Some things just never go away.

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.”

Story