George Floyd’s death was a wake-up call in Mississippi. Will real change follow?
Words are not enough, Coast leaders say. Not now. Not in Mississippi.
Gov. Tate Reeves called George Floyd’s death “a tragedy” on his Facebook page, saying people have a right to be angry about this and other cases, although he did not say the names. He is supporting peaceful protests, he says.
Yet Reeves declared Confederate Heritage Month in April. And he has said nothing about removing the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag in the last state to display the divisive symbol, much less removing Confederate monuments or shrines in other public places.
Some Coast leaders say these vestiges of a lost war symbolize hatred and slavery, especially for blacks.. Taking them down would be a start in deconstructing the institutional racism that still pervades Mississippi and the nation, say black and white leaders advocating change and interviewed by the Sun Herald. It would be a modest start, they say.
“My mom just always told me, when you walk in the door, how you present yourself, how you dress, is how someone receives you and perceives you,” said state Rep. Sonya Williams-Barnes, who is from Gulfport.
She said taking down the Confederate flag would change attitudes and, in turn, actions.
“We can change the flag,” Williams-Barnes said, “but if we don’t change the policy, we have nothing.”
‘No mercy’ for George Floyd
James Crowell, president of the Biloxi Branch of the NAACP, was not surprised that Reeves, a Republican and staunch supporter of Donald Trump, came out with a statement on Floyd’s death.
Crowell, a 70-year-old veteran of the struggle for civil rights, said the video of Floyd’s death was too shocking and brutal to ignore.
“Everybody saw that man laying down on that ground,” Crowell said. “He was living, he was breathing and he was talking. And they noted how long the policeman kept his knee on that man’s neck (8 minutes, 46 seconds).”
“It was obvious to everyone who saw that incident that he killed that man. He gave him no mercy.”
“It’s not hard for anybody to say that was wrong, even Tate Reeves.”
And yet, Crowell’s wife took a walk the other morning. She walked past a white-owned neighborhood business the Crowells have patronized.
She heard the owner’s son say, “I can’t breathe,” as George Floyd said repeatedly, as Eric Garner said almost six years earlier, his last words before a New York police officer’s chokehold killed him.
The white business owner and his son were laughing when the son repeated the words. Crowell’s wife was shocked and so was he when she told him about it.
“I know there are some white people out there who would like to see another Civil War,” he said.
Still, he sees more empathy than derision.
“This is the first time I’ve seen white people stand up for what’s right in this instance here, in the numbers I’ve seen here,” Crowell said. “There have always been white people who have stood up for civil rights, but not in these numbers.”
Mississippi needs policy change
Will Floyd’s death be the catalyst for change?
Part of the reason people are protesting police brutality is because public institutions are not working for African Americans in this country or this state,” said Corey Wiggins, executive director of the Mississippi NAACP and a native of Hazelhurst. “If you view what is happening in this country only in the context of race relations, that’s a simple way of looking at it.
“The protest is about the historical, long-rooted, systemic racism that exists in this country.”
Systemic racism in Mississippi reveals itself in statistic after statistic, said Wiggins, who has a doctorate in health education and describes himself as “data-driven.”
▪ 30.7% of blacks live in poverty in Mississippi, compared to 12.3% of whites, according to 2018 U.S. .Census statistics.
▪ 16.3% of black Mississippians have bachelor’s degrees, compared to 27.1% of whites, the Census shows.
▪ 12,008 blacks were incarcerated in December 2018 in Mississippi, compared to 7,012 whites, U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics show.
Medicaid expansion, full funding for public schools and criminal justice reform are three key areas where state leaders need to focus if they are serious about change, Williams-Barnes and others say.
Williams-Barnes said in an email to the Sun Herald:
“The race and equity disparities in our state are huge. It is going to take an assertive effort from both sides of the aisle, as well as from all races, to bridge the gaps.
“These gaps have been dredged for years so this won’t happen overnight. We need conversations AND actions from OUR leaders. It is one thing to say something is wrong but it is another to change policy to make the wrong right. I am open and always willing and working to make change.
“However, a majority is needed. At this time we just don’t have the majority working to make the many wrongs that have been done to African Americans in our state right.”
Racism must be examined
Kathryn McKee, director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, said it is not the responsibility of black people to educate whites about the racism that exists in social structures and institutions.
For meaningful change, she believes white people need to examine their own place in these systems. White and black Americans are products of the system, she said.
Her thoughts: “White people don’t want to be uncomfortable. They want to believe that their good fortune is something that they deserve. Everybody is born into the systems that structure America.
“White people are constantly in pursuit of absolution. They want to say:
‘Well, racism is in the world, but it’s not me,’
‘I was raised to not see color,’
‘My mama raised me not to discriminate.’
“People want personal absolution at that same time they want to indict someone else. It seems to me that white people have to study, analyze and respond to the structures that made them.”
She suggests people look at who has power in state government, for example, and in their institutions of higher learning.
“That’s where we see concentrations of white power, in decision making,” she said.
Faculty and staff at the center have been having urgent conversations this week about racism in the South and in America, and how they can serve as agents of change. They drafted a statement this week that encourages those in powerful or privileged positions to listen, observe, read and educate themselves about racism.
The statement says, “In particular, we encourage white Americans too easily satisfied by assertions that racism plays no role in their own thinking to think again.”
McKee is hopeful.
“Change is hard,” she said. “There’s nothing about the South that means it’s somehow unable to change. We content ourselves a lot of times by saying, ‘Well, that’s just how it is. That’s how things work in the South.
“It doesn’t have to be this way.”
