Sometimes, when I notice things, it takes a minute for it all to register, for me to make sense – or realize that I cannot make sense – out of what I see.

That’s what happened last week. The world was shocked at the news of the death of Steve Jobs, our own American guru who arguably may have made the biggest difference in all of our lives than anyone since Thomas Edison or the Wright Brothers.

I was shocked and saddened; Jobs was fairly young and his genius will be missed.

But I was also saddened because two other people died last week who also changed the lives of many Americans and yet their deaths were hardly mentioned or even covered by the news: the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and Prof. Derrick Bell.

Though they fought in different venues, both Shuttlesworth and Bell were fierce and tenacious soldiers in the battles for civil rights waged during the 60s and beyond. While Shuttlesworth faced overt violence and danger as he fought for basic civil rights of African Americans, including their right to vote, Bell fought a more insidious violence, that non-verbal racial animosity that keeps segregation a reality in the academy.

Shuttlesworth put his life on the line in the fight for justice; Bell put his livelihood on the line as he fought pristine educational establishments on their hiring practices which too often kept African Americans and women out of tenured positions.

Shuttlesworth was a Christian minister; Bell was the first African American to earn tenure at Harvard University, a position he sacrificed for his beliefs.

The omission of mention of the deaths of these two men bothered me so much that I ended up tweeting Anderson Cooper, asking him if CNN was seriously not going to cover these stories? Though I did not see or hear reports all that day, I was told they were done …

But the “below the fold” attitude regarding the deaths of Shuttlesworth and Bell which I observed on that day gave me pause. I had attended a meeting just that day sponsored by the Children’s Defense Fund at which Marian Wright Edelman said that the state of black, brown and poor people in this country is as bad as it was immediately after the Civil War.

She is not the only person who has said the same. The fact that the progress made by black people especially seems to be moving backward and not forward is sobering and troubling. The old adage, “If you’re white, you’re right, if you’re yellow, you’re mellow, if you’re brown, stick around, but if you’re black, get back” seems to be a permanent part of America’s ethos.

Steve Jobs was an admirable man, a genius for sure, but Shuttlesworth and Bell were admirable and heroic, risking life and livelihood for the sake of dispossessed people.

Why doesn’t America care about that?

It is the 21st century. Why hasn’t America gotten rid of her peculiar virus called racism? To add fuel to that thought, my daughter told me of how a very upscale neighborhood near us had an incident of racial hatred just last week; someone spray-painted the “n” word on the car of an African American family that recently moved in.

“Mom,” she said, “Isn’t this the 21st century? Are we still going through this kind of stuff?

Apparently so. It is troubling, but the truth of the matter is, America is not well, not even close. In spite of the Civil War and the civil rights era, the virus called racism is still eating away at the core of this nation.

That is a candid observation.

Nothing New Under the Sun

The lump in my throat that had been there since the execution of Troy Davis on September 21 had just about dissolved when I looked on my Facebook page and saw a piece written by Reuters News Service that said the parole board in Georgia had spared the life of a convicted killer hours before his scheduled execution.

Samuel David Crowe, 47, was to be executed on Thursday, but his sentence was commuted to life in prison without parole.

Crowe has been convicted of murder and armed robbery. He admitted the same.

And he is white.

The story said that Crowe admitted killing a lumber store manager, shooting him three times and beating him.

The story said that Crowe “takes full responsibility of his crime and has shown …remorse.” His sentence was commuted, apparently, because of his remorse and because he has been a good “model prisoner.” His attorneys argued that when he committed his crime, he was suffering from symptoms caused by cocaine withdrawal.

The lump in my throat has come back. Now it’s not a “sad” lump. It is an “anger” lump. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Race continues to matter, and matter big time, in this country.

Why, how could the Georgia parole board be so able to grant clemency to this white man, in a case where there is, apparently, no doubt about his guilt, and yet refuse to grant clemency for Troy Davis in a case in which there was substantial doubt?

Something is terribly wrong.

There is nothing new under the sun. In the Bible, “The Preacher” in the Book of Ecclesiastes proclaims the same. “The Preacher” was distressed. So am I.

This candid observation gives me goosebumps. And it makes me really angry.

The Day After a Lynching

I wonder if what I am feeling is what my ancestors felt the day after a lynching.

