Photojournalism
Aryan Outfitters
Meet the KKK's seamstress of hate couture.
Thu March 27, 2008 12:21 PM PST
Coming from five generations of Ku Klux Klan members, 58-year-old "Ms. Ruth" sews hoods and robes for Klan members seven days a week, blessing each one when it's done. A red satin outfit for an Exalted Cyclops, the head of a local chapter, costs about $140. She uses the earnings to help care for her 40-year-old quadriplegic daughter, "Lilbit," who was injured in a car accident 10 years ago.
The following is a photo essay about Ms. Ruth by New York photojournalist Anthony Karen, a former Marine who has spent several years photographing members of the Ku Klux Klan. The essay includes audio of interviews with Karen and Ms. Ruth.
Title "Aryan outfitters"
Your use of the word Aryan to describe these hate mongers is offensive to the people of the Indian subcontinent. It is bad enough Hitler stole our swastika and cultural heritage but you should not be aiding and abetting in the biggest massive cultural theft in human history. Please pick up an Anthropology text book and read up on Aryan, Sanskrit and swastika and educate yourselves.
Poor Uneducated Whites, Give'em a Break
welcome to america!
the land of stolen land, rape of culture, institutionalized racism, war on minorities and empoverished.
this is how caucasians have survived for centuries and can only continue to survive this way. let this poor woman have her small little world. if she's around for the day of reckoning she'll instantly realize how she's wasted her life with her fragile hand-me-down beliefs borne from the ultimate form of self-loathing and insecurity.
this attitude, this is how we minorities survive when we have to face our own countrymen and allow them to live and express their personal civil rights no matter how fantastic or bizarre. i don't dare credit the KKK as hatemongers or even offensive, but they are certainly lost their way in this great world we all ahem, share. a myopic to live some unrealistic caucasian eden fantasy? good luck with that.
Apparently some people live
Apparently some people live in a different America than I do. War on the empoverished? How about a war on spelling? It seems to me there is a war on success. "We'll just have the rich pay for it." "Well, we're going to raise taxes on the wealthy." "Only those making more than $250,000 wee see a raise in their taxes." We all know this is bull. They raise all of our taxes to pay for crap for the "empoverished" as you call them. War for the impoverished against the successful and even mildly successful. I see a lot more racism coming from Blacks towards Whites in America than the other way around. At least in my neck of the woods. I'm not about to say I agree with the Klan. To hell with the Klan.
"Hatred is a weakness. You become the victim." -Rise Inside, Killswitch Engage
It seems applicable so I put it in there.
This war on the impoverished crap needs to stop. If there were a war on the impoverished we would tax the crap out of the poor and once you reached a certain tax bracket you wouldn't owe taxes anymore. Actually, that sounds like a good plan. Give some people some motivation to get their asses out there and be productive! Get off the couch and do something. No wonder we aren't getting anywhere here in America. We have it backwards. The banks have it right. If you have no money, you owe us some money. Next thing you know you somehow get money into your account so you aren't overdrafting anymore. If you have money, well, obviously you know what to do with your money, so we owe you some money so you can go out and earn more money to put back into our bank so we can make money, too. Once again the private sector is FAR more efficient and economical than government.
Or maybe you should just get
Or maybe you should just get over it. These altered words and symbols mean a lot of terrible things now to a lot of people. Aryan itself is an anachronistic reference, and has little bearing on any subcontinental population anymore, except those who hold fanatically to Vedic/mythic fantasies.
I'm subcontinental too, btw. I have no patience for people who get offended by history, or think our symbolism is above misuse, when we ourselves have abused and continue to abuse it.
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The final photo!
The last picture is awfully sad.
chilling
Wow. The whole sequence of photos nearly makes you think this woman is just any other person going about her sewing. She seems so....dedicated to it. If it were ANYthing else...I might think she was a decent and caring human being. But I guess this is what five generations of Klan membership does to a family......and the child at the end is likely sixth or seventh generation.
The look in the child's eyes? Absolutely chilling.
Culture of Hate
Sometimes authors use a novel or screenplay to support political or social beliefs; or to cry out for morality and ethical prinicples. This is no more clearly evident than with Holocaust books and films. Whenever we stand up to those who deny or minimize the Holocaust, or to those who support genocide we send a critical message to the world.
We live in an age of vulnerability. Holocaust deniers ply their mendacious poison everywhere, especially with young people on the Internet. We know from captured German war records that millions of innocent Jews (and others) were systematically exterminated by Nazi Germany - most in gas chambers. Holocaust books and films help to tell the true story of the Shoah, combating anti-Semitic historical revision. And, they protect future generations from making the same mistakes.
I wrote "Jacob's Courage" to promote Holocaust education. This coming of age love story presents accurate scenes and situations of Jews in ghettos and concentration camps, with particular attention to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. It examines a constellation of emotions during a time of incomprehensible brutality. A world that continues to allow genocide requires such ethical reminders and remediation.
Many authors feel compelled to use their talent to promote moral causes. Holocaust books and movies carry that message globally, in an age when the world needs to learn that genocide is unacceptable. Such authors attempt to show the world that religious, racial, ethnic and gender persecution is wrong; and that tolerance is our progeny's only hope.
