A viral video that appears to show a group of people dressed in Ku Klux Klan robes and yelling racist obscenities is sparking outrage and widespread condemnation in El Paso.
The video shows more than half a dozen people dressed in KKK-style white robes and hoods walking through an El Paso neighborhood at night. Several in the group can be heard laughing when a male voice suddenly prompts them to say something together.
“Y’all gotta yell something, güey. As a team, yell something, güey,” the person says.
In response, several people shout a racial slur in unison.
“Y’all gotta keep yelling it, güey,” the original speaker says.
At another point in the video, a second male voice can briefly be heard saying he hates Black people while using a racial slur.
The video has drawn widespread condemnation from locals and has prompted an investigation by El Paso police, who say those in the video appear to be “young people.” Numerous social media posts suggest the group may have been teens attending a Halloween party.
“Symbols and language associated with the Ku Klux Klan represent a history of terror, violence and racial hatred. They have no place in our community,” El Paso Police Chief Peter Pacillas said in a statement on Monday, October 26.
“Treating that history as a costume or a joke is unacceptable and contrary to the values of respect and safety that define El Paso,” he said.
The chief added that free speech has limits when it “threatens public order or the safety of others.”
U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, El Paso’s Democratic congresswoman, condemned the group’s actions, calling it “deeply disturbing and unacceptable.”
“No El Pasoan is too young to understand that racism has no place in our community,” Escobar said Sunday.
“What’s next? When are we going to speak out? When the nooses come out? When the ropes come out? When the lynchings start? Enough is enough!” Dwyer said.
But others took to social media to say that El Paso has bigger things to worry about than kids in racist costumes. A local Facebook page called “El Paso 915 no nonsense conversation,” which shares news from across the Borderland, criticized local leaders as well as the local newspaper, the El Paso Times, for putting the issue over other stories, such as recent flash floods that prompted residents in at least one neighborhood to evacuate their homes over the weekend.
“Treating it like the second coming of the 1920s Klan is media and political theater,” El Paso 915 said, while adding that the teens’ behavior was nonetheless “inappropriate.”
But the NAACP countered assertions that racism is a thing of the past in El Paso. NAACP member and pastor, Michael E. Grady, of the Prince of Peace Christian Fellowship church, compared the racism that allegedly drove kids to don Klan costumes with the same rhetoric that drew a mass shooter to an El Paso Walmart on August 3, 2019. Grady’s own daughter was one of 45 people shot during the massacre. She survived while 23 others died.
“The shooter drove over 900 miles because of what he heard and what he saw and that he was gonna cleanse up the border with this infestation,” Grady told KTSM 9 News.
Meanwhile, Dwyer pointed to a more recent incident where two Black girls were “attacked and assaulted” at Pebble Hills High School on the Far East side of El Paso earlier this month.
“You cannot tell me that these incidents are not connected,” Dwyer said.