"James Craig Anderson sang tenor in the choir at the First Hyde Park Missionary Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi. He’d worked at a car plant near Jackson for seven years, and he enjoyed gardening in his free time. Anderson’s partner of 17 years, a man named James Bradfield, was the legal guardian of a 4 year-old child, and Anderson and Bradfield were raising the child together. This child will not grow up in Anderson’s care, however, because Anderson was killed by a mob of white teenagers.
The murder of Mr. Anderson recalls Jim Crow era lynchings. On a Sunday morning shortly before dawn, a group of teenagers were drinking in the nearby town of Puckett. According to police, one of them told his friends they should leave and “go fuck with some niggers.” Two carloads of the boys then drove to Jackson, where they found Anderson in a parking lot, beat him, and then drove their pickup truck over him. During the beating, some of the teens reportedly yelled out the words “white power.”
Yet, while Anderson’s death may resemble Klan violence from another era, it is hardly a memory from a distant past. James Craig Anderson died in 2011. Three of his killers were sentenced Tuesday by a federal judge.
Judge Carlton Reeves delivered fairly substantial remarks at the sentencing hearing. His full remarks are worth reading in their entirety. In them, he laments the “toxic mix of alcohol, foolishness and unadulterated hatred” that “caused these young people to resurrect the nightmarish specter of lynchings and lynch mobs from the Mississippi we long to forget,” and he lays out the brutal history of racial violence that still defines Mississippi in many people’s minds. Quoting one author’s description of the state, Judge Reeves says that “there is something different about Mississippi; something almost unspeakably primal and vicious; something savage unleashed there that has yet to come to rest.”
This history, according to Reeves, stands in tension with what the judge labels the “New Mississippi.” This is the Mississippi that has struggled to lift the state “from the abyss of moral depravity in which it once so proudly floundered in.” And the murder of James Craig Anderson “ripped off the scab of the healing scars of Mississippi . . . causing her (our Mississippi) to bleed again.”' [Source]
I know I know, we are "post racial" now. And folks like that color arousal agitator, the field Negro, is just looking for racism to chase to stir up folks.
If only that was true.
Sadly, it's not only Mississippi, it's places like Alabama as well. Where police officers can brutalize an elderly man who doesn't speak English because he is...well.. different.
The good news is that the police officer in Alabama has been arrested. And, like the animals in Mississippi, he will have to answer for his crime.
The bad news is that America continues to think that she has turned the corner on racism and ignorance.
"On Tuesday, Anderson’s family found justice. But Anderson remains dead. Mr. Bradfield, a man who cannot even call himself a widower due to another form of unconstitutional injustice, said in a statement to the court that his adopted son sleeps in his bed because “he doesn’t want those people to get me.” The United States of America has a black president. That president appointed a black judge, a black attorney general, and a black prosecutor. And none of these men have the power to restore what a small band of drunk teenagers took away from Anderson and his family.
Almost two years to the day after racism killed James Craig Anderson, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Shelby County v. Holder. “Things have changed in the South,” Chief Justice John Roberts explained in his opinion for the Court. “Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels.” On these points, the Chief Justice is correct. The South is different than it was in 1965. Racial minorities do enjoy high offices, including the office of President of the United States.
But it only took a few boys from a tiny town in the poorest state in the nation to re-create the age of Jim Crow lynchings.
This is what Chief Justice Roberts missed in his opinion scrapping a key provision of the Voting Rights Act on the theory that it did not reflect “current needs.” He missed the fact that racism can be an intensely individualistic crime against reason. A police force can be committed to equality, and a single cop can still fire impulsively on a black suspect. A nation can be committed to universal suffrage, and yet a single state legislature can erect obstacles to the right to vote. Lynchings are now infrequent in the South, but that does not make Anderson’s death any less tragic. And it certainly does not justify eliminating laws banning racially-motivated killings.
We are fortunate to live in a nation where most people do not commit serious violations of the law. Most employers do not act with racist intent. Most cops do not fire their guns unnecessarily. Most teenagers do not follow up a night of drinking with violence. Judge Reeves’ “New Mississippi” is slowly but consistently displacing the old one.
But that does not mean that we should make Roberts’ mistake of blurring the line between less racism and no racism. Anderson did not die due to a racist regime of state-sponsored apartheid, he died because of a small band of hateful Americans."
And because a majority of Americans choose to believe that those "small bands of hateful Americans" do not exist.
What a refreshing tale of young whites taking some initiative! For decades, the interracial murder category has been completely dominated by blacks killing whites. We can all see the utter chaos and anarchy that has resulted from ceding the field entirely to black murderers. Here at least is one case where the tables were turned.
ReplyDeleteIt's a new day in America.
The SPLC just learned there are limits to their officially-sanctioned Hate Speech™ when they called a renowned republican neurosurgeon a hate-filled Nazi bigot extremist without even realizing he’s black. As everyone knows, you can’t do that:
ReplyDeleteThe Southern Poverty Law Center has announced they have removed Dr. Ben Carson from their “extremist” file.
