Jena, Louisiana, is everywhere
I've stayed away from the Jena Six here 'til now. Everybody and they momma is talkin' about it. Everyone seems to be focusing on Jena. When Jim Crow comes after our children in such a blatant and shameless fashion, even black folk who heretofore have been silent and passive in the face of injustice feel compelled to stand up.
And it's about damned time.
The recent headlines remind me of the Louisiana I know.
You see, while I was raised in the Midwest, I was born in Shreveport. My mom and dad, from Louisiana and Texas, respectively, got the hell on up outta there with my three sisters and me back in the fifties. They could see the writing on the wall. Many of our extended family -- uncles, aunts, cousins -- did likewise, but took the main route to freedom, following the exodus of blacks from that part of the South out West, to California. History textbooks call it The Great Migration.
I call it The Great Escape.
It's not that we didn't find racism, bigotry and Jim Crow in Indianapolis. One of my earliest memories of Naptown is my sisters and me being turned away from a Disney movie at the Circle Theater in downtown Naptown. I remember the whites-only Riveria Country Club (the privileged kids at the school I attended referred to it glibly as "The Rivvy") and the one day a year that Riverside Amusement Park was open to "Negroes," as we were known back then. And I remember the afternoon a scrawny, little white kid shouted "Nigger!" over his shoulder at me as he ran across the playground of my virtually all-white/Jewish elementary school. I guess he knew instinctively that I'd beat a retraction from those thin, mean lips if he'd given me half a chance. Instead, I did the only thing I could. I yelled back defiantly, "Crrraa-aaack-KKKuh!"
Too bad that by the time I thought to do so he was probably out of earshot....
Still and all, "Up South" was relatively safe for black folk. Despite the fact that Greenfield, Indiana, was the seat of the KKK in the North, the new destinations offered refuge, a degree of protection -- and certainly greater educational and economic opportunity than we had had back home.
Nonetheless, a lot of family stayed in Louisiana and Texas -- particularly the older folks -- and my family has gone back from time to time.
When we do, it's always a culture shock for me. Maybe that's not the right phrase. I'm too familiar with racism and ignorance to be shocked anymore; at my age, it's something I've come to expect from whites; that's just the default setting. (If I'm pleasantly surprised with intelligence, then so much the better.) As soon as I breathe in that Louisiana heat and humidity, it's like PTSD -- a combat flashback. My reaction is more than cerebral; it's organic, visceral, reflexive. More than being embedded in my brain, that sh*t is in my muscle memory. Whenever I go "home" to Louisiana, my backbone stiffens; I walk differently. I'm hyper alert.
I'm deep behind that Mason-Dixon line, and instinctively I know I'm in enemy territory.
There's just something about the place -- that ever-present undercurrent of black subservience and deprivation and white arrogance and privilege that, in these days and times is not always in your face, but it's nonetheless palpable -- and ubiquitous. Katrina exposed the real stinking soul of Louisiana to the world. I breathe in the stench of it along with the haze and humidity; it seeps in through my pores and stings my consciousness.
Don't get me wrong. I love Louisiana; it's home. It's where my ancestors rest; it's hallowed ground. (I remember our family tending Granddaddy's grave in the segregated graveyard the last time we were there. It meant everything to me -- and even more to my mom.)
I also hate it; it represents my family history of slavery, grinding poverty, stollen dreams, opportunities denied, discrimination and oppression.
A lot of white people in Jena resent the attention the matter of the Jena Six has focused on their quaint, sleepy, little southern town. They protest they've been mischaracterized; they're not racist!
Yeah, right. Like the parents of that stomped-on white kid sitting before the cameras on national TV claiming they had no idea why their son got beat down. Because they raised a racist little asshole who was stupid enough to racially taunt a group of black kids. THAT'S why!
Denial. Don't you just hate it when people KNOW you know they're lyin', but they keep right on doin' it? It's like they just assume you're not gonna challenge them because you're too polite, or too f*ckin' scared or stoo-pid to call them on it outright.
Thank God for black bloggers and black talk radio hosts who brought the case to the forefront of public attention, because the white media was ignoring it -- still doin' that okey-dokey crap about how America is a "level playing field." The usual pablum and bald-faced lies, feeding white America's delusion of a "color-blind" society -- whatever the hell that means.
As disgusting and disturbing as the Jena Six case is, I hope it's only the beginning -- because, I know what every black person (with the possible exception of Clarence Thomas -- and even he's just lyin' to himself) in America knows, that Jena, Louisiana, is Anytown, USA. There are lots of Jena Sixes out here. We just haven't heard about them yet. The fact that it took a almost a year for this story to get out is not only sobering, but alarming. I'm reminded of how white folks in Louisiana and Texas kept the news of of the Emancipation Proclamation to themselves for almost three years before my ancestors found out they had been declared free.
Nowadays, we've got cell phones, BlackBerries, video phones, the Internet. If we brought back the talking drum, word of the Jena Six woulda reached even Jersey in a couple of months! Come on, people! I hate to say it, but, "We got to do mo' bettuh!"
Let's hope black folks are finally sick and tired of being sick and tired. Stop bitchin' and moanin' among yourselves and bendin' over and taking it up the a**, drylongso black folks -- wherever you are. And if you're in some backwater hellhole and can't see a way to change things on your own, then pick up the gottdamn phone and call for backup!
'Cuz you're family, and -- bet new money -- we gotcha back.
No justice, no peace!
