. Ready is more than a case of “one bad apple” in an otherwise good system. J.T. Ready – an avowed white supremacist – has a political agenda that is completely consistent with the mainstream conservative movement in Arizona. This overlap between the extreme white supremacist movement and the more mainstream expressions of whiteness is a point that I noted this in my earlier book, (White Lies, Routledge, 1997). While most want to dismiss white supremacists as ‘fringe’ groups that have nothing to do with the mainstream, in fact, the ideology of these groups is much closer to core American values than most choose to recognize.
No one monitors or reports the statistics of hate crimes against Native Americans, but my friends in Arizona tell me that beatings and detentions and harassment of Natives is higher than it has ever been. One friend who was in Pineridge in the 70’s says the atmosphere is eerily familiar.
After all, white racists have no skill or interest in distinguishing between brown skins.