Hunting For Negroes in Mississippi

Deryl Dedmon, Jr., right, could face two life sentences in connection with the killing. John Aaron Rice, left, has been charged with simple assault.


From all accounts, they went looking for a black man to kill. On our day of worship, Sunday, two carloads of white teenagers drove to Jackson, Mississippi to make a statement. It all ended with the brutal death of James Craig Anderson, a 49-year-old auto plant worker.

Anderson was standing in the parking lot at a hotel near his car when a gang of teens allegedly beat him repeatedly while yelling “Nigger” and “White Power!”, according to those who witnessed the act. Robert Shuler Smith, Hinds County district attorney, says the gang climbed into their Ford F250 green pickup truck, floored the gas, and drove over Anderson, killing him.

Smith says the murder was racially motivated. What the criminals didn’t know was that the hotel surveillance camera captured the murder on videotape. Officials say the gang was led by 18-year-old Deryl Dedmon, Jr., of Brandon, Mississippi.


"This was a crime of hate. Dedmon murdered this man because he was black," Smith told CNN. CNN released the footage of the surveillance tape. "The evidence will show that." CNN asked Smith if he thought the intent was to actually hurt and kill a black person, Smith responded: "No doubt about it. They were going out to look for a black victim to assault, and in this case, even kill."

As the teens were partying and drinking miles away from Jackson that night, Dedmon told friends they should leave, saying "let's go fuck with some niggers," according to police accounts. Then, the hoodlums climbed into Dedmon's green truck and a white SUV Cherokee, and drove 16 miles to the western edge of Jackson, a predominantly black area.

"This is the first business that you get to coming off the highway and so that was the first person that was out here and vulnerable," says Smith.

The videotape obtained by CNN shows the teens pulling into the parking lot, stopping where Anderson is standing and then going back and forth between their cars and Anderson. Police say this is when the beating took place. After the beating the teens piling in the white SUV left and some jumped into the green truck.

The videotape then shows Anderson staggering toward the truck. The truck rushes ahead, running over Anderson while continuing to speed away from the scene. After the incident, Dedmon was heard boasting and laughing about killing a nigger. “I ran that nigger over,” Dedmon allegedly said to the teens in the white SUV on his cell phone.

Dedmon is thin, weighing only 130 pounds, and short -- at 5 feet. He has been charged with murder and now faces a possible double life sentence. During a bond hearing his attorney told the court he saw nothing to back up the "racial allegations." A second teen, 18-year-old John Aaron Rice, has been charged with simple assault for participating in the beating. What about the thugs in the other vehicle? Why haven’t they been charged, and why is Rice only being charged with simple assault?

Locally, people are outraged. “That one person(s) can brutally, heinously, inhumanely take the life of another, with such unadulterated, hateful premeditation and then celebrate it is unspeakable,” says Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, professor of Religion at Shaw University Divinity School. “I have no words. My soul, my being vacillates from nausea to deep wailing, ancient moaning rooted in the Maafa, the Middle passage. My soul simultaneously asks, "How long O Lord, How Long," and "Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani!" At this moment too numb to be enraged, my heart aches for James Craig Anderson, for his family and friends. What allows, what serves as a catalyst that gives teenagers permission to do something so horrific in 2011?”

Yes, this is a question for people of faith to ponder. After all we, those who believe in the worth of every life, have done to move past the words and ways of separation. After all that has been done to lift the youth of this generation past the idiotic decisions that frustrated the dream for a better world. After all of that, we have to face this-again.

“It becomes apparent that even in 2011 black life has no value in the “America melting pot,” because we can be murdered by white teens for sport,” says James Blackwell, a 21-year-old graduate student majoring in history. “We live in a nation as the hunted.”

So true James, so true. Time to sing an old song-“We shall overcome, someday.”

Nigger Discussed on the View

Nigger is getting a lot of publicity lately. It all started when Nas threatened to title his new album “Nigger”. Under pressure from community leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, he backed off. The cover art depicts Nas stripped to the waist, the letter “N” outlined in ugly scars on his back as if he were the victim of a horse-whipping.

Nigger found its way to my blog, and the comments came rolling like a might cloud of witnesses. I used the occasion to have an open discussion regarding race, censorship and varying opinions related to the way we approach both.

Nigger took center stage again last week after Jesse Jackson used it during his comment about chopping off Barack Obama’s nuts. Jackson proved that even the most staunch critic of the word reserves the right to pull out the Nigger when it’s the best way to describe the deep angst felt in that moment. Nigger is a multidimensional word. It is a term of endearment. It can be used to separate a person from the ideological views of another person. That Nigger is crazy; as it was used by Jackson.


Jackson led the charge in condemning Michael Richards for shouting Nigger at a black patron at the Laugh Factory. Laugh Factory owner Jamie Masada joined Jackson in calling for a ban on the word’s use. Now that Jackson has been caught using the word, Masada says he wants Jackson to do what comics do every time they say the word on a Laugh Factory stage-pay a fine.

Nigger became the hot topic on the ‘View’ when co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck said she doesn’t like when black people use the word, and cried while trying to explain why. She said no one should be able to say it because “it perpetuates stereotypes and hate.”

“We use it the way we want to use it,” Whoopi Goldberg countered. Goldberg then became upset when Hasselbeck claimed that they both live in the same world, and Goldberg let her know “we do live in different worlds. You don’t understand.”

