"Jackson, Mississippi (CNN) -- On a recent Sunday morning just before dawn, two carloads of white teenagers drove to Jackson, Mississippi, on what the county district attorney says was a mission of hate: to find and hurt a black person. In a parking lot on the western side of town they found their victim. James Craig Anderson, a 49-year-old auto plant worker, was standing in a parking lot, near his car. The teens allegedly beat Anderson repeatedly, yelled racial epithets, including "White Power!" according to witnesses. Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith says a group of the teens then climbed into their large Ford F250 green pickup truck, floored the gas, and drove the truck right over Anderson, killing him instantly. "
I can imagine that, like myself, most people have been FLABBERGASTED by this story!! For a young African American woman it's; frustrating, infuriating, astonishing, hurtful, and a REMINDER!!! America refuses to part with her first, truest, longest lasting romance with RACISM!! Racism is ever present and abound...the oppression, discrimination, prejudice against people of color, namely African American people will never be something we REMEMBER. We did not need to know this story to remind us of this fact, just look at the hard time that the President of the Nation is getting and we all know why its that way! Oh and remember the Jena 6 in Jena, Louisiana? Yea, that was less than 10 years ago..forgot about that? I posted about that too!
While, the death of James Anderson and the means by which he died should really not be a surprise to people, it is because of where we are as a country, but honestly it should not be because of the same reason. Mississippi especially, has teetered tottered with it's Jim Crow past since the day of Reconstruction. Doubt me? The state did not adopt the 13th Amendment UNTIL 1995!!!! HOWEVER, with ALL OF THAT, taken into account; the nerve, the gull, the motivation, the will of someone to act the way those teenagers did that night is ASTONISHING, APPALLING, SHOCKING, HATEFUL, MORBID TO say the LEAST!!
I will be glued to the media to see just how the state of Mississippi, who has declared this a racial, hate crime already, will handle this case and the offenders.
They should be made example of in every way possible, National examples.
Let this incident remind us that to know one's history and to progress as a unit and a country is to also take on the responsibility to personally rectify it by any means necessary. It is PRE-Election year, remember the voting rights act was not passed until 1965, schools were not desegregated until 1954, it took 232 years approximately to get our first President of color, the President was just publicly called a "Tar baby", and everyday subtle gestures of racism are among us all. These were not old people that killed James Anderson. They did not burn crosses and sport white robes and masks. These were simply teenagers with evil intentions that had fatal results...in the America we live in NOW! It was not that long ago that the parents, grandparents, and great grandparents of these children hosed down blacks, refused service to blacks, and owned slaves! Like folk tales, and recipes, ideas of racism and evil are passed down through generations. WE, AMERICANS, have to KNOW better to do better for the common good. My prayers are extended to both the family of James Anderson as well as his soul, and the families of those teenagers.
Will Mississippi adequately seek justice?
Link to the story http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/08/06/mississippi.hate.crime/index.html
