Shame on America: Mississippi

True story: Me, my two sisters Lyd and P and my lil bro Christian were headed down to Atlanta for a family reunion. It was a 10-hour drive from DC to Atlanta and, if anyone knows how me and my whip get down, then you know I treat Jada like trailer-trash. I bought her in 2001 when she was 3-years old and, not more than a year later, I was dissing her left and right. I have to be one of the Top 10 Most Negligent Car Owners in America.

With that said, Jada was running fine, but she was messed up underneath. And her tires were balding like my boys, Uncle Gerry and Larry.

Well, while driving through South Carolina, I ran over something sharp and busted up two of my tires. So there we were, stranded on the side of I-95, with low cell-phone batteries. And guess what, I was petrified!

It was dark -- I mean, no road-lamps, pitch-black dark -- we weren't armed and we were in Buttsville, SC. We called 911 and soon a police came and guess what he said? In a DEAD serious voice he advised, "Stay calm and we'll try to get you guys out of here as soon as possible. There's a lot of knuckle-heads around here. So keep your lights off, stay in the car, keep your doors locked and wait for the tow truck."

That was code for, "People still like to drag black people off the back of their pick-ups down here."

I always tell people that when I'm in the South and its nighttime, I hate being anywhere other than a populous city. Anywhere else, and some Jim Crow Ish is likely to go down. I will piss in my pants before I pull over to a gas station in Mississippi.

As a matter of fact, that night I was even afraid to call the cops. Afterall, who's to say they aren't grandsons of dudes who used to release black men to angry lynch-mobs?

Meanwhile, we called AAA and they sent a tow truck. However, the tow truck could only take two of us. So P came with me in the tow truck, but we had to send Lyd and Chrish, who was about 17 at the time, with the cop to go wait at a Waffle House for my mother to come pick them up (she was already in Atlanta).

Yo, I was praying so hard for them...seriously, I was scared to death that my lil bro and sister would walk up in that Waffle House and some bigot truck driver would try to start something.

Thankfully, we all safely arrived in Atlanta. But, whenever I think about that night, it underscores just how uncomfortable I am with the South (deep, rural South) and its history. To some, my behavior may be similar to a white woman crossing the street when she sees a young black man coming towards her. Now, I don't really feel like arguing the difference between the two, so I'll just say this: on a very fundamental level, I empathize with her. In fact, I find myself going to extra-lengths to alleviate that fear for white people when I'm in those situations. I'll smile, or try to look as unassuming as possible. Because, guess what, when that happens to me -- when I can sense someone's fear at the ATM or walking down a lonely street...it bothers me. I almost feel guilty for making their heart beat faster...probably because I know how it feels.

I know how it feels to sit in a diner in rural Georgia and feel threatened. It sucks. And I feel this way when I read stories about the Killens of the world and the Roy Bryants and JW Milams, Till's muderers. You think the type of thinking that can encourage, perpetrate and allow those murders can be unconditioned in just 50 years? That's not even 3 generations.

And the South is unique. For instance,northern cities like Buffalo, Boston, St. Louis, Brooklyn and others are very racist and it breeds some alarming violence. But its different. You have "ethnic" whites in these cities and, yes, they'll call you a nigger and hate your guts; but I believe the hate is bred from frustration and jealousy. Northern whites always have their stories about their ancestors coming to this "great" country dirt poor and making something out of nothing. So, why can't blacks do the same? (Little do they know that there does not exist a race of people that have had to use more ingenuity to survive blatant genocide than black Americans) If the Irish, Polish and Italian settlers could carry on, why couldn't blacks?

Plus, these ethnic whites used to comepete with black people for jobs in the Reconstruction days. So for them, the hate comes from a feeling that blacks are coddled and given opportunities they deserve and we squander it because we're lazy ingrates.

Down South, however, the hatred is contempt, with Mississippi leading the charge. Contempt for blacks as human beings, we're subhuman to them.

So while some Italian Benson Hurst Brooklynites might beat a black dude with a nigger-beater bat...a white dude in Alabama will make you Strange Fruit hanging from a tree.

The attitude is different. Southerners always took offense to "audacious" blacks. How dare a black person, like James Chaney, demand freedom in the Jim Crow South. That's why Edgar Ray Killen hired that lynching. And how dare some 14-year-old boy like Emmitt Till whistle at a pretty white woman? That's why an angry white lynchmob beat his face in and shot him in the head and threw him in a river. Thay's why police allowed an angry mob to, literally, take Mack Charles Park (charged with raping a white woman) from his cell and beat him to death. And that's why none of these murderers were convicted.

Until yesterday...only Killen, a defiant devil of a man, was let off easy witha manslaughter charge. I'm no fan of human justice, but I wouldn't have shed a tear if that old demon would have rotted away in a jail cell. He should have.

I mean, seriously, what was on the minds of these people back then? You have to be demonic and seriously crazed to subscribe to the "justice" they metted out to people of color back then. And it wasn't just the dumb, ignorant, hicksville, Southern citizens; it was the police and legal system too. You had citizens not willing to testify (some out of fear, others out of a supremacy-complex), police unwilling to calm mobs and, in some cases, engaging in the mob action, juryies turning blind eyes and judges acting like helpless children.

And is it much different now? Some of you may remember that blacknews.com editorial I wrote back in 2001, "Ain't Nuttin Changed" in response to the Auburn frat impersonating lynching and mocking black frats for Halloween. Well ain't nuttin changed in the legal system either. No need to get into statistics about minority vs white convictions or social reasons and conditions for criminal behavior...but as always the truth lies in the middle, so both extremes can at least admit there's a disparity.

Close to 4,000 blacks were lynched between 1880 and 1970. Killed, mutilated, beaten, raped, dehumanized. Supposed "justice" without a trial. And many more were wrongly convicted. It was the Negro Holocaust. Where's our museum?

And it makes me angry.

Angry to know that this country that ceaselessly trumpets all of its virtues and thinks it's the greatest thing since boy-shorts was and still is the forum and petrie-dish for racism and bigotry as bad or worse than any in the world. You should've seen some of the headlines in European papers after the Till verdict...my favorite appearing in the Belgian paper Le Drapeau Rouge (the Red Flag): "Killing a black person isn't a crime in the home of the Yankees: The white killers of young Emmett Till are acquitted!"