I am surprised at how deep is my pain over the execution of Troy Davis. I have read plenty about miscarriages of justice toward black people in the South, how judges and courts and juries, without shame, put black people, too many of them innocent to death.

I have read the stories about how too many times, law officials stood aside and let injustice occur, often over a lie about a black person told by some white person, oftentimes a white woman. Just their word was enough to condemn a black person to death.

I have read about how sometimes, mobs would raid jail houses and take accused black people out of jail and lynch them. At least one of the stories I read told of how a mob lynched a black man right outside the jail and courthouse.

I have read of how black people were lynched and white people came to the event, like it was entertainment, bringing lunches and children, taking pictures, and having a grand old time while a human being, who happened to be black, was hung.

I have read the story of Emmett Till, how this young boy from Chicago, was lynched because he reportedly whistled at a white woman. I read the story about the horror of Rosewood, a town demolished because of a white woman’s lies.

I have read much, but not until yesterday did I viscerally feel what our ancestors must have felt the day after a lynching.

I cannot for the life of me figure out why our sophisticated justice system could not have found a way to hear Troy Davis’ case again, to remove the mound of doubt surrounding his case. I cannot figure out why someone didn’t risk his or her life or job to save a perhaps innocent person. What harm would it have done?

I cannot stop weeping. Every time I think of what our country did last night, it makes raw my knowing what our country has done throughout history, allowing innocent black people to be lynched.

I learned, in studying lynching, that it wasn’t just “hanging” that was considered to be lynching. It was any form of unjust murder -a beating, drowning, burning – whatever – of a person.

That’s what happened last night, or at least that’s what my gut and spirit are telling me.

This I know: we cannot stop trying to find out the truth about what happened the night that the off duty police officer was killed. Surely, we cannot stop. There are people all over the world, white, black and brown, who are disturbed about what happened last night in Georgia.

But I, for one, am wrestling. Maybe I was supposed to not only intellectually know what lynching was, but what it must have felt the day after a lynching …because this is painful beyond belief. If we cannot believe in and trust our justice system, what do “we the people,” who are not white and wealthy, really have?

It is a sobering and disturbing question, and it is a candid observation.

About “The Help”

Well, I read the book, “The Help” and I saw the movie. I liked them both.

But as I was talking about both the movie and book with friends, we came to a consensus: what was depicted could never have happened. We came to the conclusion that such a book would never have come to print, and that anyone who participated in a “hush and tell” project such as the brave maids did in this fictional adventure would have been destroyed. The violence perpetrated against black people seeking dignity and equal rights back then, and the white people who tried to help them, was vicious, relentless and largely permissible.

What, then, was or is the value of this story?

Perhaps it is that some people, white and black, were introduced to the “race problem” or America for the first time. In the theater where I saw the movie, there was a young African American male who wept openly. I asked him how old he was; he replied 30. Somehow, the story of “how we got over” was never told to him. He was surprised, shocked, and while he was glad the Negro maids were able to tell their story, he was angered by how they were treated.

He said he had a new respect for his grandparents. Call that progress.

I suspect that this sugar-coated version of life in the South for black people “back then” was about all many people would take. The horror of that time period, the domestic terrorism that was a trademark of American life, is hard to recall, hard to remember, and hard not to resent. America is still infected with racism, but nobody will admit to the disease if the presentation of the disease is too rancid. Hence, this “feel good” version of what “the help” went through was all that could have been withstood at this point.

But the tragedy of not being able to tell the real story is that much of the country and the world (the book has been published in 35 countries) is that those who really want to keep blinders on will walk away thinking and truly believing that American terrorism was not so bad, that all of the hee-hawing that is heard from black folks is a bit overdone. Heck, if a group of Negro maids could get together and just tell the truth, then what’s everyone always complaining about?

That attitude begs the real story to be told. After reading “The Help” and seeing the movie, I delved into Alice Childress’ book, Like One of the Family: Conversations from a Domestic’s Life. The difference between the two books is stark…but that is not surprising. Childress was the great-granddaughter of a slave who was born in South Carolina who also once worked briefly as a domestic. Her experiences were far different than those of Kathryn Stockett. There is an authenticity in Childress’ book that is absent from Stockett’s.

That is not to say, however, that there was and is no value in Stockett’s work. If just a few more people can become just a little more knowledgeable about these United States and how it treated its African immigrants, the quest for a post-racial world might be a little more realistic.

Perhaps.

That is a candid observation.