How are racial relations in rural MS? (Jackson, Cary: schools, gated)

[ckhthankgod]

Originally Posted by DiogenesofJackson

Yes, the Chinese in the Miss. Delta are indeed an interesting case study in rural race relations. The Chinese, not white and not black (according to the prevailing race ideology) were a people between white and black. Consequently the state's segregation laws only mandated schools for whites and separate schools for blacks. So where did the estimated 1000 or so Delta Chinese attend school?

The answer depends on at what time period are we talking about and in what county because there were no uniform rules on it. The most famous case was the daughter of Gong Lum, whose child attended the local white elementary school. I might have the order of events out of place, but he sued for his daughter's right to attend the white school because after all she wasn't defined, legally that is, as black and should not be forced to travel to another county to attend the only nearby black school. She was indeed enrolled at I believe the Rosedale, MS local school. Until one day when the state department of education got wind of a Chinese student attending a white school. They ordered her removal and Gong Lum sued again, this time reaching the Miss. Supreme Court, which agreed with the local district's exclusion of Lum's daughter, Martha.

Lum appealed and it reached the Supreme Court in the 1920s, which determined that it could not reverse the state supreme court's decision.

Regardless of the outcome of the case, many Delta whites who controlled neighboring school districts were shocked that an Asian child had to attend black schools (which were hardly schools by today's standards). In the decades after Lum v. Rice and in the decades leading up to Holmes v. Alexander that secured integrated education in Mississippi, numerous Delta school districts either excluded Chinese Americans from their schools or allowed their attendance. For the ones that allowed them to attend, these districts usually had long traditions of local control of education and rebuffed the state department of education meddling in their local affairs.

Moreover, adult Chinese Deltans also moved between the worlds of black and white during the twentieth century, oftentimes serving both communities as grocery store owners where they provided needed goods that served the agricultural workers, both white and black, who frequented their stores.

The Delta Chinese are interesting indeed and more information is available from James W. Loewen's book about this very topic.

Here's more on that: Chinese in Mississippi: An Ethnic People in a Biracial*Society | Mississippi History Now

Background - Mississippi Delta Chinese

Mississippi Chinese - Delta history - Bobby Joe Moon

http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/populat...population.pdf

I believe that some came by way of Cuba too: SOMEWHERE BETWEEN BLACK AND WHITE: THE CHINESE IN MISSISSIPPI | BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS

[Susan_UK]

This is not an answer but a question. I've read the replies to the original post with interest. Here is my question, I'm planning on having a short vacation in Ocean Springs in November after a conference in New Orleans, and we are a mixed race couple. I am actually bi-racial (Afro/European) and he is UK white. This might seem like a stupid question, but are we likely to have any problems? I've visited the US many times, but never strayed away from East and West Coasts and once to NO. I've always had a fear of wandering into Mississippi, or indeed the South (I think the French Quarter, NO is not typical). As I live in London, it feels strange to be asking this question in 2012, but I'd hate to feel uncomfortable, or worse. What is the current state of play please. My apologies in advance if my question may have upset anyone, but I believe that being forewarned is to be forearmed!
Thanks
Susan

[DiogenesofJackson]

Originally Posted by Susan_UK

This is not an answer but a question. I've read the replies to the original post with interest. Here is my question, I'm planning on having a short vacation in Ocean Springs in November after a conference in New Orleans, and we are a mixed race couple. I am actually bi-racial (Afro/European) and he is UK white. This might seem like a stupid question, but are we likely to have any problems? I've visited the US many times, but never strayed away from East and West Coasts and once to NO. I've always had a fear of wandering into Mississippi, or indeed the South (I think the French Quarter, NO is not typical). As I live in London, it feels strange to be asking this question in 2012, but I'd hate to feel uncomfortable, or worse. What is the current state of play please. My apologies in advance if my question may have upset anyone, but I believe that being forewarned is to be forearmed!
Thanks
Susan

You won't have any problems. Now if you visited North-Central rural Mississippi, you two might get some stares, but I don't think you'd have any problems. Mississippi is not like it was in the 1950s and 1960s.

My girlfriend and I are a mixed-race couple and we travel through Miss. on a pretty regular basis. Once recently we ate at a fish and steak house out in the country near Winona, Miss. and we got some stares while eating at the restaurant. But other than that, there were no problems. Folks were nice to us and the food was great and cheap.

Perhaps I should add that I'm white, but my girlfriend is Asian. She's the one who notices the stares, not me. She tells me about this usually after the fact, but I've never noticed stuff like that. It could be that she's just sensitive to it being that she's always been "between the races" that dominate--black/white--here in the States.

