By Rene Childress

I have been purposely carrying you with me as we crisscross our historical timeline. I have been using stories from our past and more current eras. By using this vehicle I had hoped to dissuade those of you who have bought into the notion that racism is somehow a thing  of the past  and we need to quit addressing it and simply move on. 

Racism is alive and well as these stories continue to demonstrate. There are many of us who would like to believe that the ugly and miserable  effects of racism have somehow magically disappeared. The statistics of poverty and poor education outcomes  and lack of health care are somehow the result of black people being lazy and recalcitrant. 

They are really the results of the continuing systematic and cultural racism that is a foot in the United States of America. There are those among us that believe Affirmative Action is no longer necessary (many are the same people that opposed it originally by the way) because we have achieved a race neutral society, a truly colorblind nirvana. These good citizens refuse to see the monsters that walk amongst us and cast a wide shadow that frighten and concern a black person or family that becomes stranded by the side of the road. 

Our current story begins as the twentieth century slips into the ether of time  and begins the dawning of the new century. It is June 7,1998 we find ourselves on a lonely road just outside Jasper,Texas.  We see James Byrd walking down the road on his way home.  We see a pickup truck ambling along with three young white men who are out for a good time. 

They happen upon James Byrd striking out for home. The young men are members of the community of Jasper. They are white. This is important for this story. 

It is their whiteness that is the essence of the story. It is their whiteness that has blinded them so much that they cannot see the humanness of James Byrd that they are about to strip him of. They cannot see the pain and suffering that their actions  are about to cause his family and community. 

The trio, Shawn Berry, Lawrence Brewer and John King, spy Mr. Byrd walking along the road on his way home. A plan quickly arises that this is an opportunity to sate their unsatisfied  bloodlust against their desired victims of choice: a lowly black person out alone.

Shawn Berry offers to give Mr. Byrd a ride home . Mr. Byrd gets in the back of the pickup truck because he knows Shawn Berry from around town and assumes he was friendly.  He  is never seen again alive. 

A witness put him in the back of the pickup truck. What occurred following his accepting this ride home would once again shock the nation. Maybe the nation needs to no longer claim to be so shocked because these events have occurred continually without abatement across all the decades of the last century. 

I dare you to find a decade where these ghastly stories do not arise. 

James Byrd after accepting a ride from these three young men is put upon in the most horrendous and inhumane ways imaginable. He had his face painted black. He was beaten. He was kicked. He was defecated on.  He was urinated on. He was spat on. He was finally bound to the back of a pickup truck and dragged to death. 

The autopsy report suggests that he was still alive as they drug him along the road. Death occurred when his head hit a culvert along the road separating his head and one arm from the rest of his body. After their orgy of racism they dropped his tattered body off in front of a cemetery. 

They continued on with the rest of their day. Even stopping by a barbecue. In this case law enforcement acted swiftly and responsibly. All three men were eventually tried and convicted.

The Byrd family truly gets no solace from the fact that the murderers  were caught. They would rather have their son, brother and father in their family bosom. Why does this keep happening? 

We have seen enough of these cases to understand that this is a systematic problem that requires systematic solutions. We need to tell our children that racism is wrong. We need to teach them the truth about how these things  came about. 

Why would three young white men at the closing of the twentieth century be repeating the crimes that their ancestors were carrying out during the dawn of twentieth century and before. Is it in their DNA? I think not. It is in the DNA of the culture and the society that shaped them.  I do not believe that God makes evil people. I believe that evil and racist people are made by the environmental triggers that surround them as they mature.