"Social baggage" of hate toward interracial love

BOISE, Idaho — News of racist threats dogging a college football star and his fiancée may surprise most residents of one of the nation's whitest states.

But Idaho blacks have seen trouble coming ever since Boise State tailback Ian Johnson, who is black, got down on one knee Jan. 1 to propose to cheerleader Chrissy Popadics, who is white, on national TV after scoring the winning points at the 2007 Fiesta Bowl.

The couple will marry today. Johnson has reported receiving more than 30 threatening letters and phone calls from inside and outside Idaho.

"When Ian did that on television, every black person I know said, 'He's a fool. That boy just asked for trouble,' " said Keith Anderson, a former Boise State football player who has been married to a white woman for 14 years and has two sons.

"I thought, 'Uh-oh, this is gonna bite him,' " said Mamie Oliver, a leader in Idaho's African-American community since she came to teach social work at Boise State in 1972.

The threats have been widely publicized this week on national sports-talk radio, with some speculating the incident will add to Idaho's reputation as a racist haven and hurt Boise State's recruiting efforts.

But what's happened to the couple has nothing to do with Idaho's rank as the seventh-whitest state in the nation, Oliver said.

Instead, she said, it's about human nature.

"There's some people that have the attitude that people don't have the right to be in love with who they're in love with. It became the black young man proposing to the white girl. People have baggage, and it just caused that stuff to come out."

Oliver now teaches at Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa and is pastor at Mountain View Community Fellowship. She said that what's happened to Johnson and Popadics is more complex than racism alone.

"Social baggage"

"It's social baggage. We do it with color, class, age, gender, power. All those categories give people excuses to be negative toward other human beings."

Marilyn Shuler, who ran the Idaho Human Rights Commission for 20 years, wants to believe the threats have come from "a small bunch of people I call the Flat-Earth Society."

But she's troubled that anonymous attacks would come at all. "Why would they have any negative feelings at all about wonderful people who love each other?"

Why? Because mixed marriage frightens people, said Cherie Buckner-Webb, president of the Idaho Black History Museum.

"There are people tied to belief systems that have been perpetuated for a long, long time," said Buckner-Webb, a black woman and fourth-generation Idahoan. "Blurring the lines and marrying across is scary."

Buckner-Webb said Johnson's celebrity has contributed to the shock among her white friends that anyone would make such a threat.

"It's not a big surprise to us," she said. "But he's a golden boy. He's done wonderful things, and how can one of our icons be derided?

"The truth of the matter is he remains a black man, and she remains a white woman."

Idahoans were relieved when the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations left the state in 2001 and its Hayden Lake compound was torn down, erasing a symbol of racism in the state.

But much work remains to be done, Buckner-Webb said. "We've said, great, the Nazis are gone. Well, no, their compound is gone, but racist attitudes are still alive and well in Idaho, and all over the world."

Blacks made up 0.6 percent of Idaho's population in 2005, according to the latest available census data. Hispanics made up at least 9.1 percent and American Indians 1.4 percent. With many Hispanics also calling themselves white, the white population was 95.5 percent.

Interracial marriage in the United States has skyrocketed since 1967, when the Supreme Court struck down Virginia's antimiscegenation law.

More biracial marriages

In 1970, 2 percent of U.S. couples were interracial. By 2005, 7 percent of 59 million marriages were biracial. Black-white marriages increased from 65,000 in 1970 to 422,000 in 2005.

Booker Brown came from St. Louis to Boise State in the 1970s on a basketball scholarship. He married Pam Selland, daughter of Larry Selland, the late Boise State executive vice president.

They moved to Phoenix this year for professional reasons but loved rearing their two sons in Boise, Brown said.

"Idaho is no Mecca for racism," he said. "But I'm not naive enough to say that covert racism doesn't exist in Boise, Idaho, or Timbuktu. It exists in 2007 and it's probably going to exist for another 200 years."

Brown taught his sons that "when you deal with stupid stuff like that you've got to be comfortable with who you are. If you have a strong sense of who you are, people can't hurt you with words."

As for Johnson, he said of the threats this week, "You take it for what it is; the less educated, the less willing to change. But we're not acting like we're naive to all the stuff that's going on. We know what's been said. We're going to make sure we're safe at all times. It's an amazing day for us, and we'd hate to have it ruined by someone."

Material from The Seattle Times archives is included in this report.