“You can’t understand it. You would have to be born there.” – Quentin Compson, Absalom, Absalom, referring to the South
Too often those of us born in the South fall back upon the ambiguity of Faulknerian explanations when we try to help friends understand why our region of the country is so obsessed with certain issues – NASCAR racing, pork barbecue, evangelical Christianity, voting Republican….
And race relations.
From the days when any visitor to the antebellum South was quizzed about family relations (as in “Are you related to the Simpsons from over at Bethany?” – a way of determining if someone had a legitimate claim to be in a slave holding state or was an interloping abolitionist), Southerners have somehow perversely prided themselves – mulishly so, it seems – on the “complexity” of black/white relations in the region where I have lived nearly my entire life.
To anyone not from the South, however, it hasn’t seemed complicated at all. For outsiders, it appears that Southern whites have systematically held blacks in some sort of bondage throughout their entire shared history. Whether it was the literal bondage of slavery, the “legally sanctioned separation” bondage of the Jim Crow era, or the less systematic but still devastating bondage of “benign racism/segregation” through the use of private schools, private clubs, gated communities, and other means – treatment Thurgood Marshall famously termed “separate but unequal” – this inequity has persisted in how the South treats her white and black citizens….
There’s a sort of famous saying concerning race relations in the North vs. race relations in the South that seems apropos to what I’m going to explore here, so let me share it:
“In the North, no one cares how uppity blacks get as long as they don’t get too close; in the South, no one cares how close blacks get as long as they don’t get too uppity.”
It’s that “getting uppity” thing that seems to have sparked new trouble in Louisiana….
In Jena, LA, (a town of about 2,900 of whom about 350 are black) last August, a black student at Jena High School asked permission to sit under a shade tree traditionally used only by white students. (No, I’m not kidding about that last part.) The school gave him permission (not sure how they could have legally refused), so the young man availed himself of a shady spot reserved for – white people. The next day, three nooses hung from the tree – a clear warning to the black student using one of the most evil of symbols of racial repression – the lynching noose. The nooses, by the way, were painted in the school colors – hardly indicative of a teenaged spur of the moment “prank.”
One parent of a black student described it this way:
“It meant a lynching. Everyone knew what it meant.” – Caseptla Bailey
The school principal recommended expulsion for the three students who committed this “prank” (as it was termed by school board members); instead, they got brief suspensions.
Another black parent, angered by the school board’s action, offered this reading:
“That just set all the black kids off. Wasn’t that a hate crime? If anyone was going to be charged, shouldn’t they have been?” – John Jenkins
Tensions between the black and white communities in Jena escalated as black leaders called for sterner action for what they perceived as a hate crime. At the school a series of fights occurred between black and white students. The local district attorney appeared at the school and warned students that for anyone who caused trouble, he could “end his life with the stroke of a pen.”
On December 4th another fight broke out at the school. Six students, all black, were charged with maximum felony assault charges carrying potential sentences of 80 years (the charges have since been reduced, and now only carry potential sentences of 15 years). An all white jury has been empaneled.
“You didn’t see the district attorney rush out to school to do anything about those nooses in the tree,” said Caseptla Bailey, whose son, Robert Bailey Jr., also was charged in the beating. “You don’t see white kids who beat up black kids charged with attempted murder. There’s nothing fair going on here.”
And there’s this:
The two facing trial this week are Theodore Shaw and Mychale Bell. Both have been jailed since their arrests, unable to make $90 000 bond.
Update: The first of the young men tried, Mychale Bell, has been convicted of second degree aggravated assault. He faces a sentence of up to 30 years in prison. The all white jury took less than three hours to reach their verdict.
“This [Jena] is a good town to live in for things like no crime, it being peaceful. But it’s very racist and they don’t even try to hide it. It’s like, stay in your place or else.” – Caseptla Bailey.
Now I remind you that this was August 2006 – not August 1955.
I mention August 1955 because this incident in Jena is reminiscent of one in Money, Mississippi, in that year. A 14 year old from Chicago, Emmett Till, was visiting relatives in the South. While visiting a local grocery store one afternoon, young Till may or may not have whistled at one of the store owners, a white woman. That night, the woman’s husband and his half-brother kidnapped young Till from his great uncle’s home, beat him savagely, then took him to the banks of the Tallahatchie River, shot him in the head, and bound him by the neck to a large metal fan used in cotton ginning with barbed wire and dumped his body into the river.
Even though they provided full, detailed confessions of their deed and were identified by Till’s great uncle in open court as the men who kidnapped his grand nephew, the two murderers were acquitted by an all male, all white jury in 67 minutes. Jurors bragged that the only reason they took so long is that they stopped to enjoy cold soda pop before returning to the court room and rendering their “verdict.” Despite attempts by the FBI to bring the two to justice, neither man was ever brought to trial on Federal charges.
But maybe the proper comparison doesn’t go back to 1955 – maybe it goes back further – to 1931. In March of that year a group of white young men got into a fight with a group of black young men (aged 13-19) who were hoboing their way across Alabama on a freight train. A posse stopped the train and nine young black men were charged with assault. Rape charges were added when two young prostitutes who were also riding the rails falsely accused the young blacks of assaulting them. The nine young men became nationally known as “the Scottsboro Boys” because their trial took place in Scottsboro, AL. After hasty trials at which the young men were denied legal counsel, eight of the nine are sentenced to death. Despite the efforts of the NAACP and various legal defense groups, each of the youths served at least 6 years in prison….
In the case of Jena High School, perhaps the young men are guilty of pre-meditated assault and deserve punishment. But the white kids were guilty of a pre-meditated act of intimidation and harassment – one that probably is prosecutable under federal civil rights laws that cover acts such as burning crosses on lawns, for instance. The black people of Jena needn’t expect any help from the Bush Justice Department, though. The Alberto Gonzales led department has prosecuted only one significant civil rights case – against a black county commissioner in Mississippi charged by white opponents with harassment, as this from the New York Times reports:
The civil rights division also brought the first case ever on behalf of white voters, alleging in 2005 that a black political leader in Noxubee County, Miss., was intimidating whites at the polls.
So appealing for help to Washington doesn’t seem likely to bring redress of grievances for the Jena black community. And here in the South, 75 years later, to the outside world, nothing much seems to have changed.
And that brings us back to Faulkner. When Quentin Compson, the Southern apologist who wants the South to be a place of honor and dignity, is asked by his Northern friend why he hates the South, he responds exasperatedly:
“I don’t hate it,” Quentin said, quickly, at once, immediately; “I don’t hate it,” he said. I don’t hate it he thought… I don’t. I don’t! I don’t hate it! I don’t hate it!
Sometimes we get good news about the South, such as this story about a Georgia high school integrating its prom – finally. Sometimes we get bad news such as this story about Jena Louisiana and its racial tensions.
This is the South. You wouldn’t understand it. You would have to be born here.
Or maybe you understand it perfectly well – and it’s us who just don’t get it. And you pity us.
When one of our current crop of distinguished Southern senators can say something as stupidly telling as this about us:
We don’t do Lincoln Day Dinners…. It’s nothing personal, but it takes a while to get over things. – Lindsey Graham
You’re right to pity us. Such mindsets make our Jenas possible.
But if Walker Percy could say something this poetic about us:
We love those who know the worst of us and don’t turn their faces away.
Maybe your pity can turn to love – and forgiveness – and help with our own understanding.
And the South needs all of those that it can get….