More Entertainment For White People

With H.K. back in the news I thought I would pass on the latest video of the mythic white South’s favorite son. The video was recently uploaded to YouTube. Edgerton is in rare form here. In fact, I can’t remember him being so animated.

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10 comments… add one
  • Woodrowfan Dec 5, 2013 @ 6:17

    sometimes I wonder if his act is just a giant FU! to the NAACP for booting him out for his financial mismanagement.

    • Andy Hall Dec 5, 2013 @ 7:27

      Given the sequence of events, that’s not implausible, although his Confederate flag shtick has long since taken on a life of its own.

  • Will Stoutamire Dec 4, 2013 @ 6:40

    From the description: “The honorable black American H K Edgerton was a high ranking NAACP official who discovered actual documents from the 1700s and 1800s showing blacks were treated better than whites. This is because a slave cost the same as a house, about $300,000.00 in today’s money. This meant slaves were much more valuable than the average white back then.”

    That’s… different.

    • Andy Hall Dec 4, 2013 @ 7:15

      Edgerton was the president of the NAACP chapter in Greenville, North Carolina. I’m not sure that makes him a “high-ranking NAACP official,” but anyway. . . .

      Edgerton was pushed out by the state organization for a number of reasons. During his tenure, the finances of the local chapter had collapsed, and he’d made an alliance in a local housing lawsuit with an attorney, Kirk Lyons, already infamous for his extensive personal and professional connections to the Klan, neo-Nazis and white supremacists of various stripes. Edgerton didn’t help his own situation when he and the lawyer were photographed together at a restaurant with napkins on their heads, hamming it up as klansmen.

      Within a few months of Edgerton’s ouster as the local NAACP chapter president in 1999, he became (under Lyons’ mentoring) a Confederate flag activist and new hero of the Confederate heritage movement, appearing (I think) for the first time at a big rally in Columbia, South Carolina in January 2000. He’s been a more-or-less full-time performance artist/activist/beard ever since, and has been successful enough at it that in 2006 Dewey Barber, the owner of Dixie Outfitters, brought Edgerton on board to be public front man for his new, for-profit venture, Southern Heritage 411.

      The rest, as they say, is history. Really, really, bad history.

      • Will Stoutamire Dec 5, 2013 @ 10:26

        Thanks, Andy. I didn’t know the details of his ouster, so that’s good to know.

        My comment, however, was more directed to the latter half of that description. That’s about the silliest slavery apologist argument I’ve ever heard. If I’m following the (il)logic: Slaves cost more than many southern whites had in money/property, therefore they actually enjoyed a privileged status compared to poor southern whites.

        Cause we all know slavery would really only have been bad if blacks were being sold for bargain bin prices. We should all be thrilled to have someone willing to buy our humanity for the price of a house. That’s just basic capitalism…

        • Woodrowfan Dec 5, 2013 @ 12:22

          being a slave is one thing, but it’s worse if you were bought at the 1850s equivalent of the used car lot or dollar store I guess.

  • Nathan Towne Dec 4, 2013 @ 6:38

    Edgerton needs to relax.

    Nathan Towne

  • Rob Baker Dec 4, 2013 @ 6:21

    Is it insensitive to say that he reminds me of a sports team mascot?

    • Woodrowfan Dec 5, 2013 @ 12:23

      He’d probably be pleased.

  • William Dec 4, 2013 @ 4:47

    “Insane in the membrane.”

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