[Listener2307]

Originally Posted by Susan_UK

This is not an answer but a question. I've read the replies to the original post with interest. Here is my question, I'm planning on having a short vacation in Ocean Springs in November after a conference in New Orleans, and we are a mixed race couple. I am actually bi-racial (Afro/European) and he is UK white. This might seem like a stupid question, but are we likely to have any problems? I've visited the US many times, but never strayed away from East and West Coasts and once to NO. I've always had a fear of wandering into Mississippi, or indeed the South (I think the French Quarter, NO is not typical). As I live in London, it feels strange to be asking this question in 2012, but I'd hate to feel uncomfortable, or worse. What is the current state of play please. My apologies in advance if my question may have upset anyone, but I believe that being forewarned is to be forearmed!
Thanks
Susan

Nah, you won't have any problems. People are fine with mixed race couples these days. You may have a little trouble understanding some of us, though......you know, two people separated by a common language and all.....
But that'll be OK. We can't understand you either!

[jhadorn]

Life is too short to make a big deal about the color of the person you love, or someone else loves. It isn't even my business who you are with.

I think you will be fine. I see mixed couples all the time and think nothing of it. My wife is Belizean, so we are a mixed couple.

[jdl38518]

Racial relations in Mississippi are no different that any other place in the country.... I promise you that. Racial relations in Mississippi get publicized because of the pre-civil rights movement incidents that happened (across many other states, I might add). There always is a scapegoat and Mississippi is easy to beat up on.

2 most racist places I have traveled to? Southside Chicago and Portland, OR. Portland was very tolerant and accepting, of course, but they were just a racist behind closed doors and in conversations as anywhere I have traveled.


I ask that visitors take their information from actual residents of MS instead of flight-risks that listened to all the media and badmouthers of MS and decided to take off rather than stay to make this place better.

[Delta-SSiPP]

Originally Posted by jdl3829

Racial relations in Mississippi are no different that any other place in the country.... I promise you that. Racial relations in Mississippi get publicized because of the pre-civil rights movement incidents that happened (across many other states, I might add). There always is a scapegoat and Mississippi is easy to beat up on.

2 most racist places I have traveled to? Southside Chicago and Portland, OR. Portland was very tolerant and accepting, of course, but they were just a racist behind closed doors and in conversations as anywhere I have traveled.


I ask that visitors take their information from actual residents of MS instead of flight-risks that listened to all the media and badmouthers of MS and decided to take off rather than stay to make this place better.

Wow, thank you! That is so true, your statement reference to Mississippi!

[Delta-SSiPP]

Originally Posted by jhadorn

Life is too short to make a big deal about the color of the person you love, or someone else loves. It isn't even my business who you are with.

I think you will be fine. I see mixed couples all the time and think nothing of it. My wife is Belizean, so we are a mixed couple.

Great post man! That's how I view it too!

[DiogenesofJackson]

Originally Posted by jdl3829

Racial relations in Mississippi are no different that any other place in the country.... I promise you that. Racial relations in Mississippi get publicized because of the pre-civil rights movement incidents that happened (across many other states, I might add). There always is a scapegoat and Mississippi is easy to beat up on.

2 most racist places I have traveled to? Southside Chicago and Portland, OR. Portland was very tolerant and accepting, of course, but they were just a racist behind closed doors and in conversations as anywhere I have traveled.


I ask that visitors take their information from actual residents of MS instead of flight-risks that listened to all the media and badmouthers of MS and decided to take off rather than stay to make this place better.

How could outsiders who want to make Miss. better if so many of the state's delusional defenders proclaim "if you don't like it here, then you can leave!"

More to the point, however, I'd like to correct your mis-statement about racial violence in Mississippi. While I largely agree that race relations in Miss. are no different than many other places in the nation, it's patently false that racial violence occurred only before the civil rights movement. Emmit Till, George Lee, Medgar Evers--they were all killed during the movement. Moreover, Fannie Lou Hamer and James Meredith were shot and/or beaten during the movement; in 1966 Gov. Paul B. Johnson Jr. highway patrol sacked a group of 1,500 protestors in Canton, beating them with rifle butts and night sticks; which was only preceded by the attack on a similar group of protesters that occurred in Philadelphia, Miss. during Meredith's "March Against Fear"; 1970s JPD and the FBI stormed the home of Imari Obadele with the Republic of New Africa separatist group shooting first and asking question later, injuring dozens and Obadele (arrested for attempted murder for shooting at JPD officers) wasn't even in the home, but arrested several blocks away from the incident; then the state paraded the RNA-9 around in shackles and chains a la slavery days.

I'm sure there've been other documented instances of racial violence in Miss. post-civil rights movement. The only thing that I can think of is the most recent instance when that kid from Brandon or Flowood mowed that guy down in a parking lot.

Again, not that Miss. is unique in this regard, i.e. Amadou Diallo in NY, NY was shot some 90 times (an estimate) by the po-po because he "fit the description" and in Texas in the 90s there was a publicized incident of a down's syndrome black man being dragged to death by a bunch of rednecks. So you're right, Miss. is much like the rest of the nation when it comes to race relations. Yet it was Mississippians attitudes and actions during and after the Civil Rights Movement that leads to many people's negative perceptions about race relations in this state. Hollywood movies like Time To Kill don't help either.

[Huckleberry3911948]

yes u r correct. but as to church that is another matter. some black people attend white churches and are treated well but not the other way around. for the mixed couples, typically AA man and wasp wife, it rough going in MS, both in the AA and wasp community.