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for being there 44 years ago! Thanks so much for this history.
Adopt a Shelter Dog! "No one worked harder to re-elect George Bush in 2004 than John McCain"
by psycho liberal on Tue Mar 11, 2008 at 09:58:15 PM PDT
My grandparents are from Mississippi....
thank you for thinking about others and your sacrifice
by SilenceISGolden on Wed Mar 12, 2008 at 06:36:46 AM PDT
[ Parent ]
and I thank you for being there to be part of history and for sharing it.
Kudos! Things have changed, but not enough. Are you ready for more work?
by victoria2dc on Wed Mar 12, 2008 at 06:38:19 AM PDT
when I wrote the diary about David (who, as an African-American in Chicago couldn't find work for better than $7.50/hr and took a horrific job in a Tyson meatpacking plant for $11/hr only to be injured and fired), I thought the very same thing. How much have things actually changed? Now no one is supposed to think racist thoughts or say racist things. Yet it's OK to have a Tyson plant with white management that recruits desperate minorities from inner cities and even Mexico to work in horrible conditions for low pay. Something is wrong.
Check out my new blog at La Vida Locavore!
by OrangeClouds115 on Wed Mar 12, 2008 at 07:44:03 AM PDT
please allow me to thank you for your service to both this country and to the State of Mississippi during those dark days of the 60's when blacks weren't allowed to vote, weren't considered equal, and many atrocities were committed against them, often in the name of religion. Were it not for you and others like you, the Civil Rights era may not have proceeded as rapidly as it did (although, it still wasn't quick enough).
Having said that, however, I am deeply disappointed that so many here still think the Mississippi of 2008 is still the Mississippi of 1964, the year of my birth. It simply is not. While the events of that time are part of our history, this state has made considerable progress, progress I believe many here refuse to see or acknowledge.
I realize that, for many, my home state will forever represent the evils of slavery and racism and probably nothing can probably shake that impression. I pity those who stubbornly refuse to see the changes that both time and people have wrought.
Mississippi is not the racist bastion some believe it to be. There are many good people who choose to live here who would strongly and rightly disagree with that point of view, myself included.
(I apologize for posting this at the top of the thread, but I wanted those perusing MB's diary to see this.)
v/r
I had come to an entirely erroneous conclusion which shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from insufficient data.
by TheBigKahuna on Wed Mar 12, 2008 at 07:12:18 AM PDT
except, I have been there and seen first hand the racist stuff that goes on there... it was scary.
Even now, I NEVER want to go back there again and I am white.
It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment. Ansel Adams -6.5 -6.75
by Statusquomustgo on Wed Mar 12, 2008 at 08:39:24 AM PDT
but as a native Mississippian, I know the majority of my state does not fit that image.
I assert Mississippi is no better and no worse overall than any other state in the Union with regards to race relations.
by TheBigKahuna on Wed Mar 12, 2008 at 10:11:07 AM PDT
see racism? Take a walk through Cambridge, MA. One of the most progressive forward thinking communities in the US. Better yet, want to see racism step out your front door.
I take political action every day. I teach.
by jbfunk on Wed Mar 12, 2008 at 10:54:22 AM PDT
It definitely is one of the most progressive forward thinking communities in the US.
Racism in Massachusetts is better defined by South Boston. I recently visited South Boston with a black coworker and she was still visibly scared or perhaps scarred is a better choice of words.
Despite that in my experience Massachusetts is way ahead of the curve when it comes to racism.
To some extent we are all guilty of racism, but if you want to adress it in Cambridge, MA I think there are so many nationalities, religions , cultures, ideoligies, mixing it up in Cambridge that you would be hard pressed to pick one of them as dominent iover any other.
