As a Western Slope farm town well known for its annual corn festival, Olathe hardly fits anyone’s definition of a hotbed for cowards and racists.
So, when news reports surfaced last week that a chapter of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan had been simmering in Olathe for four years, locals found it hard to believe.
“We couldn’t figure out a single likely Klan member,” Mayor Wayne Blair told The Associated Press. Montrose County Undersheriff Dick Deines said the Klan may have some “wannabes who want a little notoriety but aren’t going to be burning any crosses” in Olathe.
While local authorities puzzled over the revelation, they would be wise to take it seriously and be vigilant for any sign of hate activity.
It’s not so hard to imagine.
In June, just 50 miles away from Olathe in the town of Clifton, a mother of two biracial children reported to police that men wearing red bandanas with “KKK” emblazoned on them threw rocks at her children and yelled racial slurs.
Her boys, ages 11 and 13, were jumping on the family’s trampoline on a Tuesday afternoon when four men approached. At least one of the men had a tattoo that led the mother to think he was a skinhead, a loosely knit group of misfits also given to racist activity.
The rocks didn’t hit her boys, she told authorities, but the attackers threw one through the front window of the family’s home.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate group activity, says the number of groups operating in the U.S. has risen a dramatic 33 percent since 2000. The center attributes the increase to the publicity the groups receive as well as animosities involving Hispanic immigration.
According to the 2000 Census, Clifton, with 17,345 residents, is 14 percent Hispanic and less than 1 percent black. Tiny Olathe, population 1,573, was 35 percent Hispanic and had only one black resident.
With these dynamics in play, local authorities will want to keep their eyes open for hate activity, no matter how seemingly minor. After all, it would be a shame for Olathe to be wrestling with criminal malcontents when a far better claim to prominence is the sweet corn festival. (The all-you-can-eat affair, run by 800 community volunteers, is scheduled for Friday, Aug. 4.)