In an unsigned statement released on Wednesday, SPLC said, “In October 2014, we posted an ‘Extremist File’ of Dr. Ben Carson. This week, as we’ve come under intense criticism for doing so, we’ve reviewed our profile and have concluded that it did not meet our standards, so we have taken it down and apologize to Dr. Carson for having posted it.”
Affirmative action wins again!
"And because a majority of Americans choose to believe that those "small bands of hateful Americans" do not exist."
ReplyDeleteSmall band of white hateful Americans? How about all of America? Just look at the hateful comments on FN! Look at the first comment of this post.
America is unsafe for innocent Blacks. Violent Whites have made it unsafe for centuries.
Thanks for the post and the reminder to a Blacks to stay aware of ALL Whites around them and be on the lookout whenever they are NOT around. You never know when these blood-thirsty murderous freaks will attempt to kill you for sport.
Field, you have got to watch this FOX Grammy race-baiting video re: Obama. Those Negroes in L.A. are a trip.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/index.html#/v/4050196460001
Blacks must truly be the master race. Whenever they fail at anything, it is invariably the result of racism. Eradicate racism, and they will achieve their true potential as godlike beings, perfect in every way, like Yinsheng. When that day comes, Jackie Robinson West will be given back the Little League title the team lost due to cheating I mean racism.
ReplyDeleteThe Jackie Robinson West baseball team who won the American Little League championship last summer was stripped of their title for violating residency rules. The all black team used players from outside the area they represent, building an all-star team in clear violation of the rules everyone else followed. Because of this, the team must vacate all of their wins, forfeit their title, and their coach has been suspended.
What’s a little cheating when it helps right historic injustices?
But really here in BRA, just like only whites can be racist, only whites can be cheaters.
"Sadly, it's not only Mississippi, it's places like Alabama as well. Where police officers can brutalize an elderly man who doesn't speak English because he is...well.. different."
ReplyDeleteThere's been no evidence that those officers abused that Indian man because of his ethnicity, although his inability to speak English was clearly a factor. I don't think it's right to label them racist in the absence of proof. (The officers were apparently responding to a call about a "suspicious person" from someone in the neighborhood, who may or may not have had racist inclinations.)
But there's no doubt at all that those cops are a bunch of thugs. I was repulsed by that video. This elderly man doesn't perfectly cooperate with their demands because he can't understand English, so they body slam him into the ground? There was no necessity for employing that amount of force. He posed absolutely no threat to the officers.
I don't know which to blame that police department for more: hiring scummy personnel, or failing to train them on how to deal with people who can't understand directions (whether because of a language barrier or some sort of disability).
Don't go and live in countries where you can't speak the language.
ReplyDelete"Don't go and live in countries where you can't speak the language."
ReplyDeleteHe didn't. This elderly man lives in India, but was visiting relatives who live here (and who do speak English).
If no one ever traveled to a country where they don't speak the language, that would kill a huge chunk of international trade and tourism. Not a viable solution.
The actual solution is for cops to treat civilians with respect, and not fuck them up over the slightest provocation.
Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.
ReplyDeleteWhatever happened to QLB?
ReplyDeleteQLB had a run-in with a Chicago South Side Negro. He is in the hospital and won't be out for some time. The Negro showed QLB no mercy. BTW, the Chicago Negro was born in Detroit.
ReplyDeleteThe Democrat governor of Oregon has resigned over another Green Energy scandal and now America has its first "bisexual" governor.
ReplyDeleteHad enough Fundamental Change yet?
James Howard Kunstler:
ReplyDeleteBruce Jenner’s journey to transgender sainthood was interrupted Saturday on the road to Malibu, and with it perhaps the Kardashian Klan’s hopes and dreams for achieving supremacy of the known universe. All of America was twerking at the news because that is what we do and who we are now. The nation’s attention these blizzardy days would have otherwise gone straight from the Super-bowl halftime hallucination to the stupendous narcissistic grandiosity of the Grammy Awards. America becomes, day upon day, one gigantic act of “performance art” geared to shocking a bourgeoisie that has dwindled so deeply that, curiously, there may be absolutely nobody left to shock.
Of course the Kardashians are a mere metaphor for what has happened to this country, and Bruce Jenner is a metaphor for what has happened to American men. Maybe that’s why they persist in the spotlight. It is a well-known fact that motorists on a highway always slow down to see just what happened at the grisly scene of the accident. We can’t take our eyes off these freaks and geeks.
Thanks, field.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you.
"But that does not mean that we should make Roberts’ mistake of blurring the line between less racism and no racism."
ReplyDeleteFully agree. But let's try something radical in the climate. Let's actually reserve "racism" to mean things that are objectively racist, and not things like these necessarily vague and cryptozoological-esque "code words" and nonsensical horseshit like "microaggressions" if a white person looks a black person directly in the eye.
There's simply so much thrown under the banner of "racism" that even if real racism were to go extinct in America, it would never be noticed. It would simply be replaced with these microaggressions and supposed coded tactics, and then we'd hear people screaming that a little league announcer calling a black player "boy" is the new Jim Crow. Might as well lynch him, whitey!
