Arson: Racists, Not Environmentalists?

Michelle Malkin has a note on the arsons that occurred only about a half hour from me in Charles County, MD. You’ve no doubt heard about them – some 30 homes were destroyed or damaged in a brand new housing development that abutted a bog. This development has been the focal point of a battle between county officials who want to develop the western side of the county and environmentalists who want to preserve pretty much that whole area, untouched.

Thus far, the leading suspect in most folks’ minds has been an ecoterrorist group called the Earth Liberation Front. ELF has neither taken credit for nor denied the crimes, though the arson certainly does seem to fit its modus operandi.

But there is another distinct possibility that Ms. Malkin seems to dismiss relatively quickly: racism.

Yeah, except, the arsonists didn’t target homes occupied by black residents. They systematically attempted to destroy 30 new, unoccupied homes in an environmentally controversial subdivision. And no report that I have read has indicated that the arsonists left any signs of racial animus in their tracks. If this was the KKK’s way of sending a message to blacks to stay out of the neighborhood, it was a rather dim way to send it.

It’s true that we’ve not heard there’s been any evidence that this was a racial crime. But we’ve also not heard of any evidece that it was an environmental crime either. ELF has a habit of leaving “calling cards” by their arson scenes and if they left one this time, the authorities haven’t announced it.So we don’t have any evidence either way.

The quote she noted was further reinforced by an article in the Washington Post (that I think was a bit leading, but is germane to this discussion). I can speak on this a little because I’ve lived in this country pretty much all my life and have seen it transform itself from a rural area to an outer suburban area (that prompted the original name of my blog – “Suburban Sundries Shack”) to what appears now to be an exurban area.

There is a tension, not a large one but one nontheless, between long-time residents and newer arrivals. People who have lived here a long time have looked at the rapid growth of Charles Country with a gimlet eye. They don’t like the new housing developments, the road construction that ties up already overloaded routes and seems to be too little to really help, the way stores like WalMart and strip malls are repacing out locally-owned stores that have been here for decades either because they have better prices or because the owners of these oder stores are passing away. They watch crime increase to the point where doors they felt confortable leaving unlocked now have to be surely secured. They see the population changing not only in age, but in family structure, in attitude, in racial structure, and in living habits and they don’t like much of any of it. They dont understand why this is coming their way and they’re powerless to stop it.

That’s not to say that ever long-time resident is an old curmudgeon, but there is a contingent that is. And, like it or not, there’s a contingent in this county that still holds to old racial attitudes and isn’t likely to change soon. Tey aren’t public about it often, but it’s worth noting that in the early 1990s the KKK marched down the main street of the county seat. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that an awful lot of the new arrivals in the county are black families who have moved here from nearby Prince George’s County and Washington, DC. Those families bring not only a different color to the community, but also a different way of living that, though not all bad, has unpleasant parts to it to which these racist glom as an excuse to dislike them even more than they do already.

Let’s add to that that the most likely buyers of these new homes are the aforementioned black families – at least for most of the houses. That’s just been the way of things in Charles County over the last five years or so and it’s not likely to change anytime very soon, as far as I can see. That would make this development a great target for racists, especially given that the immediate suspicion would fall on environmentalsits and not on them.

Given what I know about the county, I can definitely believe that this arson could have been racially motivated. No one can say for sure, yet, but I wouldn’t discount the idea quite so quickly.

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Category: General