Sioux Falls Black leaders unimpressed with response to neo-Nazi march

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) – The fallout continues after multiple incidents of a neo-Nazi group marching in South Dakota cities.

Those activities happened over the weekend at the State Capitol in Pierre and in Deadwood.

State leaders have condemned the marches, but the level of response has been underwhelming for three leaders from the Sioux Falls branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Langston Newton, the president of the NAACP in Sioux Falls, had spent his entire Saturday celebrating the diversity of the city while representing the civil rights group in the Sioux Falls Pride Parade and Festival of Cultures.

Then, while at a Levitt at The Falls music show, he received the news about the neo-Nazi march in Pierre.

”Honestly, it was disbelief. To see neo-Nazis in 2024 go to your state capitol is, like, ‘This has to be fake,’” said Newton, who first spent several minutes making sure to confirm that the event was a reality.

“It’s jarring. It’s absolutely jarring.”

NAACP Sioux Falls treasurer Ashley Knoff used the same word, and added “visceral” and “shocking.”

“Ever since the 2020 election, you see more and more neo-Nazi’s doing more and more things everywhere. You see the Proud Boys. You want to feel safe at home and like it’s not close, and then you see that and you think, ‘Oh, that’s what’s happening today.’ And, it’s a reality. It’s a reality at home. Everyday, people of my complexion face racism and discrimination, but to see just a hateful organization is just jarring.”

Jarring but not surprising to Julian Beaudion, who has lived in Sioux Falls for almost two decades and owns Swamp Daddy’s Cajun Kitchen and recently finished his tenure as executive director of the South Dakota African-American History Museum.

”Hatred has always been in South Dakota. Hatred has always been in America,” Beaudoin said. “Racism is bred within the cloth with what we call America, with what we call home, and it’s something that we fight against every day.”

And according to these leaders, the fight against bigotry isn’t strong enough from Gov. Kristi Noem, who issued a short social media statement that said, in part, that “Nazis are not welcome here” in South Dakota and that the state rejects all hate.

“I think its shocking that she has not made an in-person statement via her own social media,” Knoff said. ”We live in 2024. It does not take very long to flip your camera around and say, ‘I’m just as shocked as you are. I don’t want this happening in my state.’ I want a real, raw response, not something that’s canned.”

Although the neo-Nazi demonstrators were escorted away from the Capitol and sent away by law enforcement in Deadwood, there are concerns about law enforcement training when it comes to these situations.

Beaudion is a certified law enforcement officer who feels police were not prepared well enough to interact with the hate group. He also thinks those police forces in those cities would not be ready to interact with members of the community the hate group stands against.

“I think knowing the climate of our country right now, more should have been done in preparation to ensure that when these things happen, and I’m not saying if. We know that these things are going to happen. They’re happening across the country. They happened on January 6th. We have folks right here in South Dakota that participated in January 6th in Washington, D.C.”

“Knowing these things are going to happen, knowing that we have people living in our community that feel the way they do, we have to be prepared to battle against the hatred,” Beaudoin said. “We can’t just come out with the statement and say, ‘It has no home,’ if we’re not empowering our people to fight against hatred.”

“I think all of those things are so important when it comes to diffusing those situations, and they have not been equipped with any of that, and I think that’s a failure of our governor.

Knoff took it a step further.

“If a group of 15-25 black men in masks came to the city’s capital or city’s hall, the response would not be the same. It wouldn’t be just ‘disperse and have a great time,’” Knoff said.

“My nephews, my dad, my uncles, cousins, brothers would have been forfeiting their lives for doing such a thing.”

Knoff said she has fielded a bevvy of texts and phone calls over the last three days from people in the Black community asking her what is the NAACP and the Black community is going to do about this, and “what is our way of protecting our people and our community so this doesn’t happen and we don’t feel supported or feel seen by law enforcement, and what will happen to us?”

“I can tell you a lot of people don’t feel safe,” Knoff said. “It’s not a matter of if but probably when. We’re the biggest city, but if it happened in Pierre, and they’re already being vocal about it, why not? We’re having Juneteenth here next weekend. It’s not hard to see that, you know, hate crimes are going to be on the rise.”

From 2010 to 2019, the number of hate crime incidents recorded by law enforcement increased by 10%, from 6,628 reported incidents to 7,314 incidents. New statistics from the FBI for 2022 showed decrease in violent offenses and rise in hate crime incidents, a majority of which targeted Black people. The number of hate crimes reported to police in the nation’s 10 largest cities rose again in 2023, according to preliminary data released on Jan. 5 from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University.

The neo-Nazi marching in two of South Dakota’s higher-profile cities comes ahead of this weekend’s Juneteenth celebration in Sioux Falls. The federal holiday recognizes June 19th, 1865, when the last slaves in America were set free. Knoff said the NAACP is grateful local law enforcement will be on hand.

In a city of over 202,000, just over 13,000 are African-American, almost 7 percent.

Newton says that if you’re white, and stand against hate, and want minorities in the state to feel safe and welcome — go to the Juneteeth festivities and show your support. And, whether you can or can’t do that, to try and get to know your minority neighbors and co-workers. Have conversations.

“South Dakota is a welcoming place,” Newton said. “I do understand, though, that it is often in my experiences that (white people) haven’t met a ‘me’ before, or they haven’t gotten a chance to actually have a conversation, or a good-faith conversation with a person of color or a minority in this state. It’s one of those pieces where it’s easy to stereotype and dehumanize somebody if you don’t know who they are or don’t know them.

”The fact of the matter is, South Dakotans, people of color here, raise their families. They go to work. They pay their taxes. They go to church. They do all these things just like you. If you actually take the time to humanize us and people of color in the state, that might lead to a better understanding and a little less hate.”

Beaudion said neo-Nazi appearances are nothing new to South Dakota, and wouldn’t be in sioux Falls. He brought up a swastika being emblazoned in the cement of a public park. Of KKK fliers passed out to kids “with candy on them.”

“We’ve dealt with all these issues, and typically it’s every two years and it’s no coincidence that they happen right around election time,” Beaudoin said. “My fear is that intimidation will work around the community, and people will not vote. People will not register to vote. People will stop running for office.”

“My encouragement, my hope, is that people will do the opposite. People will start to register in droves, in record numbers, so, when some of these policies do come up, such as House Bill 1076 (a 2024 antisemitism bill/law the NAACP opposed because it did not protect all religions and races), we are better prepared and better equipped to fight against it by making our own policies that actually protect our community.”

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