Re: Racial Tensions Flare Anew in a Texas Town

"more bullshit from the left"

---------------

how does that article show bullshit

Jasper, Texas is still a racist town that is what it proves

On 6/23/12, geoffrey theist <gtheist957@gmail.com> wrote:
> more bullshit from the left you should be ashamed of yourself obama was
> elected by ignorant white people you moron!!!!!!
>
> On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 9:06 AM, Leader of 71 <lesjulia1@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> 1
>> Browsing *1 Coupons*
>>
>> - 50% off 12 weeks of The New York Times home
>> delivery<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/us/in-jasper-texas-racial-tensions-flare-again.html?smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto&pagewanted=print#>
>>
>>
>> <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/us/in-jasper-texas-racial-tensions-flare-again.html?smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto&pagewanted=print#><http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/us/in-jasper-texas-racial-tensions-flare-again.html?smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto&pagewanted=print#>
>> [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>
>> <http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&opzn&page=www.nytimes.com/printer-friendly&pos=Position1&sn2=336c557e/4f3dd5d2&sn1=93743b0d/888159f0&camp=FSL2012_ArticleTools_120x60_1787507c_nyt5&ad=BOSW_120x60_June13_NoText&goto=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ewelcometothebathtub%2Ecom>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> June 21, 2012
>> **Racial Tensions Flare Anew in a Texas Town**** By MANNY
>> FERNANDEZ<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/manny_fernandez/index.html>
>> ****
>> ****
>>
>> JASPER, Tex. — For more than 100 years, a rickety iron fence separated
>> the
>> black graves from the white ones at a cemetery in this East Texas town.
>> Months after the brutal murder here of James Byrd
>> Jr.<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/james_jr_byrd/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
>> a black man chained to a pickup truck and dragged to death by three white
>> men on June 7, 1998, the fence was torn down by residents as a sign of
>> unity and reconciliation.
>>
>> Fourteen years later, Jasper City Cemetery remains segregated: blacks,
>> including Mr. Byrd, are buried near the bottom of the hill, while whites
>> are buried at the top.
>>
>> "It's our custom, here in the South, here in Jasper," said Albert K.
>> Snell, 80, a retired
>> teacher<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/us/in-jasper-texas-racial-tensions-flare-again.html?smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto&pagewanted=print#>
>> who
>> is white and a member of the cemetery's board of directors. "We have the
>> same cemetery, but we don't mix the white and the black graves. They're
>> separate. Put a black up here? No, no, we wouldn't do that. That would be
>> against our custom, against our way of doing things."
>>
>> In recent months, the perpetual, uncomfortable truce between the races in
>> this piney woods town of 7,600 has ruptured, and the feuding has become
>> increasingly public.
>>
>> At the center of the controversy this time is not a vicious crime, but a
>> bitterly fought political feud over the
>> hiring<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/us/in-jasper-texas-racial-tensions-flare-again.html?smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto&pagewanted=print#>
>> and
>> firing of Jasper's first black police chief, Rodney Pearson. Mr. Pearson
>> says he is preparing to sue. The Texas N.A.A.C.P. has asked the federal
>> government to investigate. And former and current white officers who
>> worked
>> under Mr. Pearson have filed federal complaints of their own alleging
>> racial discrimination.
>>
>> The battle dates from last year, when the majority-black, five-member
>> City
>> Council voted to appoint Mr. Pearson, first as the interim and then the
>> permanent chief.
>>
>> Mr. Pearson had been a longtime state trooper in the area and was a
>> former
>> Jasper volunteer fire chief. But Mr. Pearson's selection was opposed by a
>> number of white residents, who believed the council passed over more
>> qualified candidates, including Gerald Hall, a white police captain at
>> the
>> time and a veteran of the department.
>>
>> A group calling itself the League of Concerned Citizens circulated
>> petitions to recall three of the four black council members who voted to
>> hire Mr. Pearson, accusing them of "incompetence, misconduct and
>> malfeasance in office." Hundreds of people signed the petitions, and it
>> appeared that all of them were white, according to a ruling in a lawsuit
>> filed in connection with the recall effort.
>>
>> Two of the council members were recalled in November. When the new City
>> Council was elected in May, it became a 4-to-1 white majority. This
>> month,
>> one of the council's first acts was to vote, 4 to 1, to fire Mr. Pearson
>> at
>> a public meeting after council members and Mayor Mike Lout, who is white,
>> questioned him about his handling of the department. Alton Scott, the
>> black
>> councilman, opposed the move.
>>
>> "The whole thing is racist," Mr. Scott said of Mr. Pearson's firing.
>> "It's
>> based on race. It has nothing to do with qualifications."
>>
>> Mr. Lout, who in May retained his seat after surviving a recall election,
>> did not respond to requests for comment.
>>
>> White residents opposed to Mr. Pearson said their concerns had never been
>> about race, but about his failure in hisemployment
>> application<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/us/in-jasper-texas-racial-tensions-flare-again.html?smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto&pagewanted=print#>
>> to
>> disclose bad checks he had written, including one that led to a 1990