"PC, I thought the Aussies were the team to beat. This is a shame. You have to get it like ppv in this country.
ReplyDeleteGo Windies!"
The Aussies are big favourites to win, but my money is on the Kiwis, they don't have the big name global superstars that Australia have got, but they are a canny team with clever bowlers like Tim Southee and Trent Boult and in-form batsmen like Kane Williamson and Brendon McCullum. And McCullum is the best captain in World cricket ,a born leader of men.
**
Regarding the Windies, I'm afraid West Indian cricket is in a very bad place right now. There has been all kinds of fractures, fights and recriminations flying around the WICB this last year or so, so Clive Lloyd had been brought in at the last minute to instil some much needed discipline and tough love. As a result of all that, several of Windies best players like D'wayne Bravo and Kieron Pollard have been left at home.
Big Jason Holder from Barbados has been brought in as captain, he's a smart kid with a big future, but he's awfully young and inexperienced to be captaining a side at a World cup.
The Windies Possee group on Facebook are close to despair
https://www.facebook.com/groups/westindies/
Our first game is against Ireland on Monday, we should win because Ireland have got no bowlers worth a lick, but I'm not massively confident.
Still as bad as it gets for us, at least we are not England fans! Jesus those guys are in chaos.
**
Regarding TV ratings, 1.2 BILLION people will watch tomorrow's game between India and Pakistan. After soccer, cricket now has the second highest sports ratings in the world. That's why cricket's finances have been transformed.
"The bad news is that America continues to think that she has turned the corner on racism and ignorance."
ReplyDeleteToday Manifest Density affects over 3 million in the United State of America, and like other addictions, its sufferers must become aware and acknowledge that they have a problem.
Most famous
Thomas Jefferson
Symptoms
(include but are not limited to)
Racial intolerance, stubbornness, primitive empathetic development.
Motto
"Dumb and Steadfast, dumb and steadfast, thank ol' Ronnie Reagan we're dumb and steadfast
The first comment on this thread is telling.
ReplyDeleteBut thanks for making me seem so prophetic in my writing.
PC, thanks for the 411 on the cricket World Series.
Yep, sadly the days of Richards, Holder, et al are long gone for my Windies.
Have a Happy St.Valentines Day everyone!
ReplyDeleteMay you all get chocolates, flowers, perfumes, and plenty of love and good friendship! That's what makes the world go round! (heart emoticon here(
Field you need to put emoticons on this blog so we can express ourselves properly x*D
D, no emotions needed. We can feel the love, :)
ReplyDeleteHappy Valentine's, Everyone!! Opening the evening edition of FN via my email, I initially presumed the picture and story chronicled lynching that occurred to black people 60 years ago. Partially true...
ReplyDeleteThen I wondered how James Craig and his "partner" of 17 years could have been raising a 4-year-old child together during the Jim Crow era until it was further revealed Mr. Craig was lynched/murdered in Mississippi "2011" by three white teens so drunk and ignorant, with zero respect for human life as well. Heart-rendering the recent court convictions of murderers pave the way to justice, healing and closure for the families and community.
Quite a timely message, Mr. Field, especially throughout the observances and reflections of Black History Month. And I greatly agree with the need to safeguard against policies that diminish voting rights.
By the way, I was quite intrigued by Josh's comment, as I was vaguely familiar with the term "microaggression." Interestingly, the link below was very helpful.
http://m.nationalreview.com/article/370078/microaggression-alec-torres
Any death of a white person at the hands of a black suspect will invariably be described by the media as "[insert action here] gone wrong"; conversely, any death of a black person at the hands of a white suspect will inevitably be an opportunity for the media to lecture all white people for their past, present, and future evils against the colored people of the world.
ReplyDeleteUntil the day BRA ends, all white people can do is go about their daily tasks, trying to avoid being in the wrong place at the wrong time, with your final moment on earth described as a: "carjacking gone wrong"; "home invasion gone wrong"; "riding public transportation gone wrong"; "walking to your car gone wrong"; "shopping gone wrong"; or, a "sale gone wrong."
Go ahead, Google "Craigslist Sale Gone Wrong" and see how many stories involving a black suspect come up.
I read almost all of the folks involved in this modern day lynching are being convicted. Good on the justus department.
ReplyDeleteOn another note having a good time at the USAF museum. There's a good exhibit on the Tuskegee Airmen and Eugene Bullard.
"There's a good exhibit on the Tuskegee Airmen and Eugene Bullard"
ReplyDeleteBut of course there is. They won the war after all.
They certainly helped. What have YOU done in your life?
DeleteSup Faith?
ReplyDeleteJaramye,did u give your cousin Roses?
Thanks for shout out, Mr. Field... As always, pleased to see you in your element :-)
DeletePilot, don't feed it.
ReplyDeletefield negro said...
ReplyDeleteJaramye,did u give your cousin Roses?
Nah, I'z in jail.
Sorry to hear that, Jeramye. Don't forget to report to your PO when u get out.
ReplyDelete