brainiacsub
Posts: 1209
Joined: 11/11/2007
From: San Antonio, TX
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quote:
ORIGINAL: MzMia
I am not really that versed on Jena, La, but there seems to be
some serious racial issues going on down there.
As bad as it is down there now Level, you really can't imagine what it
was like for Black people years ago.
I grew up down there and I'll tell you what it was like 30yrs ago. Honest to god, this is a true story.
When I was in elementary school, my father was stationed at England AFB in Alexandria, La, about 40 miles from Jena. It is the place where many of the race riots over the Jena 6 have taken place.
I attended North Bayou Rapides Elementary, a school of about 600 and predominantly white, with only a handful of blacks (3 or 4 maybe). Two of them I remember very well. Patricia Henry was in my third grade class. She was bright, talkative, friendly, always making noise and interrupting the teacher. She was funny in a class clown kind of way, but today she would probably be considered ADHD. The teacher kept her isolated from the rest of the class with her desk in the back of the classroom up against the wall. Her older brother (whose name escapes me) was in the sixth grade.
One weekend her brother and his friend were playing with a handgun and accidently shot Patricia in the chest. She died the next morning. When we returned to school the following Monday, an announcement was made about Patricia's death, we had a moment of silence, and then nothing more was said about the incident. I was absolutely horrified and really wanted to make sense of it all. All I kept thinking about was what it must be like to be dead, I wondered if she had felt any pain or suffered, I wanted to know if she had a chance to talk to her family before she died, and I wanted to know if she was in heaven. There was no one I could talk to, not even my parents. No one from the school attended the memorial or the funeral. I remember a couple of times I started to cry when I looked over at her desk, but the teacher would send me to the bathroom to wash my face and then rejoin the class. Although I was only 8, I knew that I wasn't supposed to feel sad because she was black.
A week later, her brother was back at school. The first time I saw him, he was in the lunch line in the cafeteria. I stared at him for the longest time, maybe half expecting him to break down in tears at any moment. He sat at a table by himself, a few kids stopped over to make idle chat with him, but mostly he kept to himself and seemed very sad. I wanted to go tell him how bad I felt for his sister, but I didn't think he'd talk to me because I was only in third grade, and of course, because I was white.
I don't think many people in this country understand that this is often how racism exists. It's not always hate speech, skin heads, Confederate flags, separate drinking fountains, or racial slurs and epithets. Sometimes it's as simple as lack of empathy. I was not surprised when I saw the state of race relations in Jena and Alexandria this past summer. Nothing has changed in 35 years. Empathy and compassion are taught, and it has to start with the kids.
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RE: The Great Debate/Martin Luther King's Birthday - 
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But it's hard to see the good sometimes when there is still such bad to be dealt with, I know.
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