Black Alabama "Prepper" and State Senator Joseph Mitchell Brings the Heat to A Constituent's White "Slave-holding, Murdering, Adulterous, Baby-raping, Snaggle-toothed Kin Folk'"

Representative Joseph Mitchell's portrait depicts a black man of some accomplishment who is not to be messed with. The vibe is real. I sense some old school 19th century Exoduster who made good energy radiating from it like in the movie Ghostbusters 2.

This whole matter is a hot mess for lack of a better word. I was reading this exchange and ducking from the 1960s Batman-like sound effects from the verbal darts being thrown back and forth between Representative Joseph Mitchell, an African-American Alabama State Senator, and Eddie Maxwell, a white constituent, who dared to warn his representatives that gun control laws were a violation of the Constitution, and any official advocating for them was committing a "crime."

In response, Mitchell goes hard and suggests that black people had best stock up on arms to protect themselves from the white folks who pray at The Temple of the Gun Right:

From: Representative Joseph Mitchell
Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2013 11:59 PM
To: Eddie Maxwell
cc: (all members)
Subject: Re: Gun Control and our Constitutions 

Hey man. You have used the word ‘except’ when I think you mean somethin’ else.
Hey man. Your folk never used all this sheit to protect my folk from your slave-holding, murdering, adulterous, baby-raping, incestuous, snaggle-toothed, backward-a**ed, inbreed, imported criminal-minded kin folk. You can keep sending me stuff like you have however because it helps me explain to my constituents why they should protect that 2nd amendment thing AFTER we finish stocking up on spare parts, munitions and the like. 

Bring it. As one of my friends in the Alabama Senate suggested – “BRING IT!!!!” 

JOSEPHm, a prepper (’70-’13)
Mobile County

1100 comments later we are witness to a mix of white conservative colorblind racism myth making-victimology, Maxwell's standard script of having a "best black friend," being warned about "dangerous negroes with knives" back in the 1960s, and how "racism" is not the soul sin of white folks:

From: Eddie Maxwell
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2013 2:23 PM
To: Representative Joseph Mitchell
cc: (all members)
Subject: Re: Gun Control and our Constitutions 

Rep. Mitchell and other members of the Legislature of Alabama,

That’s not the type of reply I expect to receive from a state legislator. The lack of response to your racist comments from your fellow members speaks volumes about the state of our legislature as a whole. 

I’m not a racist and I find your reply to be especially offensive considering the position you hold. 

My parents and grandparents taught me to love God and my fellow man as myself. My father was threatened by members of his church back in 1954 for inviting a black family to attend the church he pastored. 

My father-in-law was threatened when he hired a young negro man to work in his shop back in 1968 in a community where several neighbors were members of the Ku Klux Klan. He didn’t allow those threats to keep him from treating people of all races equally. 

In 1969, I was a draftee in the US Army and bunked with a young negro man named Earl Shinholster at Fort Benning. Earl later became a prominent leader of the NAACP back home in Georgia after serving with me in the Army. When I received numerous racist threats from negroes who knew I lived near Birmingham, Earl warned me of the knives they carried and cautioned me to be more careful around them. Earl had been watching me and he had come to know and respect me for my Christian values. Earl and I became friends and he helped me get through some tough times there. 

Racism is not exclusive to my own people. I learned that before 1955. It is just as ugly now as it was then, regardless of the race of the person who is consumed by it. 

I love my country and my state, and I vowed to support and defend our constitutions. I expect you and all of our representative to do the same. 

Sincerely,
Eddie Maxwell 

Whatever his stylistic choices in this very unprofessional exchange, Representative Mitchell points out an interesting dilemma for Tea Party authoritarian conservatives--they have discovered an obsession with "human rights and liberty" when in fact their intellectual, moral, and philosophical roots are with the neo-Confederacy and the John Birchers.

Where were the "freedom advocates" and "patriots" who are now a dime a dozen on the Right, and love to dress up like zombie George Washington spouting all of that liberty rhetoric, when when black folks were being hung from trees or suffering under Jim and Jane Crow? Did these Tea Party "patriots" march with Brother King and others against the day-to-day tyranny of the white supremacist South (and in many ways, North too).

I think you know my answer to that question...

Guns, race, state politics, ego, and passion do make for some great political theater.