A message to black Pasadena
By Andre Coleman 08/30/2007
My great-great-grandfather killed slave owners to gain his freedom and then fled Mississippi for Louisiana and adopted the name McCray, which survives in my family to this day. He lived with the fear of being hunted down and lynched for the rest of his life.
I mention my ancestor because it seems like a lot of black folks are still crippled by the past, so much so that it has become a crutch whenever things go wrong.
There's a flier circulating in the community depicting a black man with a noose around his neck hanging from Pasadena City Hall. The flier is meant as an attack on Mayor Bill Bogaard's role in local developer Danny Bakewell's failed efforts to develop the Heritage Housing Project.
Let me say right off, Bakewell certainly has a lot to complain about regarding the way the city handled its business concerning Heritage Square, an affordable housing project located on a 2.85-acre parcel just north of the Foothill (210) Freeway on North Fair Oaks Avenue. Two different city-appointed committees recommended to the council that the Bakewell Co. be given the right to exclusively negotiate with the city for the proposed 134-unit mixed-use project.
Instead of entering into those negotiations, the council over-scrutinized the project. Ultimately, Century Housing, the financial arm behind Bakewell's proposal, backed out ending Bakewell's chances.
But Bakewell has not been lynched, nor has he been subjected to Jim Crow-like tactics in any way, shape or form.
If this had happened during the Jim Crow era, the dozens of African Americans who supported him would not have been able to pack the council chambers and complain about the process. Nor would Chris Holden or Jacque Robinson, who are African-American, be on the City Council.
The tragic fact is, between 1882 and 1968, 5,000 African Americans were horsewhipped, drowned, hanged and stoned for simple things like drinking from the wrong water fountain or attempting to vote. Undoubtedly, thousands more lynchings went unrecorded. In the South, many African-American family members simply disappeared, never to be heard from again, like my great uncle Albert who went to the store to buy a loaf of bread and never came back.
With that said, I believe it's about damn time all of us stop trivializing racism and exploiting it for our own interests and get honest about ourselves and our community.
Aug. 17, 16-year-old Ebony Huel was shot in the head outside the Underground, an illegal nightclub in Pasadena, about two blocks north of John Muir High School, the same high school that legendary civil rights figure and baseball great Jackie Robinson graduated from — a high school that today is failing our children and recently lost another principal, with the seventh in six years set to take over when school starts next week.
Maybe along with packing the council chambers, residents should have been asking questions about the Underground, what they could be doing to help teachers and students and stopping the flow of drugs into the Northwest and other parts of Pasadena.
We could be the biggest agents of change in our communities if we just start sending our children the right messages. Tell your child: No one is going to hire you if you don't pull your pants up and learn to speak well; paying your bills is more important than buying spinning rims; hanging out in front of the liquor store all day drinking 40s isn't cute; and not all of your problems are the white man's fault.
Whoever put out that flier would do well to remember that.
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT