Now that I am sort of retired I have all kinds of free time on my hands. So of course I fill it with productive pursuits. Okay not so much. One thing I do do is hike but now that it’s the dead of winter I rather stay inside. The other day I said to myself “Self, we need to start writing again.” So with that in mind, I came up with some ideas to write about and began to research.
Of course, my research led me to the internet and a whole bunch of rabbit holes. Like the one I am writing about now. I was looking through YouTube for random ideas, (I do like videos dealing with historical events but not stupid cat tricks) and came across a video entitled “The Most racist city in America, Harrison Arkansas”.
Hmmm, I’ve been to Harrison, several times in fact, and although it was over twenty years ago I never thought of it as racist. I think of it as being a nice little town where everyone I met was very friendly and welcoming. So this got me wondering where this title came from. Who decides which city or town is the most racist or for that matter the most anything? What are the criteria? And so I began my research.
The first thing I found was an article entitled Harrison Race Riots of 1905 and 1909. Okay so Harrison has a not-so-pretty past but it was no different than a thousand other towns throughout the country at the time. Certainly no worse than others.
What shows the town of Harrison is racist today? It seems the current fervor has been caused by a YouTube video where the YouTuber went to Harrison, and stood at an intersection holding a “Black Lives Matter” sign. This resulted in presumed citizens of Harrison shouting out various racial slurs and obscenities at the person. There were also several threats of either implied or real violence.
I’m still not sure this was a reason for earning the title of “Most Racist”. You see a very unscientific count of the comments made shows there were about 35 incidents of people hurling insults. If we assume that these were all different people that means of a population of about 13,000 this is less than one-half of one percent (for the record I have never been good at percentages). If you take the time to look at the video, the majority of these incidents appear to be the same people either driving by more than once or they were longer clips that may have been copied and pasted to make it look like more.
This can’t be the reason the town has received this title. I continued looking. I think another video explains it. In this video, the YouTubers are driving around Harrison to find evidence supporting this claim of it being the most racist city. In the accompanying conversation, I learned what to look for.
First, there was a shot of a liquor store named “Sundown Liquor”. Okay maybe although we don’t know the true origin of the name of this business, we do know the definition of a “sundown town”. Harrison was known as a “Sundown Town”. After some further research I learned that this store isn’t in Harrison, but why let the facts get in the way of a good story?
The next way one can tell how racist a place is is by using the amount of litter in the parking lots of Chinese and Mexican restaurants. I don’t understand the rationale behind this but this is what they claimed. If you pair this with the Google ratings for the restaurant and check out the reviews this can be even more proof. I can’t make this stuff up.
Then there was some confusing information about how busy downtown is and something about if there’s a visitor center. The YouTubers did not make any conclusions. I am curious if there are any actual studies of these criteria.
So how can you put a title like this without more proof than this? Is this what we have become, a people who are so easily manipulated by people who don’t even take the time to find out the facts before publishing something?
The last two reasons for this title involve the KKK. They had placed some billboards around the area touting a white pride radio station and other similar signs. It also seems the headquarters for the organization is in a very small town 15 miles away named Zinc. I guess maybe the drinking water from Zinc flows into Harrison and somehow turns the citizens racist.
As I stated in the beginning I have spent time in Harrison and I saw nothing to make me believe it was any more or less racist than anywhere else. I can recall several instances in my travels throughout the South of credible and scary racist acts but none in Harrison.
I know this is nothing new and has happened throughout history, but now with the click of a mouse, misrepresentations and false claims spread across the world in seconds. And millions believe it.
Is this what we’ve become?
Postscript: I have not linked to the videos above but if you want to see them just search for “Harrison Arkansas Racism”.