Live Free or Die --- Investigate, Impeach, Incarcerate
by rktect on Wed Mar 12, 2008 at 03:05:23 PM PDT
in cambridge. Upper middle class whites are clearly the dominant group as they are all over the country. While I love the community, its school system is the very worse kind of defacto legal segregation. The neighborhood schools based on "school choice" are alarmingly segregated based on race. There are 2 schools with very large poor black populations and the rest of the schools range from a little integration of blacks to hardly any. Most of the schools have large populations of white upper middle class affluent children who are products of very liberal progressive homes and families. That's really fucked up. In addition there is a small but thriving black community in Cambridge that is largely alienated and disconnected from the whole "progressive liberal" image of Cambridge. Most of Cambridge's "progressive liberal" inhabitants are almost completely ignorant of the defacto segregation that exists and very little is done about it. In no way am I trying to imply that Cambridge is somehow the "most racist community in America" but it is far from perfect especially coming from somebody that spent significant time with the black population. There is a great deal of anger seething below the surface.
In general, based on my 7 years in the state, I find MA to be no less racist than any other state and there is a great deal of hostility towards blacks, latinos, and asians in MA. My overall point is that it is just plain wrong to point at one section of the country and talk about how racist it is. I find that disgusting and sadly ignorant of US history.
by jbfunk on Wed Mar 12, 2008 at 07:13:36 PM PDT
I have lived in various communities in MA for over half a century and spent maybe a decade and a half in other states and overseas.
I generally have sent my kids to the closest public school regardless of other factors. Some of them were pretty well racially mixed, some predominately white and in Cambridge predominately black. (Martin Luther King Junior).
I'll allow that there was a time when Boston schools were very racist, but Dorchester and South Boston more so than Cambridge, and MA in general less so than most other places I have lived.
I can remember working on Dudley Street in the midst of a poor black population and watching sections of the city get torched almost on a daily basis.
Violent crime, drugs, prostitution were endemic, there were Jamaican posses in Cambridge and extensive gang activity in police areas A, B, C and D with area C where the gangs broke into the Police Station to steal guns probably among the worst.
I'll allow that gang violence in the mill towns as far up as Manchester NH is still bad, and what you learn in the streets is a different but interactive form of education.
Lately Boston schools have been changing. Boston itself has become too expensive to live. Most inner city neighborhoods, not just the North End, South End, and Beacon Hill, but Dorchester, Roslindale, South Boston, Charlestown and Somerville have become pricy while what were exclusively black or white neighborhoods now have Cape Verde Islanders, Greeks, Albanians, Asians, Brazilians, etc; both blacks and whites still have their differences, but if you go by restaurants, Cambridge caters to as many different ethnicities as MIT and Harvard do.
Not too long ago I visited a coffee shop on the west side of Savin Hill where Whitey Bulger used to hang out and there were cops sitting at one table, gangsters at another passing sections of the paper back and forth. Neshamking French now holds its office parties at the Ironsides in Charlestown, and Deval Patrick's campaign placed their headquarters in Somerville.
To get into seedy neighborhoods you have to head out side of Rte 128 to 495, Lawrence and Lowell, even Revere and East Boston have been cleaned up by Logan's residential soundproofing and various harbor maritime projects. Malden has turned its industrial buildings into housing and Chinatown now has shopping malls in what used to be the combat zone.
I attribute this gentrification to the presence of a neighborhood synergy movement that brought community health centers, recreation, business investment, parking, open space, schools, restaurants, shoping New Markets Tax Credits and opportunity as linkage to development.
Compared to say Washington DC well up into Maryland, New York City, Pittsburg, Miami Fl, Lawton Oklahoma, Telluride, Colorado, Colorado Springs, Salt Lake City, Vegas, San Diego, Brownsville Texas, New Orleans, Bemidji Minnesota, and up until recently Marana Arizona, to mention but a few places, I would say Cambridge Schools compare well both for academics and lack of racism.
by rktect on Thu Mar 13, 2008 at 01:20:37 AM PDT
of all, Cambridge is one of the wealthiest communities in the country. It is not comparable in any way to those other cities you mention. Cambridge spends a 22,000 per pupil which is highest in the state. The tax base in cambridge allows it to combat urban issues in way that is largely unique in this country. Cambridge's tax base too, is driving out the very people that allow it to celebrate it's diverstiy through gentrification. Which in many ways is the worst kind of institutional racism. Not unique to Cambridge, but Cambridge is just like a lot of other communities in this way.
