For those who live in the American South, the news that white supremacist billboards are appearing in and near Birmingham, Alabama does not come as a surprise. Last summer, a billboard reading â??Anti-Racist is a Code Word for Anti-Whiteâ? appeared on I-20. Earlier this month, another on I-59 warned that â??Diversity Means Chasing Down the Last White Person.â? The secessionist group League of the South claimed to have made the former, and the latter, owned by a private citizen, appears to take its talking points from the white supremacist White Genocide Project. But alarming as these billboards may be, they are, unfortunately, par for the course below the Mason-Dixon line.
I didnâ??t pay much attention to Interstate scenery myself until I moved to the South five years ago. Now, itâ??s hard to keep my eyes off the roadside. Not only are there countless cars bearing Confederate bumper stickers, there are also prominent Confederate flags flying over I-75, one north of Tifton, Georgia, another just outside of Tampa, and others scattered throughout the region. Alongside I-95 on the way into North Carolina, there are dozens of billboards featuring a racist caricature of a sombrero-wearing Mexican named Pedro, who urges me to stop at the infamous eyesore of a tourist trap known as South of the Border. One of these billboards features a large three-dimensional sausage and promises, â??Youâ??re always a wiener at Pedroâ??s.â?
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