The Judge in a Mississippi’s modern-day lynching case gave a must-read speech on racism in the case of James Craig Anderson, while sentencing Deryl Dedmon, two others to from 7-50 years in federal prison for a hate crime against the black Mississippi man, who was killed in 2011 by ten white teenagers who, according to police, had decided to "go fuck with some niggers".
It is ironic and unbelievable that I chose to write this diary today. You see, in America today it is Valentine`s day. It is a day that each year we set apart from other days specifically to keep this country`s preconcieved notion that we are a people bound by love and fairness, to all, regardless of skin color, religion or beliefs - but more specifically LOVE.
When I read the story written in the links above my heart was shattered, as if I need any more damage therein. I am very uncomfortable writing this piece on racism today, but you see, when I first read this story as it broke out my first thought was that I had seen this before - in person. Not necessarily like this barbaric killing but I lived at a time and place where the actions of the ten white teenagers in this story was very common - to go fuck with black folks. Where the yellow rose of Texas is the hidden model and racial whistle on whiteness and racism is still sang loud and clear.
Texas like Mississippi are states in the deep south where this type of discrimination on race and racism were carried out, and are still are in the open. The days when black folks had to step off sidewalks onto the streets with lowered eye gazes to allow whites to walk by are now gone. Everyone is now permitted to enter theatre, walk on sidewalks and sit on counters. But things remain the same but different. Today`s racism is carried out by white policemen by bullet lynchings, killings with a gun. So things remain the same.
Like I do, you may recall reading how in a horrific attack that's been called a "brutal, Jim Crow-style lynching," the teenagers reportedly found Anderson in a parking lot, brutalized him, and ran over him with a pickup truck while yelling "white power."
Surely, this is not the first time we hear or read on this type of yelling by racists who`s only purpose is to intimidate by using terror against other not like them. Reading today`s news of the federal court`s findings and sentencing in this case only gives me hope that we may at last be reaching a time when this type of shit has to stop.
I have never been an outspoken writer on racism here at Daily kos because I am at an age when my anger fuse is so short that I refrain from that all together in order to avoid the expected back-latch from those who might feel offended, or might feel that writers on this subject might be target shooting, so to speak, so close to them.
I am not a black man. I write this today to provide the links to those black folks who make it a personal business to expose the lawlessness that is being carried out against their own.
This story contains materials spoken directly from the mouth of a black Judge who see the actions of these white kids when he spoke of:
A toxic mix of alcohol, foolishness and unadulterated hatred caused these young people to resurrect the nightmarish specter of lynchings and lynch mobs from the Mississippi we long to forget. Like the marauders of ages past, these young folk conspired, planned, and coordinated a plan of attack on certain neighborhoods in the City of Jackson for the sole purpose of harassing, terrorizing, physically assaulting and causing bodily injury to black folk. They punched and kicked them about their bodies — their heads, their faces. They prowled. They came ready to hurt. They used dangerous weapons; they targeted the weak; they recruited and encouraged others to join in the coordinated chaos; and they boasted about their shameful activity. This was a 2011 version of the Nigger hunts.
Reeves went on to contrast the state’s current criminal justice system with the past, when the system “operated with ruthless efficiency in upholding what these defendants would call WHITE POWER.”
Today we take another step away from Mississippi’s tortured past . . . we move farther away from the abyss. . . . Mississippi has a present and a future. That present and future has promise. As demonstrated by the work of the officers within these state and federal agencies — black and white; male and female, in this Mississippi, they work together to advance the rule of law. Having learned from Mississippi’s inglorious past, these officials know that in advancing the rule of law, the criminal justice system must operate without regard to race, creed or color. This is the strongest way Mississippi can reject those notions — those ideas which brought us here today.
Judge Reeves full statement can be read
at this link