"You smell that air? We are in Mississippi now." This phrase spoken to my grandmother by my grandfather, who went to school at Ole Miss, could not have been more true today.
I chased down an old family friend who still lived in Starkville as a way to better understand my roots. I think it is a powerful and important thing to understand the place and people we all come from. The two I had lunch with were some of the kindest people I had ever met. They also happened to be freshmen in college at Ole Miss the same year James Meredith integrated. I believe we all take care of and protect those closest to us. If those closest to us happen to be black, Jewish, gay, you name it, we are more apt to defend them. We all fear what we don't know and what seems strange. It is a human reaction that I believe we have to work to counteract. When talking with this woman, she said that she hoped she didn't sound racist but she was scared that James Meredith was coming to her school -- not out of malice but out of a lack of interaction. She had at that point in her life she had never met a black person before... I believe after spending a lot of time talking with people that we are all pretty much kind at heart. We want the best for those closest to us and do not set out to be hateful. We hate out of fear and out of protection, and today that rang even more true.
Oxford, Mississippi is the kind of town you want to live in. The downtown square is filled with cool bookstores, home cooking, and more than ten live music venues. Just outside of Oxford is a town called Taylor. In this town is the best fried catfish and coolest joint around. It is called the Taylor Grocery. It is a hidden secret that is not much of a secret in these parts. Every night it has legit, and I mean legit, live music. They never post who is playing, and sometimes they don't know until someone shows up. There are a couple of art stores, an art studio and the coolest special event venue called the Big Truck in an old converted barn. I was blown away by the town and its people. I had a three hour conversation with the owner and artist at the art studio/Big Truck venue that really got me thinking. He challenged me to think about this whole racism issue and the south in a bigger way. His belief, and one I started to see, was that Northerners come down to the south and meddle in everyone's lives when really the same issues that happen in the south happen in the north. The south's indiscretions were and continue to be headline news. The bigger problem is, and I quote "There are too many rats on the cheese". We as people are growing exponentially and our earth cannot handle it. We as humans are working out how to relate, and the more we try to bring up color, the more that detracts from everyone as people??? After talking with many people across age, income and race lines there is a resounding theme of how it is better or non-existent with the younger generation. Racial hatred is held closer by those who lived the turbulent past or know a lot about it. He believes if we just let it be, that we as humans will keep working it out. The north needs to worry about its own problems and leave the south to their's. There are ten stories of interracial harmony to every story of racial issue. People in the South just don't see it that way. You don't play music on your front porch with a black guy because he is black; it's because its Frank and you have been playing with Frank forever. Integration just happens naturally. People just want to eat, and whatever it takes to do that is more important. He also believes that there are far bigger fish to fry than race and that generally if people are given time, they either like or don't like each other, and it is much bigger than race. It was a lot to think about, a very enjoyable and challenging conversation as well. Now I am back at the Inn at Ole Miss.
Tomorrow: Clarksdale, MS home of the delta blues
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