Sheets of a Different Color

I have vague recollections, as a child, of hearing my dad talk about the "Republic of New Afrika." It seems that in my hometown of Jackson, Mississippi, some nuts once holed themselves up into a building and declared independence. The story seemed a little funny at the time, but the usual derisive laughter people like these -- Dad called them "idiots" -- usually elicited from him was absent. Beyond that, I don't remember anything else. He never told me anything else and by the time I was old enough to ask, I'd mostly forgotten it. I also noticed growing up that one of the "police buildings" my dad, a cop, went to from time to time had the name "Skinner" on it. As I grew older, I learned that this building was the Jackson Police Academy, and that Skinner had been killed in the line of duty. Until today, that was all. These were just vague memories of childhood, with no particular significance to me.

Today, on a visit to JacksonCrime.org, the crime blog of Jacksonian Alan Lange, those memories and their larger significance came crashing together like freight trains at a stop named "Obadele." After visiting Jackson several times in recent years only to be shocked each time with new evidence of its decline, I now keep tabs on the town. There's a sort of morbid curiosity to it. It's a little like watching the first part of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged from a safe distance, except for the fact that what's happening there is neither safe nor distant. Let me explain. (I credit Lange with pointing me to all news links below.)

A few days ago, I stopped by Lange's blog and saw the name Obadele all over the place. "Interesting," I thought. "This has got to be either another multiple offender that Hinds County let off the hook one time too many or, with that name, some rabble-rousing Black Moslem politician." Sad to say, news accounts and experience have made both species of subhumans somewhat unremarkable to me. Well, I was partly right about both counts, but what is worrisome is not so much Obadele himself, but the fact the government of the city of Jackson, whose job it is to protect its citizens from the likes of Obadele, has recently chosen to honor this individual.

First, let's get an idea of the greatness of the "man" the city of Jackson chose to honor. Sid Salter, the opinion editor for Jackson's Clarion-Ledger has this to say about Imari Obadele.

Obadele ... was convicted of conspiracy while a member of the RNA, a black separatist group that sought to establish its own black nation in the South.

He was president of the RNA when, in August of 1971, Jackson police and FBI agents got into a shootout while trying to serve an arrest warrant on RNA members who were barricaded inside a fortified Jackson home.

Jackson Police Lt. William Louis Skinner was killed. Two other officers were wounded.

This murder may have been premeditated, according to this account in the Clarion-Ledger

Lt. Skinner was shot through his car window and police helmet on Aug. 18, 1971, when police and FBI raided the RNA's headquarters at a house on Lewis Street. Obadele served more than five years for conspiracy, assault and firearms possession.

Just days before the shootout, Obadele had as much told Lt. Skinner that he was going to kill him [emphasis added] after Skinner had called Obadele "meek as a lamb," Bill Skinner said.

"I'm a commander, I'll show you how meek I am. This is going to be a long revolution," Obadele said, according to a 1971 police report.

Hinds County District Court Justice William Skinner, the murdered policeman's son, has this to say.

"This man is a terrorist," Bill Skinner said. "He ran a terrorist organization, and there is no difference between him and Osama bin Laden."

He chastised Jackson Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. and the council members who did not speak out against Obadele.

"I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this crap," Bill Skinner said. Only two [of seven] council members, Ben Allen and Marshand Crisler, have publicly said Obadele has no place speaking in City Hall.

And who would want to have Obadele speak at City Hall? Sid Salter describes the small-time race-baiter aptly.

Now comes Jackson City Councilman Kenneth Stokes — the clown prince of Jackson city politics — inviting Obadele to speak at a Black History Month event at City Hall this week. The move brought swift condemnation from Skinner's son, Hinds County Court Judge Bill Skinner, and Hinds County Sheriff Malcolm McMillin — both of whom called the Obadele visit an insult to law enforcement officers and called the appearance racist activity.

I'm not going to waste much ink here on Mr. Stokes. Mississippi has seen more than its share of white politicians who used racial confrontation to attract votes and Stokes is but a cheap imitation of the same tired model.

Anyone who argues that racists come only in white skin simply isn't paying attention. Black racists are visible on Mississippi's political landscape and the harm they do to all of us is real [italics added].

