Mississippi's Black community was incensed earlier this week after state lawmakers proposed to create a separate justice system within the city of Jackson that would overrule the majority Black city council and put a large swath of the local justice system completely in the hands of state officials, all of whom are white.
As reported by Mississippi Today, the legislation would allow the state's white chief justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court, its white attorney general, and the white state public safety commissioner to appoint new judges, new prosecutors, new public defenders and new police officers to oversee a new district in the city encompassing all of the city's majority-white neighborhoods, effectively creating a separate justice system for whites in what is statistically considered the Blackest city in America.
And it would do so without any of those officials receiving a single vote of support from any resident from Jackson, 80 percent of whom are Black.
"It reminds me of apartheid," Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba told the website Tuesday.
Newsweek has contacted Lumumba for comment, as well as all three of the bill's principal sponsors, who claimed on the floor of the Mississippi Legislature that the foremost aim of the bill was "public safety" amid concerns of crime rates in Jackson.
However, some legal observers described the effort by the Mississippi Legislature as an attempt by white conservative politicians to erode the Black vote in a way that had not been seen since the Jim Crow era.
This is an example of white supremacy at it's best.
Mississippi is pretty much telling white folks we are bringing back Jim Crow.
As reported by Mississippi Today, the legislation would allow the state's white chief justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court, its white attorney general, and the white state public safety commissioner to appoint new judges, new prosecutors, new public defenders and new police officers to oversee a new district in the city encompassing all of the city's majority-white neighborhoods, effectively creating a separate justice system for whites in what is statistically considered the Blackest city in America.
And it would do so without any of those officials receiving a single vote of support from any resident from Jackson, 80 percent of whom are Black.
"It reminds me of apartheid," Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba told the website Tuesday.
Newsweek has contacted Lumumba for comment, as well as all three of the bill's principal sponsors, who claimed on the floor of the Mississippi Legislature that the foremost aim of the bill was "public safety" amid concerns of crime rates in Jackson.
However, some legal observers described the effort by the Mississippi Legislature as an attempt by white conservative politicians to erode the Black vote in a way that had not been seen since the Jim Crow era.
MSN
www.msn.com
This is an example of white supremacy at it's best.
Mississippi is pretty much telling white folks we are bringing back Jim Crow.
