I'm rockin black today in support of the Jena 6.
I signed the petition months ago not knowing that it would blow up to be this large. But it's time, y'all, that injustices happening to us (still) in Mississippi and Louisiana get noticed. After living in Mississippi for as long as I did, I realized that the rest of the country doesn't even know half of the stuff that goes on there. Like, I bet not a lot of you (non-Mississippians) know about the lynching that took place in MS just 3 years ago. There was also a 17 year old lynched in Mississippi back in 2000, supposedly for his relationship with 2 white girls. This one was ruled a "suicide," but let me just tell y'all, we don't hang ourselves from trees (especially with a belt that's not ours). It's just the principle of the thing. REALLY.
Rev. Jesse Jackson and a bunch of folks actually came to MS to rally when the 17 year old was found, but it didn't get much press outside of Mississippi.
I usually don't get too riled up about any particular thing, but this issue really hit home. I'm glad the nation is finally able to see the harsh realities we (as black folk) are still facing in the deep, slow-changing, south.
Hey, does anybody know whatever happened to that little black girl who went to jail for shoving the hall monitor in Paris, TX? (7 years for assault on a public servant)
I'm gonna make a change, for once in my life.©Michael Jackson, Man in the Mirror
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Jena 6 Rally
Posted by Tracie Mae at 10:59 AM
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4 comments:
Black ain't all you rockin'!
You are so right about everything--except quoting Michael Jackson.
i'm glad there's attention being called to all of it, but it's just amazing to me that all of the coverage hasn't even been enough to finish the entire thing for good. i don't understand, why, after all the stories on all the channels, they're still proceeding with this crap.
it doesn't make sense to me how a 1/2 black man could end up being president of the same country that's still letting stuff like this go on.
i grew up in austin, texas. we had all kinds of people living around us and nobody really cared either way. i got a whole nother feeling when my cousin and i made the drive out to atlanta for me to start school.
people just aren't the same in those places. the black people acted differently than i've ever seen them act. they acted like they were beneath me. it came through in their eyes and even the way they held the door open for me. they talked like they were shit. like they were sorry i even had to look at them because they were shit.
i felt like i was in some kind of a movie because i'd never seen anything like that in my life. i'm a white kid and i even hated driving through some of those places. it made me feel scared and sick and like there's no way i could have just seen what i had seen.
that girl from paris got out. she said she's going to get her GED at home, but i don't know anything other than that.
Yeah Minus Five, when I first moved from Chicago I never thought about black and white; people were just people. But after living in MS for years and years (12 to be exact), it becomes embedded in your brain. You start to immediately calculate how many black people there are in the room with you versus white people. I still do it now. It's sad that it's something I think about, but that's the south for you. There are so many things I love about the south, but the thick racial tension in the air is NOT one of them. And ATL is NOWHERE near as bad as Mississippi and Louisiana. One of my best friends is white and married to a black man. In ATL everything is cool, but when they come to MS to visit it's like going back in time with all the mean glares, stares, and whispers they get. So sad, really.
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