Think James Cameron.
Remember the story of Emmett Till.
Revisit the history of Little Rock Nine.
For many Blacks, when they hear stories about the Jena 6 or Hurricane Katrina, they think, remember and revisit.
The history of African-Americans is painful and sad, yet, triumphant and proud, and racism sits in the mix of it all.
Cameron was a 16-year-old shoeshine boy in Marion, Ind. on Aug. 6, 1930 when two friends – 18-year-old Tom Shipp and 19-year-old Abram Smith – were lynched in front of thousands for killing a white man. Cameron, who did not participate, was brutally beat but saved from a lynching and spent five bitter years in jail. He later founded America’s ‘Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, Wis., and died last year.
Such sorrowful history plays a critical role in African-Americans’ perception of racism in the U.S. today, says Dr. Edward O. Frantz, assistant professor of history at the University of Indianapolis.
“It would only be natural for someone to filter through (past events of African-American history) when making a point of reference to racism,” he said. “Certainly, Hurricane Katrina was the starkest reminder of how far we still have to go and how real racial disparity is.”
As an educated Black man who received his Ph.D. in African-American Studies from Temple University, Dr. Ivan Hicks quickly acknowledges that racism continues to exist calling today’s society, “a new millennium of racism.”
“It seems like there’s been a steady progression of a move toward a greater good, but I think perhaps we’ve missed a step,” he says. “We are in a society that is culture driven and we live in a place where we have disparity among races. If you live in (a place) and your world is a lily-white world then you will not be affected by race an awful lot. But for those that are marginalized by race and those that suffer the brunt of institutional racism, you look at it a different way because you’re the victim.”
A light on racist situations
Hicks points to Jena, La., as a poignant example of racism in America where the population of approximately 3,000 is 86 percent white.
Last fall, when two Black high school students sat under a tree white students called, the “white” tree on their campus at Jena High School, white students responded by hanging nooses from the tree.
When Black students protested the light punishment for the students who hung the nooses, District Attorney Reed Walters came to the school where it’s reported he told the Black students he could “take (their) lives away with a stroke of (his) pen.”
Racial tension continued to mount in Jena, and African-Americans claim Walters did nothing in response to several egregious cases of violence and threats against Black students.
The story gets more disheartening when it was reported that a white student – who had been a vocal supporter of the students who hung the nooses – taunted a Black student and was beaten up by Black students. Six Black males were charged with second-degree attempted murder.
Journalist Jemele Hill questioned the lack of attention given to the case, which began in September 2006.
“National cameras have yet to invade Jena,” she wrote in a column last month. “District Attorney Reed Walters, the prosecutor in the case, hasn’t suffered backlash like Mike Nifong, prosecutor in the Duke lacrosse case. Oprah Winfrey held a two-day town hall meeting about Don Imus. There have been rallies in support of and against Michael Vick. What does the Jena 6 deserve?”
Hicks, like many throughout the U.S., traveled to Jena last Thursday for what had been described as a non-violent protest to support the six males and voice concerns of not only their treatment but also the racial unrest that has settled on the city.
Frantz, a white male who hadn’t heard of the Jena 6 until being interviewed, believes such situations prove that there are many unfulfilled legacies of the civil rights movement.
Even instances of radio host Don Imus who was fired by CBS after calling the Rutgers University women’s basketball team “nappy headed hos,” the government’s slow response in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and baseball homerun record setter Barry Bonds who has been under fire in recent years for allegedly using steroids though it’s never been proven, can be seen by African-Americans as illustrations of racism.
“There are still symbols in this country that are always going to be powerfully charged and incredibly divisive,” said Frantz. “One of them is obviously a noose and another is a Confederate flag. You can make the argument that because there has been a dearth of conversation (in the Jena 6 case) people haven’t articulated their main concerns clearly enough. When anything like this happens – even though things have changed – it makes it seem too reminiscent of an era that many would rather forget.”
Are there solutions?
According to a poll conducted by Opinion Research Corp. for CNN in 2006, most Americans, white and Black, see racism as a lingering problem in the U.S. and many said they know people who are racist.
Almost half of Black respondents – 49 percent – said racism is a “very serious” problem, while 18 percent of whites shared that view. Forty-eight percent of whites and 35 percent of Blacks chose the description “somewhat serious.”
It can be difficult to pinpoint one solution to solve America’s racist problems.
From James Cameron to Don Imus, racism continues to rear its ugly head regardless of conversation or justice.
Hicks believes to begin solving such a monumental problem is to first acknowledge that it exists and then expose it.
“Hiding it is not going to help and neither is sugar coating it,” he said. “You have to have some sense of social awareness and some level of political involvement. You can’t just look at what you’re going through, you have to have sight beyond the block.”
