This has been a bad couple of weeks for the "kumbaya" set here in A-merry-ca. Black mob violence on whites in Ohio; Jim Crow revisited in Pistolvania; black and white men behaving badly while their spouses suffer. And,to top it off, a President, who happens to be black, being accused by his political enemies of lusting after an under aged girl. Not to mention a black... scratch that. An A-merry-can icon, who even in death, prompts uncomfortable discussions about race and its effect on our psyche.
Wow! It makes you wonder when we are going to end up like the folks over in the Xinjiang province of China. Still, I was going to put it all behind me and just enjoy this wonderful life that I have been blessed with. Hey life is too short, I tell myself, to stress the things I can't control. Things such as the people who will be forever ignorant and content with their cluelessness. It's Friday, I tell myself, and tomorrow I won't even think about all the nastiness of these past couple of weeks.
Well, that was until I read this story. Sadly, the story got me thinking about the ugliness of our racial history all over again. I mean the story from the link is ugly enough. --What type of human being robs graves for profit?--- But just reading the name, Emmett Till, made my mind race to places that I didn't want it to go on this beautiful Friday evening in paradise. And the more I think about it is the more amazed I am that I didn't think about it before.
I mean isn't that what this whole Barack Obama getting his peep on is about? Isn't that what this swimming pool incident is about? Isn't this what Steve McNnair and the other men behaving badly is about? (Maybe not the racial aspect, but certainly the sexual one.) I think, that in a sad way, it's fitting that Till's casket was rusting away in an old shed; yet it was amazingly in tact after all these years. In many ways the kind of racism that caused Emmett Till to die such a horrific death is rusting away, too. But unfortunately, like that casket, there are still aspects of it that is very much with us.
Yep, the last thing I needed to see tonight was a story about Emmett Till. Because that just pretty much makes it a lock that tomorrow I will be chasing racism all over again.
0 Comments