"I wish I could just be white...." --Mississippi

I'm going to apologize in advance for anyone I may offend in writing this (but not really), but there are issues that are heavy on my heart, and I guess that's what my blog is for.

     I grew up in Mississippi, a nicer part of it, but Mississippi nonetheless.  I spent the toughest years of my life among the people I considered my family at Madison Central High School.  I loved the place.  I loved Jackson and Madison and Ridgeland and Biloxi and Ocean Springs, and loved my few early years in Clinton.  I love Mississippi.  When I cross that state line, I get that feeling of "home" in a way...not that I have a home there any longer, but it's where I grew up and I'm proud of it.

    I'm proud of telling people at Duke and in North Carolina that I'm from the deep South, Mississippi.  They ask me questions with wonder and my responses all intrigue them.  Yes we're still #1 in obesity.  Yes, Mississippi is at the bottom of the pole for education, ranking dead last particularly in science.  And yes...there is still discrimination.  Some of my friends ask me about the movie The Help and if it's still very much like that...

As someone from the greater Jackson area, I am ashamed to say, Mississippi, part of the Deep South and the Bible Belt, is still a very backwards state....It still holds groups of primarily (there are certainly exceptions) upper class whites and groups of lower class blacks living together.  As someone of neither race, I was fortunate to grow up without much discrimination.  I felt it at times, yes.  I will not delve into those times, but at other times I was judged for not being Baptist.

I'm not here to talk about religion nor myself, but rather, about something much more prevalent, much more offensive. 

Sure, Mississippi has come a long way since the 1950's.  We're all about equality.  You go into a school or a workplace or a restaurant and you won't see segregation.  You go to a rich plantation-style house, you won't see slaves, a housemaid maybe, but no slaves. 

The election in 2008 and the most recent election of 2012 have caused much deeply entrenched racial tension that makes me wonder if we as a state have progressed...maybe by the laws, yes, but by viewpoints?

Not so much.

For the first time in my life, I, like many of you others, have followed the election as closely as people follow celebrity gossip.  I enjoyed it at first.  I laughed at the debates.  I loved the PBS moderator.  I had my fun with it.  Things got serious really fast.  This election meant so much to so many people---those with alternative lifestyles, including gay marriage, the nation's women, and middle-lower class Americans.  I am not a democrat nor a republican by any means.  However, my values and experiences do make me liberal, and I lean greatly towards the ideals of the Democratic Party the majority of the time.

Mississippi asks what has Obama done for us.  Right because the President is supposed to come down from the white house and spoonfeed us, a state that can't even help itself!  [If you've done any research, you will find much that Obama has done for the country as a whole, not just you.]  I'll agree, he's not the perfect President, but what President has been?

    As someone who has been on government welfare as a young girl growing up at MC, it was the one way I could even get bread on the table for my younger sister and myself.  It gave us enough to nourish us, so we could continue going to school.  No one knew.
      By my junior year, there were far too many other financial responsibilities and without government aid, I don't know what would have happened to us.  We were given a couple of hundred dollars a month solely for food, and we survived.  Starving was real.  We were on medicaid, but were unable to see any doctors.  It wasn't something that was accepted everywhere.  It wasn't until I got to college and was on the student insurance did I even get to fully understand what was going on with me, whatever spinal diseases, health problems, etc.  And I'm on the road to recovery.

It's a temporary act of help...  Some of the statuses I read about quitting jobs to get welfare on other people's taxes, from high-headed Madisonites.....it hurt. 

The things I read and heard bothered me enough at the time.  I just wanted people to do their research and realize that the color of our President is not any indicator of his success, and NO he's not muslim just because of a middle name.  I'm not going to sit here and list the reasons you should have voted for either candidate because frankly I don't care.  I'm not anti-either one.  Something far deeper is consuming me, and that is Mississippi's ever evident racism. I didn't realize how bad it was till I actually left the state, and I've never been more thankful.  But that doesn't solve anything.  This isn't about me at all.

More importantly, however, I have a young friend who currently attends Madison Central High School, and what he experienced is something that everyone needs to think about...  

This young man is a genuine, sweet, ambitious, whole-hearted young man.   He's a track star, a football player, he's a son and brother and cousin and boyfriend, he's innocent and pure, naive to the world...he's a kid.

A few days before the election.  Bitterness, resentment, and all kinds of emotions seething in the minds of the American public.  So tell me, Mississippi, please do.  What did this young man do to deserve such condescending behavior.... by a woman at the place he just wanted to enjoy dinner with his girlfriend?

The young high school student I have described, who I also consider my younger brother, has been discriminated for years and years, by his teachers and other school staff, by athletic directors, but what really broke my heart is a text my little sister sent me.
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"Esha, this woman was SO racist towards him today at McAlister's.  I've never seen him cry like that.  He really let it get to him.  It broke my heart.  Please text him telling him that you love him!  Just something sweet, he really admires you.  Me and my friend literally stood hugging him in the driveway for an hour while he cried.  He was like I don't know what I did wrong...I wish I could just be white..."
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