REGGIE JACKSON: WHEN WHITE PRIVILEGE COMES UP AGAINST A PANDEMIC

By Reggie Jackson, Milwaukee Independent

“The unwelcomed, unwanted, unwarranted and force-induced intrusion upon the campus of the University of Alabama today of the might of the Central Government offers frightful example of the oppression of the rights, privileges and sovereignty of this State by officers of the Federal Government. This intrusion results solely from force, or threat of force, undignified by any reasonable application of the principle of law, reason and justice.”

Alabama Governor George Wallace Speech, while refusing admittance of black students at the University of Alabama June 11, 1963

“It was with a heavy heart that I found it necessary to sign the bills of the Extraordinary Session of the General Assembly and to close the High Schools in the City of Little Rock. I took this action only after the last hope of relief from an intolerable situation had been exhausted.”

Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus Speech, justifying closing public schools to protest supreme court ruling to integrate schools, September 1958

When I saw the videos on the news from Brookfield, Wisconsin, and the images from places like Austin, Texas, Lansing, Michigan, Carson City, Nevada, Indianapolis, Indiana, Annapolis, Maryland and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania of throngs of white people, most without masks, none socially distancing, demanding that their governors “liberate” their states from lockdown orders I was reminded of images of events in Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi years ago.

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Many of the people in these crowds were adorned with American flag scarves around their faces, American flag shirts and pants, MAGA Hats, Trump/Pence 2020 shirts and hats, and dozens had rifles strapped over their shoulders while wearing bulletproof vests outside the state capital buildings in Lansing, Michigan and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania…

There were more than a thousand lining Bluemound Road in Brookfield. I saw people with American flags and I saw people that had Confederate flags. This was not in Mississippi or Alabama or Arkansas but right here in good-ole “Midwest Nice” Wisconsin.

Read what Jackson saw here

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