Sunday, April 24, 2011

No, use this Bible.

I was driving back home after being away for the weekend and I wound up listening to a radio show on Public Radio International called Smiley & West hosted by Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornell West. They were talking about a lot of things, but the most interesting thing to me was an interview with an author who wrote a book about the Great Migration. (The Great Migration being the moves of millions of Black people in the 1900s from the south to the north.) The radio show really caught my attention when I heard that when testifying in courtrooms in the Jim Crow south, there were different Bibles used for Black people than for white people. Are you kidding me? White people really think of everything.
On the radio show, the hosts Smiley and West, and the guest, author Isabel Wilkerson, talked about whether Wilkerson thought it a fair analysis to describe the discrimination and prejudice Black people experienced as terrorism. That really made my ears perk up, because I'd never heard the term terrorism used that way, but I have to agree that that's a good way to describe it. There was also a lot of talk about the caste system where Black people were relied upon for cheap labor but were discriminated against every time they turned around. (It's a whole 'nother ball of wax to talk about cheap labor and who's relied upon to provide it nowadays, so we can save that topic.) Wilkerson also mentioned that it wasn't okay for a Black motorist to pass a white motorist regardless of how slow the white motorist was going. Ick.
The book is called The Warmth of Other Suns and Wilkerson won a Pulitzer Prize for writing it. She conducted 1,200 interviews as a part of her research, and she mentioned the positive impact moving had on all of the descendants of Black people who migrated north and the impact those people have had on American culture. (Toni Morrison being one.) Go Isabel Wilkerson. I can't wait to read the book.

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