Elon James White (abridged; video and transcript via Womanist Musings):
So we’re all familiar with the Black comedian doing “Black people do this, white people do that jokes.” I was thinking, because you know I’m a comedian and I’m black, I need to get on that, I need to get on that train okay? So I started to do a little bit of research and I actually ran across an article about governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour, talking about how he was a part of the first generation that went to school with Blacks and it wasn’t weird. It was totally cool down in Mississippi, ya know? In fact, he remembers one of his Black schoolmates, her name was Verna Lee Bailey. And she was a lovely young lady, and he copied her notes from her because she would just share it with him. And it wasn’t even strange, because that is just how it was, Blacks and Whites working together; it was just awesome! HAHAHA, See, when people talk about Republicans being out of touch with race, they don’t talk about this stuff, you know. Good for him!
Funny thing though, the reporter who actually wrote this article, reached out to Verna Lee Bailey and the reporter found her. That is awesome! Maybe her and the governor can get together and talk about the good ole days, ya know, and how awesome everything was…
The first thing we found out is that Verna Lee Bailey’s name is actually Verna Anne Bailey. So what? I don’t remember the full names of people I went to school with. And apparently, Ms. Bailey has no recollection of Governor Barbour.
And when she was asked about her time at the University of Mississippi she described it as being terribly lonely. She talked about being called ‘nigger’ and having coins thrown at her. And actually people would call her dorm room and just make horrible crank phone calls. And one time she had to lock herself in her room because they thought that she was in danger because people were sending funeral wreaths. Her classmates wouldn’t even sit next to her in class unless the teachers made the seating alphabetical. She finished school in three years because it was so uncomfortable for her, she wanted to get the hell out of there.
HAHA! You know how White people be going to school in Mississippi in the 1960′s and they were like, “Everything is cool! Everything is great.” And then Black people be going to school in Mississippi in the 1960′s and they be like, “I’m being discriminated against. People are throwing coins at me and threatening my life.” HAHA, Black people and White people are so different.
Now I know that you guys are now expecting me to mock the governor of Mississippi, but I’m not going to do it. Personally, I believe he believes the ridiculous nonsense he was talking about concerning race relations in Mississippi in the 1960s. I believe he thinks that, but of course he does. He was a straight White male, in the South, in the 60s. There was no better time to be a straight White male, okay? Literally, he could just go punch a Black person in the face, go home beat his girlfriend, and leave his house and just call someone a fag. He could just do that and get away with it. It was Mississippi in the 1960s. This is about perspective. He simply cannot have the same perspective of a Black person who was living it daily, ya know?
And that’s a major problem that we’re having in America nowadays. People who are not apart of certain groups or minorities decide that they can talk about the situation that concerns those groups or minorities, as if they know what they are talking about. Some people like to bring up the fact that Black people voted for Obama, like, by far, like the majority of Blacks did. And you know what? They’re right; we did. A lot of us was thinking, “Man it would be awesome if we could have someone in the White House that was that brilliant and that well spoken, who actually could see things from our perspective for the like the first time ever.”
Listen, I don’t think that everyone who says that they don’t see racial injustice in America is lying. I don’t think they are actually really lying. I think that some of them are being really willfully ignorant. For example, White straight dudes who talk about desegregation in the 1960s and how cool it was, you know? It was 1960s Mississippi! What the f–