What is frustrating about Cambridge and speaks to how deep racism is embedded in this country is that people in Cambridge will talk about how bad other communites are and how good Cambridge is, yet Cambridge has a very difficult time acknowledging it's own race issues. Because of it's progressive values people in cambridge are very much aware of racism and race issues in theory, but in practice I see Cambridge as being shockingly out of touch with its values. I see this clearly illustrated in the defacto segregation of the public elementary schools. Want to fight racism in this country start with yourself and your own community.
Next, when you compare the overt racism of the 70's to issues of today you are using the same kind of logic Ferraro does in her comments. Trying to justify today as better based on the overt segregation of the past shows faulty logic. What we are battling today is institutional racism and comapring that with overt racism is like comparing apples and oranges. In many ways blacks face challenges today that are just as severe as the challenges of 30 and 40 years ago. It's just a hell of a lot harder to call institutional racism for what it is: evil, destructive, and ignorant. Consistently across this country including Cambridge, black communities have been robbed of an elder generation for at least 3 successive generations to raise the children due to the '86 drug laws. No community can survive if it's children are raising themselves due to the adults being in prison or being drug addicts. This dynamic did not exist 30 years ago. The instituion of the family is be eroded everywhere, including Cambridge due to institutional racism. Cambridge is trying to fight this, but the coummunity does not do enough to justify look down on other communities as being "more racist."
To cite these other communities in your comment as comparable is ridiculous and I did not imply that in my posting that Cambridge was even remotely comparable to Boston let alone those other communities including the one in which I currently teach, Lowell. Next, I made it clear that I do not consider Cambridge to be some raging center of racism with crisies erupting like Jena, LA. Seriously, you're shifing the entire arguement to a different kind of discussion just to make your point.
I taught at the King School. I loved it. What I saw in that community was a great deal of pain, resentment, and sadness. I saw people living in projects and cyclical poverty even as they were surrounded by tremendous wealth and opportunties for others. Cambridge is not Cabrini Green, but it sure isn't Disney Land either. The poor in Cambridge are lucky they don't live in Dorchester for sure, many peole move from Dorchester just to get their kids out of Boston Public Schools, but that doesn't mean Cambridge should get a pat the back for being so "progressive." Without Harvard Inc. and MIT Inc. Cambridge would look a hell of lot more like Lowell than Brookline.
BTW, perhaps the worst community in the metro-boston surrently is Chelsea/Revere in terms of poverty and gang activity. Beyond that when you start to discuss communities like Lowell, Fall River, Worcester, Springfield, those communities really fall into the Rustbelt and the destruction of the manufacturing economy that wreaked havoc and caused urban decay from Lawrence, MA all the way to Gary, Indiana. Those cities' issues are a fundamentally diferent converstation.
by jbfunk on Thu Mar 13, 2008 at 06:45:02 AM PDT
and I'd like to say there's a lot of truth in what jbfunk says. But on the other hand its absurd to blame "school choice" for the fact that there is still segregation in Cambridge. Hello? I went to public school in cambridge40 years ago when local schools were, well, local. At that time there were, of course, rich neighborhoods and poor neighborhoods and mixed neighborhoods. My own neighborhood was mixed, with professor's kids and the historically black neighborhood behind upland road sharing a school. Other neighborhoods were unmixed, leading to high quality parental involvement in some and low quality parental involvement in others. School choice was introduced to break the back of the connection between the poverty of the location and the poverty of the school. The idea was that with parents entitled to seek out the best school anywhere in the city the active, involved parents would reward the active, involved schools and parents whose kids would otherwise be stuck in poor schools could get free busing out every day.
IT didn't work out that way because lots and lots of parents either don't have the social and educational skills or the leisure to figure out which school would be "right" for their kid and to fight to get them in through the lottery. In addition, it takes more than a great school to move kids from ignorance to education and from poverty to a middle class lifestyle and aspirations. The closing of vocational schools and the refusal to recognize the very high grade of technical learning required for modern vocational jobs was another problem.
