{"id":73840,"date":"2019-03-27T14:27:47","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T20:27:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=73840"},"modified":"2019-03-27T12:34:54","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T18:34:54","slug":"the-view-from-the-balcony-mississippi-bubbles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/the-view-from-the-balcony-mississippi-bubbles\/","title":{"rendered":"The View from the Balcony: Mississippi Bubbles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019m back in SoCal, and I\u2019ve been reading\na few news stories about us (Mississippians). I have to say, if those stories\nare all a body\u2019s got to go by, it\u2019s easy to see why we come off looking like\nidiots so often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It can be hard to make out all the progress we\u2019ve made in social justice issues over the last 75 years when much of the world still views us through the long, dark lens of bigotry, gender bias, racism, and isms ad infinitum ad nauseum. Defending her against such long-held historically based bona fide well-earned stereotypes is more often than not an exercise in futility. Just as the denial level about the injustices that still exist in our state is high, the denial level about reforms we\u2019ve implemented is even higher in our knee-jerk judgmental info-saturated poorly informed culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m reminded of the chorus of a Jim\nWeatherly song:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mississippi, this is your song,<\/em>
Sung for all the righteous people<\/em>
Who won\u2019t let you forget when you were wrong . . .<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, there are plenty of folks who love\nto press their boot of oppression on the throat of Mississippi. Can you blame\nthem sometimes? But the saddest thing is how we keep doing it to ourselves\u2014\ncutting off our nose to spite our face. No, not everyone, but a heaping helping\nof us, enough to keep electing officials who seem to live with a secessionist\nmentality that\u2019s about as patronizingly transparent as a condescending, molasses-drawled\n\u201cbless your heart.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you, kind sir\/madam for seeking to\nenlighten us to the errors of our ways. I know you mean well, but we don\u2019t need\nyou outsiders coming here and telling us what we\u2019re doing wrong when you got\nplenty of fish to fry in your own fal-de-ral fantasy land of a state\u2014bless your\nheart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 (To\nbe clear, yes, I am talking about flags and statues and such, including our\nillustrious governor\u2019s recent slap in the face to Bennie Thompson\u2019s work to\nhave Medgar Evers\u2019 home declared a national historical landmark. But I\u2019m talking\nmore about the belief by many that showing acts of kindness to the\nstill-oppressed in our state is so damned noble, refusing to see that even such\nacts, no matter how kindness-motivated they are, perpetuate institutional\nracism. Then there are those who say, more or less, \u201cGit over it!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every state has its cache of ca-ca and\nit all stinks. But here\u2019s the deal: if you\u2019ve been sitting in a pile of it all\nyour life it probably smells like Chanel No. 2-Poo. Even if you notice the\nstench, you\u2019ve been there so long that you\u2019ve got it just the way you want it\nand you\u2019re as comfortable as a dung beetle in a warm cow patty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But stirring things up sometimes is one\nof the most likely ways to invite change and sometimes we need somebody from\nthe outside to agitate the white-washing machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was listening to Mr. Zimmerman on my\ntrain ride yesterday. He sang an early one of his, \u201cBlack Cross,\u201d about an old\nblack man who read a lot, believed what he believed, and minded his own\nbusiness. Hezekiah Jones was visited one day by Reverend Greene of the local white\nchurch. When Reverend Greene could not extricate a conversion of the courteous\nMr. Jones\u2019 soul, the good folks of Reverend Greene\u2019s white church hanged\nHezekiah Jones, saying, \u201cWell, he had it comin\u2019\/Cause the son-of-a-bitch never\nhad no religion.\u201d Sounds like Mississippi sometimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have friend who says that living in\nOxford is like living in a bubble. Thank heaven for Mississippi bubbles like\nOxford and all the people\/places\/things that make them up\u2014pockets of hope in this\noften-inhospitable state of hospitality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Mississippi Don Ho might sing: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tiny bubbles in the state<\/em>
just might save us,<\/em>
if it\u2019s not too late.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gandhi famously said, \u201cBe the change that you wish to see in the world.\u201d Wish it. Manifest it. Be a bubble. Live it, and get with all those other bubble-people. Let\u2019s fill the state with suds. Lord knows we could use a good washing every 100 years or so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m back in SoCal, and I\u2019ve been reading a few news stories about us (Mississippians). I have to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":39753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11902],"tags":[7987,5,10286,10878],"class_list":["post-73840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-randy-weeks","tag-jim-weatherly","tag-mississippi","tag-randy-weeks","tag-the-view-from-the-balcony"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/2017-5-11-View-from-the-Balcony.jpg?fit=600%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}