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Do you know who recorded the song, Ship Those Niggers Back? To jog your memory, a lyric with chorus:

Ring that bell, shout for joy, white man's day is here
Gather all those equals up and herd them on the pier

America's for whites, Africa's for blacks
Send those apes back to the trees, ship those niggers back

It was Johnny Cash ... or so it seems at first. But AMG doesn't know about it, and commenters on the lyrics sites say that this is confusion: the song was in fact recorded by a Johnny Rebel.

One way or another, my neighbors just played this song very loudly from a pick-up truck during a party they're having right now. Wow. Also:

• A black kid walked by (not during the song), and I really thought they were going to start harrassing him. They were talking about fried chicken.
• I heard a guy complain that the cops in town pull him over for tinting his windows, but they never pull over the drug-dealing niggers.
• A guy told me how much he hates working construction in the city, because the niggers are constantly robbing job sites and staging shootouts. He carries a gun like everyone else on his crew, and he has in fact drawn it on the job. Then he poured me a shot of moonshine.

Racists, and I love them. They are beautiful. These people treat my children so gently, when my wife brings them over in pajamas and wet hair. They turn the music down when the kids go back home for bed. They are effusive over the left-over frog legs that I contribute. One guy is unsuccessfully trying to line people up for the Mötley Crüe show in August. Two others are telling me about their invention. Most are volunteer firemen. I live amongst beautiful racists.

It is so clear what has to happen. This has to be worked from both ends. Treat our neighborhoods like Wendell Berry treats a farm. So Mark: you take Pleasant Valley, and I'll take Lower Harmony?

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P.S. We visited my sister-in-law a couple years ago when she was living in a commune in the Chicago ghetto. I went downtown one night for a show, and walking two blocks to the train station I had to pass directly through a group of black kids. It was very uncomfortable. I was wearing flip-flops. They looked at and muttered to me threatingly, and actually went so far as to throw a bottle after me after I had passed. I empathize with the black kid that walked past us tonight: eight pick-up trucks parked all over the road, country music blaring, white guys in ball caps and work boots drunk on moonshine, pointing at him and whispering about fried chicken.

P.P.S. Jess is reading a book about attempts to assassinate Hitler. Apparently, the moral clarity we have today about Hitler is hindsight. As late as 1944 you have the New York Times castigating would-be assassins of Hitler as traitors to their country.