Rage, Reactions, and Remonstrances Pt. II
There is never any confusion about where we are. There is never any confusion about who we are. The confusion is always a matter of when we are in America. I do not own the videos posted from youtube here, am not using them for economic gain, and am including them as part of an educational demonstration.
There are times when we let our tools of communications, our ability to quickly spend money where we want, and our shiny new gadgets distract us. We mistakenly think that because we have more “stuff,” slightly better increase to educational institutions, good-driving cars and sturdy homes, that we have left the not-so-long-ago past with its “Whites Only” signs in the distant past. Mistakenly, we have equated “stuff” with “progress.”
I hate to be the bearer of bad news. I do. But the reality is that the signs are gone, but the attitudes remain. Actions/inactions that are claimed as “rights” by white Americans are still seen as privileges if exercised by Americans of color. This attitude, with racial superiority encoded in it, lands us right back to the sweltering Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1963 and Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer’s testimony in 1964. For me, as a child of the Deep South, who has been trained since birth to know who I am, there is never any confusion about what the roots of my hair, the fullness of my lips, and the color of my skin signify, even though many of the signifiers are gone.
Having witnessed the L.A. riots of the 1990s, I am never in any confusion about when we are. But, as a professor, I am noticing a disturbing trend among young, Black students: anything older than 2015 is old, irrelevant, and has nothing to do with today. I am not sure where our students are learning such a dangerous attitude. I must announce to them that if we live between Mexico and Canada, and if we are Black or women, everywhere is Mississippi and every day is 1963. Possessing the latest hair styles, Jordan sneakers, and Apple watches does not erase the stain of racism from our country, and it will not exempt any of us from experiencing “whites only” attitudes and actions (either direct or through subterfuge) in our lifetimes.
In order to understand when we are, we must revisit a moment in the past: the testimony of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer in 1964.
This is a wonderfully narrated introduction. Yet, the power of her testimony need not be filtered. Here’s Mrs. Hamer’s testimony in it’s entirety.
Notice that Mrs. Hamer says, “…to try to register to become first class citizens.” Mrs. Hamer, a sharecropper, knew hard physical labor. She knew the physical limitations that racism placed upon her body. Mrs. Hamer, a sharecropper in the Black Belt of Mississippi, understood also the limitations of racism via bureaucracy: literacy tests in order to qualify to vote, poll taxes, and an economic system that was barely any better than slavery. In fact, South Carolina and Mississippi were the first two states to use their state constitutions and laws in order to enforce social separation in order to maintain a regime steeped in racism and guarantee white economic and political superiority.
The Freedom Summer of 1963 was not about rioting. It was not about protesting. It was not about looting. The Summer of 1963 and the activities of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was about defiance of racism via laws and bureaucracy. Because Mrs. Hamer and others dared to defy racism via law and bureaucracy, law enforcement meted out physical violence. They DID NOT spare Mrs. Hamer because she was a woman. She was beat mercilessly, by Black men who were ordered, and it took her 3 months to recover from the beating she received inside the jail house.
Mississippi Freedom Summer was 57 years ago. Due to textbook selection committees and our love affair with material goods, the events of that time seem far removed and even irrelevant to the present. But are they irrelevant? Have we, with our phones and clothes, progressed past these moments from 1963? Kaepernick was fired for daring to silently protest the manifestation of race-based hatred against Black men by law enforcement. He was fired from his job, just as Mrs. Hamer was forced to move from the plantation where she sharecropped for daring to become “a first class citizen,” by exercising rights that the Constitution guaranteed to all American citizens.
I once posted that I just cannot name all of the innocent Black people who have been killed by the police since 2000, it becomes too much for me to do emotionally. I watched this policeman, who had his knee on the back of a man’s neck in a way that I am sure that a dog wouldn’t be treated, I cannot help but hear Mrs. Hamer ask, “Is this America, the land of the free the home of the brave…?” If so, can we really ask God for mercy when we do not show any?
This is from my personal diary. If you have comments, leave them.
