COLUMN: Learning from a Texas jury

From Andrew Exum's, "Perilous Orthodoxy," Fall '99 From Andrew Exum's, "Perilous Orthodoxy," Fall '99It took just 2 1/2 hours for a mostly white jury in Texas to remind America just how far the South has come over the past few decades. Last Tuesday, a jury of 11 whites and one black man found John William King, 24, guilty of capital murder for the death of James Byrd, Jr., 49. Not too long ago, it was unheard of for a white man to be found guilty of much of anything over the death of a black man. In order for any verdict to be reached, the case first had to make it to court, which was sadly a rarity in such cases. In fact, the last time Texas put a white man to death for killing a black man, the year was 1850 and the black man in question was another's white man's favorite slave. The South, however, has seen fewer and fewer racially motivated crimes over the past few decades. That's just one of the reasons why the brutal killing of Byrd -- who was dragged behind a pick-up truck for several miles, alive until decapitated by a road-side culvert -- has sparked shock, outrage and overwhelming sadness all over the South. "Not again," moaned Southerners old enough to remember the dark days before and during the civil rights movement. The crime against Byrd was bad enough, Southerners both black and white felt, but atrocities like these only serve to further cement the national perception of the South as an unrefined wasteland full of white supremacists and helpless, oppressed blacks. So it was no surprise that the "guilty as charged" verdict sent back by the jury was so welcomed. "We have come too far for the individuals who have committed these types of crimes to take us back in time," NAACP President Kweisi Mfume said in a statement last week. Mfume is right, of course, but I'm not so sure many people in America weren't secretly hoping for something other than "guilty" from that mostly-white jury in Texas. As long as the South can be readily identified with racial hatred and oppression, it lets the rest of the country off the hook to some extent. "That kind of stuff only happens down South," you might say. Popular movies and books would agree with you. If you come into contact with a white racist in a movie, chances are he or she has a Southern accent, regardless of whether the movie is set in Mississippi or San Francisco. And why are we so quick to forget our own neighborhoods when looking at racism in America? You can't look at Philadelphia or other Northern cities and not see racial divides. Remember when Grey's Ferry almost blew up not too long ago? How about when South Central L.A. went up in flames? The sad fact is that many in our country seek to compartmentalize racism into regions. The South has long been demonized as a region of hate, while the North is seen as more or less moral and upright. The North can ignore its own racial problems as long as the South holds up its role as the country's racial netherworld. The danger of such a stereotype is that it carries over onto those unlucky enough to travel northward with a Southern accent. As one of those "sons of the South," I can attest to the fact that unlike many thought-but-unspoken generalizations made about people of color, many are all-too-ready to tell just how they feel about your Southern accent and the supposed baggage that comes with it. The irony of the whole situation is that while Southerners are the ones most often stereotyped as racist, they're also the most likely to have been educated from an early age about race relations and social harmony. One of the lasting effects of the civil rights movement has been that Southerners have been forced to acknowledge, confront and fight their shameful past. Northerners, however, haven't gone through such an education because they have been too busy placing the burden of America's racial problems elsewhere. Until we break down regional perceptions, America outside of the South will forever be running in place as far as race relations are concerned. Looking for racism in America? Forget the map. Look in the mirror.