>> misdemeanor arrest. They said Mr. Pearson and his supporters had unfairly
>> labeled criticism of him as racist, and that Jasper — 45 percent white
>> and
>> 44 percent black, according to the 2010 census — had had a long history
>> of
>> black leadership, including R. C. Horn, the mayor at the time of Mr.
>> Byrd's
>> murder.
>>
>> Three white council members — Mitch McMillon, Randy Sayers and Raymond
>> Hopson — said their votes to fire Mr. Pearson stemmed from what they saw
>> as
>> his lackluster performance as police chief, and that firing him had
>> nothing
>> to do with race, though Mr. McMillon said he believed the decision to
>> hire
>> him did.
>>
>> "The chief of police needs to be someone of impeccable character, to
>> demand the respect of his employees and officers and really the town,"
>> said
>> Mr. McMillon, who runs a senior center in town and who won a seat vacated
>> by a recalled black council member. "Mr. Pearson didn't have that. The
>> decision to hire Rodney was based solely on the color of his skin. That
>> was
>> a racially motivated decision. And I think our town reacted
>> appropriately.
>> They were recalled as a result of that."
>>
>> In one way, the dispute over Mr. Pearson's hiring was a small-town
>> political power struggle. Mayor Lout wanted Mr. Hall, the police captain,
>> to be named police chief, but the majority-black council rejected the
>> mayor's recommendation and selected Mr. Pearson. When Mr. Pearson became
>> chief, he demoted Mr. Hall to sergeant and brought in a new captain,
>> angering the mayor.
>>
>> But racial animosity often came to the surface. Two white business owners
>> who supported the recall effort used a racial slur at a City Council
>> meeting and on Facebook; they later apologized.
>>
>> Three weeks before Mr. Pearson was fired, his wife, Sandy, was fired from
>> her job as an officemanager. Mrs. Pearson, who is white and who did not
>> work for the city, said she believed her firing was due in part to the
>> controversy over her husband.
>>
>> Throughout the disputes, Mr. Byrd's death and Jasper's struggle to heal
>> from it have been in the background. In June 1998, Mr. Pearson, then a
>> state trooper, was the first law enforcement officer at the scene of Mr.
>> Byrd's killing and found his body. Mr. Hopson, one of the new council
>> members, was related by marriage to Shawn A. Berry, one of the three men
>> convicted of murdering Mr. Byrd.
>>
>> Lance Caraway, a white gun-shop owner who gathered signatures for the
>> recall effort against the black council members, is one of the local
>> businessmen who used a racial slur last year. "You get angry at a few
>> people, sometimes you call names, right?" Mr. Caraway said. "It was a
>> poor
>> choice of words."
>>
>> Gary L. Bledsoe, president of the Texas N.A.A.C.P., has asked the United
>> States Department of Justice to monitor race relations in Jasper and is
>> preparing to request that authorities in Washington withhold federal
>> financing to Jasper because of what he called racial discrimination in
>> the
>> firing of Mr. Pearson. "Clearly he's been the victim of a lynch-mob
>> mentality in the area," Mr. Bledsoe said of Mr. Pearson.
>>
>> Mr. Bledsoe and black leaders in Jasper said the segregated cemetery was
>> one example of the ways in which many here perpetuate a hostile racial
>> attitude. Several black residents, including one of Mr. Byrd's relatives,
>> said they feared speaking out against bias in Jasper and in support of
>> Mr.
>> Pearson out of fear of retaliation. A longtime board member of the
>> cemetery, which is not city-owned, said a black family could not bury a
>> loved one in the white section because all of the plots were taken, and
>> the
>> plots had been bought along racial lines.
>>
>> Mr. Pearson said that throughout his tenure as police chief, he was
>> treated differently because of his race. He said he was cut out of the
>> city
>> budgeting process and was never given the honor of a swearing-in
>> ceremony.
>> He said city officials used a scoring system from the Texas Police Chiefs
>> Association to rank the candidates for the position — a system that he
>> and
>> his lawyer, Cade Bernsen, said had never been used in the past and that
>> was
>> meant to give credence to the claim that he was underqualified.
>>
>> While still police chief in April, Mr. Pearson filed a complaint with the
>> federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the city,
>> alleging
>> racial discrimination. "A nightmare," Mr. Pearson said of his time as
>> police chief. "I feel that I ran the department as best as I could with
>> the
>> support that I had."
>>
>> Mr. Hopson, a retired state trooper, said his family ties to Mr. Berry
>> had
>> no bearing on his decision to fire Mr. Pearson. "There's not a blood
>> relationship nor a legal relationship between Shawn Berry and I," he
>> said.
>> "He was part of our family when his mother was married to my brother. I
>> personally knew Rodney for many years and I liked him. It's strictly
>> based
>> on performance. It had nothing to do with race."
>>
>> At the cemetery, one fence, the one separating the white and black
>> graves,
>> came down in January 1999, but a different one went up years later. A
>> cast-iron fence surrounds Mr. Byrd's grave. In 2004, two white teenagers
>> desecrated the grave with racial slurs and knocked over the headstone.
>> **
>> ******
>> **
>> MORE IN U.S. (19 OF 26 ARTICLES) Chief Justice Offers Hint at New
>> Timing for Health Care
>> Ruling<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/us/politics/new-timing-hinted-on-supreme-court-health-care-ruling.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fnational%2Findex.jsonp>
>>
>> Read More
>> »<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/us/politics/new-timing-hinted-on-supreme-court-health-care-ruling.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fnational%2Findex.jsonp>
>> Close
>>
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