But these weren't problems of racism per se but of a failure to deal with intractible structural problems of poverty which, frankly, the school system can't solve. Cambridge takes the money they make from industry (not harvard and MIT which don't pay taxes the way the biotech industry does) and pays for a very expensive school system. It does as well as it can but the attempt to create and maintain the highest level of academic achievement by using the remaining white/middle class families as the chief promoter of excellence is doomed to failure. A system which relies on self interested proxies to make the schools work for everyone is doomed. And a passive, uneducated, uninterested, or incapacitated lower and working class population can't ride herd on the schools alone.
aimai
by aimai on Thu Mar 13, 2008 at 07:44:41 AM PDT
comments and your support of my observations. I don't make them lightly and I love Cambridge. It was a wonderful place to live during the time I was there. I'd like to return someday.
First, when I use the example of the schools I only mean to put it out there as s snapshot example of the degree to which institutional racism exists in the places people least expect to find it without a great appreciation for how prevelent it is. Again no person or one group is soley to blame for the conditions that exist. That is part of the problem with institutional racism. Also, I find a heigh degree of irony in the defacto segragation that exists given the progressive nature of the Cambridge community.
IT didn't work out that way because lots and lots of parents either don't have the social and educational skills or the leisure to figure out which school would be "right" for their kid and to fight to get them in through the lottery. In addition, it takes more than a great school to move kids from ignorance to education and from poverty to a middle class lifestyle and aspirations. The closing of vocational schools and the refusal to recognize the very high grade of technical learning required for modern vocational jobs was another problem. But these weren't problems of racism per se but of a failure to deal with intractible structural problems of poverty which, frankly, the school system can't solve.
But these weren't problems of racism per se but of a failure to deal with intractible structural problems of poverty which, frankly, the school system can't solve.
Also your explanation for how the schools evolved into that they are now is interesting in that I find that to be a very good explanation of what institutional racism is. It is a condition that exists with far to many sources of the problem, but not one worse enough to single out. That leaves a community in many cases struggling to then find a solution.
by jbfunk on Thu Mar 13, 2008 at 08:57:17 AM PDT
the inutility of the single word "racism" to describe the complex reality of american (or any) race relations/power relations over at my other blog If I Ran The Zoo. http://tehipitetom.blogspot.com/
Come on over and visit some time.
by aimai on Fri Mar 14, 2008 at 08:15:54 AM PDT
Although I would not have thought that "Mississippi of 2008 is still the Mississippi of 1964," I was willing to believe that it is still rather similar. Admittedly, I am a true "northerner" who has never ventured below the Mason-Dixon line, and I thank you for some first-hand knowledge that the stereotype is more fiction than fact.
Thank you for the correction in my misperception.
-8.88, -7.77 THERE IS DEFINITELY NO THREAT WORTH SUSPENSION OF CIVIL LIBERTIES.
by wordene on Wed Mar 12, 2008 at 08:42:24 AM PDT
My ma used to secretly register African American voters in a backyard shed in Jackson. After they registered them, they would take them to the voting booths. It was a very dangerous job. My ma told me about all the death threats and bomb threats they would receive. My dad did the same kind of work in Selma AL. My grandparents and uncle still live in MS, and my uncle is dealing with some racism. right now. He's half Cherokee and half Mexican, and has lived in MS most of his life. He told me that the racism towards Mexicans has been getting out of hand. He is thinking about leaving MS because of this.
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by sarahlane on Wed Mar 12, 2008 at 11:32:43 AM PDT
The ethnic groups have changed over time, somewhat, but it seems as though there have always been designated "outcasts" based on race.
by wordene on Wed Mar 12, 2008 at 02:03:41 PM PDT
The threat that Republicans pose to the future of the human race is worth suspension of the liberties they are taking with the constitution.
by rktect on Wed Mar 12, 2008 at 03:08:18 PM PDT
Who obviously doesn't know the first thing about the black freedom struggle.
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by ProgressiveSouth on Wed Mar 12, 2008 at 07:38:12 AM PDT
wide narrow
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