The
same week the threat of a massive protest caused the cancellation
of a white (gay) male’s “blackface” routine in West Hollywood,
that same protest threat failed to save nine of ten black
youth on trial for what was deemed a racial attack in Long Beach. I’ve been preaching for some time
that “Colorblindness is the new Jim Crow,” and the clock is being
turned back. However, lately, there been such a blatant disregard
for African American humanity that people now think they can
take unbridled liberties with the race’s imagery and constitutional
rights. The lesson in this? When we don’t protect our imagery and
our rights, others won’t either. For those who don’t believe “Jim
Crow” is back, it’s time to take another look. This is “deeper than deep” time
for Black America. The race is going through a “great divide” as
the wealth gap impacting the larger society has one segment of
African Americans trying to hold on for dear life to a middle
class lifestyle, while the other segment continues to scrape
the bottom of the economic well of deeply entrenched poverty.
Black America, as cultural trendsetters, gives America it’s fashion
and music style—a flavor that everyone wants to emulate—but at
the same time, faces such horrendous social circumstances that
the rest of society chooses to ignore its plight and in some
instances, mock what those circumstances have produced.
That’s actually how Jim Crow
started in the 19th Century. A white minstrel, calling himself
a “delineator,” saw a crippled black man in tattered clothes—a
victim of the antebellum South’s social and economic exclusion
of Blacks, enslaved or free. He took the man’s clothes, put on
blackface, mocked the man’s gimp and dialect
in a minstrel show that night—calling himself “Jim Crow.” The
popularity of minstrel shows took off in the mid-1800s as many
whites, some who had never seen a real Black, romanticized about “the
good ole’ days" in the post Civil War depression (economic
and social). Jim Crow soon transitioned from entertainment to
social protocol, as racial etiquette required Blacks to subordinate
themselves in ways to which Whites had come to know them—as ignorant,
buffoonish, docile, smiling, shufflin’ and
most of all, subservient to white people. When Blacks didn’t
succumb to the expected etiquette, they were framed as hostile
or maniacal. Either way, Blacks framed in imagery as uneducated
or as hostile, were viewed as unfit
to govern themselves and required tight oversight—in essence,
a Master over their affairs. Blackface became the mask that Jim
Crow wore, as America took extreme liberties
with African American imagery, for a century, in their attempt
permanently to denigrate the race into an inferior socio-economic
position to justify the maintenance of white supremacy. Fast
forward to the 21st Century, where you have a modern day southerner
(from Lexington, Kentucky) named Charles Knipp,
taking stage in blackface as “Shirley Q. Liquor” (shirleyqliquor.com)
and performing such routines as, “Who Is My Baby’s Daddy?,” “Brownbakeded
Beans,” and
even denigrating an African-centered cultural holiday in an act
called, “the Twelve Days of Kwanzaa.” Though the latest southern California appearance was canceled, Knipp is
booked all over the nation to sold out performances. Ladies and
gentlemen, Jim Crow, Jr. is “in the house". And blackface minstrel shows have made
it into the “here and now.” Have we really turned back that far?
Obviously so.
The case of the “Long Beach
10” was a case that involved ten black youth being charged for
what was being called a hate crime assault against two white
women. It is a case where for the first time in American history—any
where in the nation—young African American girls (it was actually
nine girls and one young man) were being tried for a race crime
against a white person. The case was highly controversial because
all the children were under-aged, and had been accused based
on the solely circumstantial evidence that they were present
during the assault. Certainly those who commit hate crimes, black
or white, should be prosecuted—to the fullest extent of the law.
However, the victims in this case only know that they were jumped
and their assaulters were black. So were 30 or 40 other youth
at the scene during the time of the attack. This is the latest
iteration of “the black man did it (only they were women)” and
somebody has to pay. As back in the Jim Crow days when a white
woman's virtue was allegedly assaulted by a Black—any Black would
do in carrying out justice (which was usually the injustice of
lynching, or mock trials—if it got to trial).
This case was the
most egregious conviction of circumstantial evidence since the
Scottsboro Boys
in 1931. While the youth are facing the death penalty like the
Scottsboro Boys, they are facing the same king of discriminatory
justice that only sees the color of their skin and not the reasonable
doubt in their purported guilt. The abuse of criminal justice
system, as it did during Jim Crow days, worked in collusion with
the prosecutorial process, worked to construct a case that exonerated
the white girls despite the obvious flaws in their testimony.
During Jim Crow, white people were never guilty of anything (even
when they were) and black people were guilty of everything (even
when they weren’t). It always came down to who’s word was more
credible, and as Scottsboro proved, less credible white testimony
was given more credence over more credible black testimony that
supports reasonable doubt.
As we witnessed during Jim Crow,
mob violence can never be attributed to individual culpability.
Absence of identity is why so many hate crimes went unprosecuted.
And when they were prosecuted, Jim Crow judges and juries made
sure justice peeked though her blindfold. While there was no
Jim Crow jury in this case, there was a Jim Crow judge, and today,
nine black youth stand convicted on circumstantial mob violence
charges. The Long Beach Ten case will be (or should be) appealed,
but the point is, Jim Crow trials were once thought to be a thing
of the past.
As we saw last
week, mock trials have made their way into the 21st Century,
too. This was a gross
miscarriage of justice, and as King said, “Injustice anywhere
is a threat to justice everywhere.” Silence on the Long Beach
Ten trial only allows the practice of circumstantial convictions
to spread, and Jim Crow will make a comeback—at the expense of “guess
who”? Two segments of the black population, the uneducated and
those perceived as maniacal, are being managed (mastered) today,
and their images in the media (and now on stage and film) are
the most grotesque (and perpetuated) in what it means to be Black
in America today.
These were two
blatant demonstrations that a system of cultural compromise,
that we thought was dead,
spawned offspring. Jim Crow, Jr., in blackface and a robe, is
now grown and perpetuating the legacy of his father. As history
tells us, the twisting of culture image and the law is a dangerous
combination. The danger is when an entire people are represented
as ignorant and hostile, and nobody objects as society accepts
these images and acts on them. And for those who thought Jim
Crow couldn’t come back? Think again. The proof is in blackface,
and in the courts.
BC Columnist Anthony
Asadullah Samad is a national columnist, managing director
of the Urban
Issues Forum and author of 50 Years After Brown: The State of Black
Equality In America. His website is AnthonySamad.com. Click
here to contact Mr. Samad. |