By Trymaine Lee, NBCBLK
Every now and then Michael Tubbs comes across news of the other Michael Tubbs. And he cringes.
“I’m someone very interested in diversity, equity, social justice and getting rid of white supremacy,” said Tubbs, the 27-year-old mayor of Stockton, California. “We have the same name but a completely opposite aim in life.”
The other Michael Tubbs, 57, is the leader of the Florida chapter of the League of the South, listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. He has a long-documented history of hate, aimed mostly at blacks and Jews. He made headlines again recently as he emerged as a key figure in the Charlottesville melee, a bloody clash between white supremacists and the counter-protesters who fought them.
Tubbs is alleged to have orchestrated many of the most violent incidents at the rally-turned-riot. He was captured on video and by witnesses ordering his underlings to dole out vicious attacks and beatings, including one particularly violent attack on a young black man named Deandre Harris, who was left staggering and bleeding.
As blood spilled in Charlottesville, including the killing of a young woman by a suspected white nationalist who mowed through a crowd with his car, Mayor Michael Tubbs followed along on social media nearly 3,000 miles away.
“It was just a reminder of just how much work we have to do,” Mayor Tubbs said in a phone interview. “What’s shocking is that throughout history, every time there was progress in this country it was always met with angry, violent, murderous, white nationalist anger. From the rise of black elected officials after the civil war and Reconstruction to the civil rights movement. Every time there’s progress there’s a response, there’s a lot of bloodshed and hate.”
A number of historians and analysts say what could be considered great progress in the election of President Barack Obama, America’s first black president, has given way to the ascension of President Donald Trump, in many ways his antithesis.
Trump rose to political prominence leading a years-long political war that hinged largely on questioning Obama’s legitimacy via the so-called birther movement, viewed by many as a proxy war against African-Americans. Then Trump barreled through the 2016 presidential election by whipping his overwhelmingly white, largely poor and uneducated base into a frenzy with racially charged, nationalistic and xenophobic rhetoric.
What the events in Charlottesville revealed may be something of a racial and political cross-roads for America. It drew a wide swath of racial miscreants, including Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups that had been pushed toward obscurity in recent years.
Here, in this conflux of race and politics, is where the two Michael Tubbs collide.
Theirs is a story in black and white. Literally, one is African-American and the other, white. One represents American aspirationalism, the other American abhorrence and intolerance.
One is an inspirational tale of hope and the richness of the American melting pot. The other reeks of hate and racism, a wretched stew that has stubbornly remained a staple of life in America.
Read the entire story here.