Salter's assessment is a masterpiece of understatement. Obadele helped murder a cop and is now being held up as an example to our black youth at a speaking engagement. Nevertheless, I'll let Obadele's acolytes, Kenneth Stokes and attorney Chokwe Lumumba, show and tell further. First, there's this exchange at a Jackson City Council meeting.

During the council's 10 a.m. meeting, a face off between both sides roiled emotions. Obadele and local lawyers Chokwe Lumumba and Imhotep Alkebu-lan sat in the front row, about eight feet from the council. [obviously to appear intimidating]

Lumumba said white supremacy is still alive in law enforcement as it was in the 1970s. Referring to Hinds County Sheriff Malcolm McMillin's stance against Obadele's visit, he said white supremacy is alive today, but different.

"Law enforcement is slicker now. We know he (McMillin) has at least one council member here," Lumumba said, referring to Crisler [who is black and recently served in Iraq], who sat just to Lumumba's right.

"He wears a black face, but I saw him smiling there with McMillin (Monday at the sheriff's news conference)."

Crisler, Ward 6 councilman, is also a Hinds County Sheriff's Department deputy.

Deliberately extending Lumumba's comment time, Stokes asked him questions, including whether Obadele had visited the council before.

Later in the meeting, Stokes took aim at both McMillin and [Jackson city councilman Ben]Allen.

"McMillin lives in Clinton. How can he run things here?" he said. "Ben Allen is the biggest racist [Translation: he's white and stands up for himself.] I know, but at least he stays in Jackson."

Allen, seated next to Stokes, burst into laughter along with many others in the chamber.

Clinton, where the sheriff lives, is in Hinds County.

And what else can Lumumba add? This.

"Dr. Martin Luther King has a criminal record," Lumumba said, surrounded by other Obadele supporters. "Are we going to tell him he couldn't speak if he was here? He had one like Imari -- a false one orchestrated by a racist state that had a political purpose."

So this is what the "civil rights" movement has devolved to today: glorifying a racist (who was convicted of conspiracy to murder) and remembering, not King's dream of equal treatment for all, but the fact that he had a criminal record. So does the fact that King and Obadele have criminal records somehow exonerate Obadele or does it give street cred to King? Is respect for the law something for white bigots and Uncle Toms to worry about, but not something worth teaching to black youths? I'd like to know. If I remember Jackson's ward boundaries and demographics correctly, I believe Stokes's ward is the one of the most crime-ridden in a city whose murder rate is five times the national average and whose inhabitants have a one in four chance of having their houses broken into in any given year. My parents remained in Jackson until a man on drugs tried to break in while they were home asleep. Now, the odds are that a black family lives in that same splendid location instead. Is this what Stokes wants for his fellow black Jacksonians?

Salter compares the actions of the RNA to those of the Ku Klux Klan, except that he makes the mistake of focusing too much on the fact that the black racists ostensibly want to harm whites. The fact is that, as Ayn Rand put it so well, the smallest minority is the individual. Racism is merely a symptom of a deeper problem: the refusal to make moral judgments of other human beings as individuals. Today, in their revealing attempts to glorify the black equivalent of the Klan, the rump of the civil rights movement reveals its moral and intellectual bankruptcy. They are teaching black children by how they act and by whom they place on a pedestal that it's OK to fail to control your emotions, or to show no consideration for others, or to break the law. Anyone who says otherwise is a "racist." These "leaders" are teaching black youths not to judge the actions of other people -- or (much more importantly) themselves -- as long as they're black.

The consequences afflict the black community like a cancer. Just visit Alan Lange's blog some time and recall when you do that Jackson is now about 70% black, if the descriptions of most of the suspects don't tip you off. I recall hearing about a civil rights march -- a real one -- long ago in Alabama, in which dogs were turned on a little black girl. Is it somehow better to take the life of a boy's father? And what does it mean when you hold that up to your children as an example? Do you really want your children to become like Obadele? Ethics, or morality -- and the willingness and ability to judge oneself that go with it -- is not how Whitey keeps the nigras down. Morality is a requirement for living one's life and today's civil rights movement is sytematically eradicating it from the minds of young blacks.

My father kept me from learning the whole truth about the RNA for a very good reason. Today, black "leaders" are not only exposing children to this savagery en masse, they're holding it up as an example! In doing so, they're far worse than Salter imagines. Indeed, they're turning the dogs of savagery loose upon the very children they profess to be better than any others: their own.

-- CAV

Updates

2-8-04: Corrected several typos and omissions.