Stephen A. Smith might be right. Maybe it's wrong to judge Jerry Jones for something that happened 65 years ago. Maybe he was just "curious." How could anyone know?
he discussion centers around this photograph, taken on Sept. 9, 1957, when white students tried to prevent six Black students from integrating North Little Rock High School.
One of those white students is Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.
It worked.
They actually turned the Black students away. The North Little Rock School District would not integrate until 1964.
And Jerry Jones was right in the middle of it all.
To be fair, Jerry Jones was a sophomore in high school. And, according to the Washington Post, he said:
“I don’t know that I or anybody anticipated or had a background of knowing … what was involved. It was more a curious thing.”
So even though some people ALWAYS find a way to contort themselves in a way that lands on the side of the powerful white establishment, maybe Smith is right about this one. Maybe Jones didn't know what was going to happen.
How could he have known?
If Jerry Jones, a high school football player, didn't know, it meant he wasn't listening when his COACH warned the team that there would be trouble.
Wait... Didn't he tell the post that he had heard?
Maybe he had no clue that people in his community were planning to use violence and the threat of violence to preserve white supremacy. Maybe he didn't communicate with a lot of his neighbors
Oh, wait...
It would also mean that Jones had no idea that his school was even planning to desegregate. After all, this happened on Sept. 9. What was the biggest story in Arkansas at the time?
No... What was the biggest story in AMERICA?
But hindsight is 20/20. What were people saying at the time? Who prevented those students from integrating NLRHS?
According to every report I could find, the Black students were confronted by 10 white students in front of the school.
But that's not what turned them around
The top of the stairs
You know what? Maybe I'm making this up.
Maybe we should ask someone who was there, like Richard Lindsey, one of the North Little Rock Six
Apparently, not only did Jones not see the national, local and state newspapers, we are supposed to believe that EVERY STUDENT THERE knew what was going on except Jerry Jones.
Yet, for some reason, Jones decided to go...
To the TOP OF THE STAIRS
So what happened at the top of the stairs?
But here's my beef with this entire conversation and white supremacy in general.
Forget about all those racist students and their parents and the cops and the school administrators or the government.
What if Jerry Jones wasn't a violent segregationist?
What if he really didn't want his classmates spitting on Black kids & using the n-word? What if he wanted to attend an integrated school? NO ONE expects teenage Jerry Jones to stand up to a mob by himself, but ask yourself this?
Why are the "good white people" never around?
Why is it always Black people vs ALL the white people?
Why weren't there 25 or 10 or 6 white kids out there standing for what's right?
Why weren't a dozen white parents out there?
Why can't news reporters find them?
Why aren't they on the police force or the school board?
THAT IS THE POINT.
The point is not that Jerry Jones was a violent segregationist. The point is that he can watch something like this and never MENTION IT FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE. The point is not that Jones has never hired a Black head coach...
It's about how people can rationalize racism with fantastical excuses that have no basis in logic or reality.
Jones not knowing what was going on that day is as unbelievable as the CEO of a company with an 80% Black workforce saying: "I can't find a qualified shift leader"
And the crazy thing is, PEOPLE WILL BELIEVE IT.
But maybe I'm one of those CRT people who distort history by applying today's standards to the past.
Instead of listening to me or the guy who was actually there, let's see how newspapers back then described what happened.
But this isn't about 1 day 65 years ago.
It's about NOW. It's about WHY this inequality persists.
But I truly understand why some people ALWAYS seem to land on the side of defending whiteness: I even understand WHY some people will stand and watch and do nothing.
We are all just trying to reach the top of the stairs.
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After the French Revolution, people who supported the old monarchy, feudalism and a heirarchal sat on the right side of presiding officer of French Parliament and the liberal, non-aristocrats and members of the third estate usually sat on the left.
During the 1900s Karl Marx’s ideas began to spread across Europe. In France, the people who supported monarchies (the right wing) were the most vocal opponents of communism, so they referred to Marxists as the “far left.”
First of all, let’s get this out of the way, NO ONE deserves hate. It is wrong
Yet, year in and year out, there are more anti-Black hate crimes than any other category.
And according to the latest FBI data there, are nearly 3 times more anti-black crimes than anti-Jewish crimes.
But of course, there are SIX TIMES more Black American than Jewish Americans, so people just divide the number of hate crimes by the percentage of the population and Jewish Americans are more likely to experience hate crimes…
A few years ago, while working for one of the greatest sports franchises of all time, I learned a very important life lesson.
A thread
Every summer, my hometown's recreation department hosted a "stop the violence" summer league to keep kids "off the street."
It eventually became so competitive that teams would recruit out-of-town ringers, leaving local basketball players shut out of their hometown's tournament
My homeboys asked me to sponsor a team and I agreed. Unlike the other teams, no one on my team played college ball. They were essentially regular dudes from the hood who just loved basketball.
Many people don’t know that the phrase “crabs in a barrel” comes from an old Geechie Gullah tale.
A thread:
A long time ago, it was impossible to catch crabs. They were too crafty. Even when they got caught in a net, other crabs would come and free them. Then, one day, a fisherman found a crafty old crab in his net one morning. He was just about to eat it when the the crafty old crab said:
“Please Mr. Fisherman, don’t eat me. Please don’t eat me!”
“Why wouldn’t I eat you?” said the fisherman
“Because I’m crafty, old, & other crabs respect me,” the crab replied.
Fisherman: What good does respect do me? You ain’t nothing but a crab”
Crafty Crab: Well crabs are very stupid, and I’m smart. They’ll believe anything I tell them
7 years ago, I wrote a small piece about a man who was falsely accused of a crime.
A few days later, I got an anonymous telling me to look up the woman they called “the evilest white woman on earth.”
What happened next is the absolute wildest story you’ll ever hear
A thread
The story begins in 2017, when an editor asked me to fill in for a coworker and do a quick write-up about Lamonte McIntyre, who spent 23 yrs in prison for a double murder he didn’t commit.
I thought it was weird his conviction wasn’t actually overturned