Barbara Walters also chastised Hasselbeck during the discussion.” You’re not listening, you're just talking," she said.

The conversation came to an end when Hasselbeck burst out in tears asking, "How are we supposed to move forward if we keep using words that bring back that pain?"

Nigger gets so much attention, and it is so misunderstood. White people struggle with discerning how and why black people use it while rebuking them for doing the same. The word is a reminder that we are living in two different worlds, and that these worlds are further complicated by the escalating generation gap in the black community.

Nas said it best during an interview on BET to promote his now untitled album. “The youth think the older generation has let them down,” he said. “They don’t care about how they feel.”

The youth listen to us older folks scold them for using Nigger as a term of endearment. We remind them of the history of the word, and how it stirs up so much that we would rather place in a time capsule never to see again. They tell us they have taken that word and remade it into something useful. The spelling is changed. The meaning is different. If that is true, and I’m not so sure how you can do that without visiting the historical meaning of the word, why is it that they get so upset when white people use it?

They say, those angry young folks, that it is there’s to use in the way they decide. It’s a private word, limited to conversations with other Niggas. If that’s true, and again I’m not sure how you do that, why is it so prevalent in their music? I would be more willing to accept that logic if the primary consumers of Hip-Hop music were black youth. White youth purchase Hip-Hop more than black youth, creating a social and psychological dilemma that will take decades to process.

What happens when you take the terms of your former oppression (and in the minds of some, your current oppressors) and recast them to define yourself? If our identities are structured from the residue of a hideous past, what does that mean related to how we refuse to use new language to communicate who we are?

Nigger brings to the forefront deeper sociological and psychological constructs. It reflects the black communities divide around the ways it views history and the ways it interprets the significance and relevance of that past. If Nas is right, and black youth are angry at older blacks for letting them down, then Nigger stands as a social protest against a generation so enamored with their own quest for the American Dream that they left behind a generation in need of more than they were willing to give.

Elisabeth’s struggle to understand on the ‘View’ reflects black America’s grapple with its own identity. In other words, she is not able to comprehend because black people aren’t able to understand themselves. Black America is left fighting to find meaning within the chaos caused by the burden of history. The youth say take it and remake it. The older say cast it to the pits of Hell, burry it and refuse to revisit those villains from our past.

There’s one problem. When Jesse uses Nigger to communicate his rage, it reminds us that black folks use it behind closed doors, and white folks are confused because of our own bewilderment around the power of our words.

Taking Down to Black People

When I first heard Jesse Jackson’s rebuke of Barack Obama for “talking down to black people,” I conceded that old dude is jealous and in need of medication for an obvious mental illness. It must be tough to witness the rise of a young, vibrant, intelligent, articulate, spokesperson able to accomplish what he couldn’t.

With that being said, I’m not sure this is all about an old man refusing to take his seat in the rocking chair as the next generation takes control.

I listened in disgust as Jackson whispered his desire to cut Obama’s family jewels, and thought homeboy has taken this thing too far. He needs to check himself, take a nap, and rethink all that hostility. This is a new day, and it’s time out for playa hating on Obama. Those old crabs in the barrow were tugging at the best chance black folks have at the White House, and I fumed at each assertion Jackson made.

For a brief moment, I celebrated Obama for telling the truth. Black people are slack. We don’t take care of our children. We cry the victim game whenever things don’t go our way. Our boys are enamored with the thug culture, and our young girls are mimicking the image of the video vixens on BET. I listened to Obama challenge black people to rise above the lure of the streets. I watched as those gathered at the NAACP annual convention rose to their feet in a resounding Amen.

I wanted to join them. I wanted to participate in this great moment, but something was wrong with the rhetoric of his message. An opportunity was missed. Obama made the same mistake as Bill Cosby. He overstepped in his claim, and, in doing so, participated in the further dissemination of negative information regarding the state of Black America.

There is another side to this story, a piece that we all should cheer. Not all black people are poor, drug addicted and pregnant before the age of 20. Not all black men are absent from the lives of their children, hooked on stupid, treat their women like garden tools or measure their manhood by the bulge in their pants. There is more to black America, much more, and I wanted to hear Obama communicate the good rather than fuel the stereotypes that hinder our ability to see past our assumptions.

By casting that large umbrella over black America, Obama has further victimized black people by reminding us of how the problems of a few can be used to categorize what it means to be a part of the whole. Isn’t it time to rethink what it means to be black in America? Isn’t it time to shed light on the good examples instead of casting a bright light on the few among us used to classify what it means to be black?

My mother and father have been married for over 50 years. My father is my role model. My uncles are like my father-black men who took care of their children. My cousins take care of their children. My father and uncles passed on meaningful lessons that have helped nurture me into the man I am today. This is not an anomaly. It’s what happens with black families across the country.

Instead of feeding the flame of negative sentiments regarding the black man, woman and family, let’s tell the truth. What you see on BET doesn’t define black life. I’m fed up with that assumption, and Barack Obama needs to help others understand the truth.

Yes, there are some knuckleheads out there. Some of them are black. Some are white. Some are Hispanic. Some are bi and tri racial. The bad in America can’t be reduced to the state of black America, and I would love it if our leaders would stop and celebrate the good that is Black America.


Maybe that’s what Jackson meant when he said Obama talks down to black people. I understand the need to challenge us to do better, but it sure would help if he could help America see there is more to black life than all those stereotypes pasted in the minds of most Americans.