September 18, 2010

  • RACISM IS NO RELIC - REMEMBER THE LYNCHING OF JAMES BYRD

    {2010 - Lynchings and their legacies linger...Hobama is legendarily lynching poor people. Homohaters are lynching gays. Hypochristians are lynching Muslims. Men are lynching women via rape, battery, femicide, and sexism. Parents are lynching children via toxic parenting, ruthless neglect, and abuse. Hobama and his charter school bankster posses are lynching students and teachers in public schools nationwide...Racism and lynching remain as commonplace as football and apple pie in America...SHAME!!!}

     

    1998

    LEGACY OF A LYNCHING

     - 

    ON MOURNING JAMES BYRD

    Until now, I have been reticent regarding the lynching of James Byrd. My silence has been motivated primarily by numbing horror. Also, I have been painfully touched personally by this vicious murder. The eternal Byrd is a distant cousin of my best friend. My own grandfather, Isadore Banks, was brutally lynched. The heinous nature of these savage and racist acts haunt a nation, at a distance. It torments me at a far closer proximity.

    It has been reported that one of the three killers was no stranger to Byrd. They offered him a lift when they drove by, as he walked, in the wee hours of the morning, on June 7, 1998, in Jasper, Texas. They took him to a dirt logging trail and beat him. Then, they chained him alive to the back of their truck. Then, they drug him for several miles until he was scraped to death.

    Coroners say Byrd appeared to have lived for at least two miles. He tried to endure the excruciating pain by propping his body up on his elbows. He may even have been alive when his head swung against a concrete drain pipe, causing it to be ripped from his neck.

    In every tragedy, there are lessons. Byrd accepted a ride from someone he assumed to be a friend. We must all choose friends cautiously and wisely. Byrd made every effort to lessen the pain of his torture. We must all fight with such defiance and courage until our very last breaths. Byrd was a kind and great person. We must all accept that life and death are both, often, brutally unfair in this world filled with evil and racist morons.

    I never thought that I would witness such rabid acts of racism in my own lifetime. Yet, I am witnessing hate crimes increasingly. Hatred is clearly in vogue as we enter the millennium. There is a tangible, collective evil that is fueled by toxic legions of racists, misogynists, gaybashers, killer cops, genocidal government scientists, elitists, fascists, and various other mad fools. Clearly, like technology, hatred has entered the age of Aquarius.

    Clarence Thomas’s brazen reference to a “high tech lynching”, made in a rare moment of African association inspired by public exposure of his lechery, was a disgrace to all who have actually been lynched for centuries. Byrd and millions of his ancestors are evidence of such neocon slander, as they exemplify the tragedy of real horror rather than shameless exaggeration. America has now admitted that a black man has indeed been lynched. And like the pending revolution, it was not televised.

    It is curious that the media have reported that these three Caucasian animals who abducted and tortured Byrd to death were “looking for women” at the time they morphed into a demonic lynch mob. Could their sexual frustration have played a role in this gruesome murder? Did these monsters come upon Byrd and presume that he was strolling away from/to a superior evening? Perhaps even one in the company of one of the white women who seemed to be hiding from them? Did their twisted racial sex fantasies and sexual envy cause them to see O. J. Simpson and his ilk in the innocent, black, male face of Byrd?

    Nothing anyone could ever have done could warrant such a grisly exit from this world. No rejection, dementia, or displacement can excuse this insanely sinful act. The monsters who tortured and killed Byrd are spiritually doomed. No court of law can begin to make them pay for such a huge karmic debt.

    There is a level of violence that is randomly ruthless. What might have happened had these monsters found a woman that night? Would they have maimed her body as fatally as they maimed the corpse of Byrd? What if they had found a black woman walking alone that night? Would they have ravaged her so as to inspire a new tattoo? Perhaps one to match the prophetic tattoo of a black man being lynched, which one of the killers dons with Nazi-like pride?

    I pray routinely for a world devoid of hatred. I dream of a world where we are all judged by who we are inside. I long for a world where all who are loving are loved. Yet, I deal daily with the sorrow and rage evoked by the knowledge that it will be ages before such worlds exist. And, the dejection and despair that this wisdom breeds festers into hatred within me.

    I hate the rabid, white dogs who murdered Byrd. I hate their rabid KKK kin who slew my grandfather nine years before I was born. I hate that they reportedly feel no remorse. I hate that Byrd’s family and this nation are eternally wounded by this evil slaughter. I hate that so many people are unloved/self-hating. I hate that unloved people hate those of us who are loved. But, what I hate most of all is that such haters will kill again.

    May my own hatred guide, defend, and protect me from the kind of demonic dogs who devoured Byrd. I am a lioness. Lions slay pit bulls like the human dogs who slew Byrd.

    I send all of my love and blessings to the eternal souls of James Byrd, Isadore Banks, and every person who has ever been lynched in America. Even as the new nooses of racism and  elitism are stronger and deadlier than ever, I pray for peace. May all wounded spirits someday rest in a superior place. A place where there is no racism and no lynchings...

     

    JAMES BYRD

     

    MY GRANDFATHER - ISADORE BANKS

     

    Black Trials: Citizenship from the Beginnings of Slavery to the End of CasteTwo Nations : Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal

    White Lies: Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality in White Supremacist DiscourseCallus On My Soul: A MemoirWho's Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black NowAfter the Storm: Black Intellectuals Explore the Meaning of Hurricane KatrinaLife Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History, 1513-2008Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in AmericaLynching Photographs (Defining Moments in American Photography)100 Years of LynchingsSecrets Uncovered: J. Edgar Hoover, Passing For White?

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