Charles Weinblatt
Author, "Jacob's Courage"
http://jacobscourage.wordpress.com/
“The banality of evil”
“The banality of evil” comes to mind as one looks through the photos.
interesting
interesting post thanks!!!! i really like it
The price of free speech?
Sad, our free citizens choose to hate.
All I can say is atleast they are free to express their points of view.
Did not know that KKK was into Bespoke outfits :)
If you knew where Aryan came from - you'd know what a dravidian is.
Kudos to the Photographer for documenting this and thanks to MoJo for publishing it.
I would like to "THANK YOU"
tagged as:- result
I would like to "THANK YOU" for what you are doing. The Ku Klux Klan has a long and patriotic history in this country. "The KKK is here to stay, like it or not." Just 'cause we have, (for lack of a more preferable word), a BLACK president in office doesn't mean we're gonna run back to our cow pastures dragging our sheets behind us!! NO, WHAT THIS LADY IS DOING, IS A great service!! And she makes SURE we look GOOD doing it!! God Bless you dear...God Bless AmeriKKKa!!!
The Ku Klux Klan isn't
The Ku Klux Klan isn't patriotic. It actually goes against everything this country stands for: freedom, liberty, and justice for all, no matter what your skin color is. I cannot even comprehend how you could possibly think that an organization that is based in completely unnecessary hatred of others is patriotic at all. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for being a member of this organization!
You spelled "America" wrong.
You spelled "America" wrong. Maybe you should think twice before disrespecting our fine nation, pal.
The south needs to rise again!!
Thank you for what you are doing,its greatly apperciated.The KKK is here to stay.The south will rise again,but when is the question.
i liked this post. She is
i liked this post. She is keeping her culture alive.
wow
This is a great set of photos with interesting and informative captions. I felt for a few minutes as if i had spent "a day in the life of". It made me think.
We all have our own feelings on the subject matter of course, but let's not let that distract us from the quality of work shown here.
Sweet life.
Sweet life.
All I am seeing on here are
All I am seeing on here are comments of hate. I was brought up in a small southern town, and let me tell you there is alot of racism there, but you cant blame those people that is how they were raised, that is how i was raised. I moved up north and got quite a culture shock, i was used to saying 'nigger' all the time, and i dont say it in any offensive term, its just a word im used to. why cant everyone just let each other be. this poor woman is trying to support her invalid daughter. leave her and the rest of us be.
Leave her and the rest of you be?
How can we leave them be? Their kind are hate-filled pustules on the backside of humanity. This "Poor woman" is receiving your and my tax dollars so she can blow 6-dollar a pack cigarette smoke at her unmoving daughter. That second-hand smoke must be doing wonders for her daughter's lungs. How much do you want to bet that $50,000-worth of "religious robes" income isn't reported? Those robes are a symbol of blind hatred, preserving a dark heritage of one man owning another and when truth and justice were found hanging at the end of a hemp rope. These people are dinosaurs, multi-culturalism will be the asteroid that drives them into extinction. We can try educating them, but brainwashed early in their lives, like the little girl in the last picture, they prefer to revel in their own brand of ignorance and fear. Like a doctor reviewing the X-rays and finding the cancer is inoperable, there is no future for the patient or for this way of life. But, like a carrier of an easily-transmitted disease, they must be kept in isolation, to prevent the spread of another deadly disease: the plague of hatred.
It would be possibly more
It would be possibly more appropriate to put Aryan in quotations or say so-called 'Aryan' outfitters. The Aryans were an archaic people whose languages have been passed down through conquest and assimilation from the Caucasus (the Ossentians, who speak an Iranic language live in southern Russia) to Bangladesh. Their ancestry has been of-course greatly exaggerated as all we really know about them is they originated in an area from southern Russia/Ukraine to Central Asia (probably before the coming of Turkic-Mongols) and moved south. In the 19th century some European academics discovered that the languages of Iran, northern India, Armenia etc. were related to those of most of Europe and hypothesized (and then retracted) a theory that the original 'Europeans' were the Aryans, the oldest known Indo-European speakers credited with laying the foundations of some early civilizations (though they were doubtless influenced by their non-Aryan predecessors). Racists began then to use the term Aryan as an appellation for the now infamous Nordic superman myth that Hitler and the Nazis also seized upon, along with the Swaztika, a symbol of Indian origin. Today, the very name Iran is a cognate of 'Aryan' for example. The 'Aryans' or their linguistic forebears DID end up also in Europe as the Sarmatians (some of whom were stationed in Roman Britain), the Alans (who accompanied their Germanic Vandal allies during their conquests of Spain and North Africa) and the Scythians who were assimilated by the Slavs in Russia and Turkic tribes in Central Asia. Combating the use of Aryan is useful in that it is another chink in the armor of racists who never seem to get history right. I mean why not just say 'Nordic Outfitters' or European Supremacist Outfitters etc.?
Although I agree with you
Although I agree with you and admire your detailed evidence, the ignorance has already been embedded into their 'culture'. You can't reverse it.