Political Gumbo: Let’s Set the Record Straight

During Monday’s City Council meeting during the typical phone calls on matters not on the agenda, one caller made a comparison that I just did not get.

The caller referred to Anthony McClain as Pasadena’s Emmett Till. 

Till, as anyone that’s bothered to read up on Black .. er.. American History knows, was lynched after being accused of whistling at a white woman.

He was tortured, shot, wrapped in a barbed wire, attached to a 75-pound fan and tossed in a river.

His mother Mamie famously demanded that her son’s brutalized beyond recognition body be exhibited in an open casket so the world could see the horrors of racism in the South.

How that compares to McClain is completely beyond me.

McClain, as locals know, was killed by police during a traffic stop after he fled from police.

The point here is not which death was worse. The point is that we don’t have to do this to deal with a police shooting.

Local residents can discuss the McClain shooting and call for an examination of police policy and sleep well at night.

That’s exactly what Black people could not do in Mississippi in 1955. They had no political power.

Today, three African Americans sit on the City Council. The City Attorney/City Prosecutor is an African-American woman. The City Manager and the Mayor are men of color.

And from where I sit none of them is afraid to speak their mind on racism, police accountability or other sensitive topics.  

Pasadena is not the Jim Crow South.

The policies don’t come close.

And let me say now to the white progressives who cannot wait to write to me and explain how racism works. 

Miss me with that.

Being “woke” only means you were asleep before. 

Go back to climate change and talk to me about something you have experienced first hand. 

The horrors of the South have impacted every man and woman in this country and yes the ramifications continue to reverberate across our Republic. 

I lost family members in the Deep South during Jim Crow. Maybe they drank out of the wrong drinking fountain, maybe they looked at the wrong woman too long.

We don’t live under that specter in Pasadena. Nobody is dragging Black people out of their homes while their family stands by helplessly to witness the death march.

As we examine the McClain shooting, activists are screaming for an honest assessment on what is happening in our City.

We also have to be honest about what’s not happening. 

Emmett Till had to die to be heard. 

Think about that when you turn in your virtual speaker card to be heard at the next City Council meeting.

And after you hang up the phone, be grateful no one is kicking in your door.