Last week, thousands of protestors (I’ll assume rallied by The Reverend Jesse Jackson’s Operation Push among others) descended on Jena to voice their opposition to the treatment of Mychal Bell and the five others. This kind of blatant discrimination is bread and butter for Jackson, The Reverend Al Sharpton and others, whose well of racial complaint appeared to have lately run dry. These men always seem to be within lurching distance of a podium whenever race-based issues assert themselves. I have mixed feelings about their line of work, legitimate concerns about men whose income, fame and prosperity is so linked to the misery of others, but I also realize this is work that needs to be done and which can only be done effectively by men and women of high enough profile to warrant the media’s attention. Thus, it’s a double-edged sword: we certainly need these reverends, even if the notion of their profiting from this tends to upset my digestion.
My larger concern is this, given all the black-white unity we saw in the marches, all of the cross-cultural investment in this case we witnessed: what happens after the march is over? I don’t mean with Michal Bell and the five others, but with the army of the righteous, now returning to their normal lives? How many of them will actually attend the same church on Sunday? With all of this hollering about racial divides and discrimination, we still continue to gloss over the point that Sunday remains the most segregated day of the week for Christians.
I have no way of knowing if any of that was addressed by Reverend Jackson and his allies, but I tend to doubt it was. A bunch of folks jumped on a bus and ran down to Jena to holler and shake their fists, then went home and split to their severely segregated churches and social clusters.
In many ways, we all live in Jena. Just, perhaps, a more polite version of it. Our impulse control is a bit better, and we give lip service to tolerance and equality. But, my goodness, we hate gay people. We look down our noses at broke people. And, Sunday morning, the vast majority of people in our churches tend to look like us.
I believe, if we really want to do something for Jena, we can start by ending the bigotry in our own hearts. We can start there. Because, until we start dealing with the underlying problem, all the bus trips in the world one make one bit of difference. It’s all just glossing over the real problem while these reverends get a check.
8 Comments
For the record, the Revs Sharpton and Jackson came late to this party. The whole "incident" (as well as the march IIRC) were brought about by the efforts of various bloggers including http://www.dallassouthblog.com/
IMO, those guys are doing just fine without the involvement of the old-school black "leadership."
scrawled by Herb | September 27, 2007 7:33 PM
The most telling thing for me were the comments local folks were making about it all. Thousands of black people protesting and marching, and the news kept showing these white people who seemed to keep saying that their town wasn't racist and they just wanted to all go away. Sand is a horrible place to keep a head.
scrawled by Cooper | September 27, 2007 8:52 PM
I think it was the accents. I mean, one of those locals could have said, "run, Jesse, run!" and sounded incredibly racist.
scrawled by priest | September 28, 2007 9:16 AM
The effort was originally grass roots but then the revs came "to show their support". I think the effort was misguided I think that over a year ago when the families seen that the prosecutor wanted to hang these boys out to dry (bad pun intended) they should have called an effort to get money to get lawyers to defend the boys. thousands of people showing up only angers the judges of this small town they are thinking "how dare them try and intimidate us by the sheer volume of well to doers." I think that is was good that they showed up in mass but like you said what now? If all we have to do is show up in massive numbers then we get what we want? I'm sorry but it doesn't work that way. The judge will wait untill it all calms down and then he will still try(trial) and convict him. They won't show weakness not even in Jena LA.
scrawled by mdwaire | September 30, 2007 11:40 AM
Totally agree with you Priest. All I want to know is, since when is beating someone with a shoe attempted murder? If that's the case then any person raised the "old fashioned way" was damn near murdered every week growing up. Am I the only one here whose bottom was beaten with a shoe by their parents? I hope not! Hell I remember one time my father used an extension cord! Good times!
scrawled by TippyTai | October 1, 2007 2:15 AM
Tippy that is funny my Mother used a hot wheels track and my all time favorite a video game controller now that is a thick cord. What has happened there in Jena is wrong on so many levels but it is far too common in other ways for this to be the new milinium. as one of my favorite groups put it I guess some of us are "not yet free". This ain't america is it where can I be???????
scrawled by mdwaire | October 2, 2007 2:12 AM
When The Reverend Al Sharpton was shown on the news, my sixteen-year-old daughter asked who he was. I said "Al Sharpton." She then said "I thought he did the weather."
It took a few minutes for me to realize she was thinking of Al Roker!
In her defense, she does want to be a meteorologist, so she pays more attention to the weather than any other part of the news.
Eileen
scrawled by Eileen | October 5, 2007 3:13 PM
I don't think I'm going to take the Revs' version of events as gospel truth.
I think I'll go with the locals' take on this one: that maybe we're all like Jena, just less polite.
scrawled by Christopher J. Arndt | October 29, 2007 6:19 PM