Paranoid or Traumatized

By the middle of Alabama, the warm air had begun to thicken like grits on the stove, ready to be salted and buttered. The space between me and my boyfriend of a month and a half who had graciously offered to drive me into the notoriously volatile racial climate of the south, had become pregnant with something I could not quite put my finger on. It was a strange mixture, somewhere between anxiousness, fear and curiosity. As African Americans born above the Mason Dixon Line in the post civil rights era , we were aware of what had gone on, and might still go in the deep south. We'd heard the stories of the maltreatment, the struggle and the lynchings, but they existed in our minds more as faint memories of a horrific mini series we might have encountered on the History Channel than a story we had experienced ourselves.

Those memories stung, and lingered more intensely for my parents, who lived in New York during the blatant injustice, the demonstrations, and the slew of killings of innocents and truth seekers. Though they had the blessing of distance, they did not share with us in the luxury of being so far removed from these travesties by time.
"I am in Mississippi." I said.
Silence… "Holy mackerel." my mother said almost in a whisper.

My Father, ever the former Air Force something, maybe sergeant, always ready to respond to a crisis, begins to speak. He has been listening on the line as my parents often do when I am talking to one or the other.
"Now I don't want to scare you, and I am not sure how much things have changed or remained the same, but you are in MISSISSIPPI. I want you to be careful. I don't want you walking around at night alone. Stay in groups. I don't know how safe it is out there. "

"Ok Daddy." I replied.
Though I have repeatedly downplayed their comments. I understand the apprehension and caution in both of their voices. It is the same apprehension that prompted me to say yes to being escorted in my travels. I too was concerned about whether Mississippi had had a change of heart, or had at least become more aware of the rules America says it plays by. But after both successfully getting through Alabama, entering into Jackson and being disarmed by the lack of dirt roads and the prevalence of the Walmart Super Center's and upscale strip malls, I began to relax. I even imagined myself in a warmer greener Delaware. However, after dropping my boyfriend at Medgar Evers Airport I began to think about where I was and what I was doing.

"Holy mackerel, I was in Mississippi. A place where it makes more sense to spend $140 on a one way ticket back to North Carolina because it perceived too dangerous to travel alone. A place where I have to be careful what I say and where I go, because there is no telling whether racism or maybe even violence lurks behind the next corner. It's 2009, and the fears that gripped the black community from slavery to the civil rights movement are still very much alive and well in the mind of a progressive northern raised educated Black girl who has traveled the world, and her family's. How much more do these fears and memories of hatred and injustice affect the Black people who lived through it, or the young people who are only one generation removed? And what of their white counter parts?

Its often said in relationships that a cheater will always cheat and an abuser will always abuse. Can the same be said for the mentality of the oppressor? Can all white people of Mississippi be considered oppressors? My desire to engage in the work of reconciliation asserts my belief that the answer is no on both accounts. God has reconciled all things through Christ. But the damage that has been done in Mississippi has to be more than prayed away. Like the abuser and abused in therapy, Racisms participants must confront their past, their motives, their mentalities and figure out where the malfunction is and work together to figure out how never to repeat the atrocities of the past. I pray that God uses me in some way to shine light on dysfunction as well as examples of a better way. I also hope God reveals some of my own faulty thinking so that at the end of my Journey, Mississippi isn't the only thing that has evolved.