Didn't see this posted anywhere. Please delete if blah blah blah blah blah you know the drill. Anyone see the Nightline town hall meeting last night on this? I'm from the area (Beaumont). Glad I'm not there anymore, and glad to instead now have a legitimate right to say GO ROCKETS!! http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2002/twotownsofjasper/aboutthefilm.html Two Towns of Jasper About the Film Whitney Dow and Marco Williams are old friends. Growing up, they didn't talk much about race. Then came one of the most appalling crimes in recent American history — the brutal murder of African-American James Byrd, Jr., who was chained to a pick-up truck and dragged to his death by three white supremacists in Jasper, Texas. Like many others, Dow, who is white, and Williams, who is black, were shocked. Unlike others, they decided to do something — they made a film. "Two Towns of Jasper," the documentary that resulted from their efforts, will have its broadcast premiere as part of the P.O.V. 15th Anniversary season. Sharing the concerns of so many Americans, Dow and Williams wondered how and why this had happened. If an explanation was possible, they thought, who better than the citizens of Jasper to provide it, since both victim and perpetrators were locals? So Dow and Williams took to the streets of Jasper during the murderers' trials to see what the town had to say. And they decided to do it with segregated crews: Williams filmed the black community, Dow filmed the white community. The resulting portrait in "Two Towns of Jasper" is an explicit accounting of the racial divide in America — a disturbing montage of contrasting realities that somehow inhabit the same place and time. "Two Towns of Jasper" airs Wednesday, January 22, 2003 at 9 p.m. ET (check local listings) on PBS. "Two Towns of Jasper" is the twelfth program in the 15th anniversary season of P.O.V., television's longest-running series of independent, non-fiction films. The killing of Byrd horrified the nation. On a June night in 1998 three young white men from Jasper — John King, Lawrence Brewer and Shawn Berry — went out for a drive. After some drinking, they picked up Byrd, a local man, chained him to the back of their truck and dragged him for three miles. Byrd was alive for much of this ordeal. Eventually his head was shorn off and his body disintegrated. It was a modern day lynching. The filmmakers talked to 30 Jasper citizens — evenly divided between black and white — compiling 240 hours of video. What emerges first is not the picture of a racist southern town — Jasper has a black mayor and an integrated city council. The authorities moved vigorously to apprehend and prosecute the killers, anxious to show the world that Jasper was not racist. Many leading white and black citizens were similarly anxious to counter the infamy of the crime, pointing to the generally harmonious relations between races. But "Two Towns of Jasper" reveals a more troubled and nuanced reality behind the demonstrations of racial unity. Beneath honest outrage lurks a legacy of mutual distrust between blacks and whites — and wildly differing accounts of the state of race relations in the town. Some whites in Jasper feel angry over the negative attention the crime has brought, and claim complete surprise that such an atrocity could have occurred in their town. Others feel a need to point out the faults of James Byrd, Jr., as if his personal shortcomings somehow help explain the crime. One of Jasper's white citizens, an avowed white supremacist, is neither shocked nor surprised by the crime. He sees the town's reaction to it as a commentary on the true relationship between blacks and whites. For Jasper's African-Americans, the white community's response to the crime was just another sign that racism is experienced differently. They can recall a history of racist incidents and attitudes that pervade the town and the region. For them, Byrd's murder is not an anomaly, but an extreme expression of a danger always felt just beneath the surface. Oddly, however, few in either community speak out to confront these atrocities. In fact, it takes Byrd's murder and the attendant media glare before a fence in the local cemetery, used to separate black from white, is removed. "Whitney and I spent a lot of time talking about the Byrd murder and how a film might excavate its deeper meaning," says co-producer/director Williams. "We were both horrified, of course, but the more we talked the more we experienced moments where our viewpoints diverged. We realized the divergences were rooted in our racial identities, our different racial experiences. That was the germ for the approach we took." ""Two Towns of Jasper" is not so much about the murder of James Byrd, Jr., as it is about two perspectives on the murder," adds Dow. "The facts, after all, weren't in doubt. It's a question of how you explain those facts. Listening to the black and white communities of Jasper talk about the crime turned out to be a pretty startling revelation of the depth of the division that exists between black and white Americans." Revelatory and sobering, the film ultimately invites intense and often provocative discussions about race in America; its history, its future and most importantly, how the question of race plays out in our daily lives.
Yeah I saw this show. And I was shocked when people brought up negative stuff about James Byrd. I couldn't believe it. How is that relevant? Not all the white people did, of course, but some did.
I unfortunately only made it through the part where this family of fatasses talks about the "personal shortcomings" of Byrd. I got so pissed off that I knew I had to turn it off or else my anger would transfer to something else.
My buddy, who is from Pocahontas Arkansas of all places, thinks that Eastern Texas is the most racist place he has ever lived. He works as an enviromental engineer so he's lived in some freaky backwoods places on the gulf coast over the past 10 years.
As a native of Northeast Texas (Texarkana native area) for the past ten years, I would have to disagree big time with this. I moved to Texarkana from the middle of nowhere in Arizona and I remember my dad telling me part of the reason he wanted to move here was so I could grow up in a place with hispanics, african americans, etc and learn and experience other cultures. I went to a school that was almost exactly half white and half black, and we never had major racial blow ups. Very rarely did anyone try to play the race card when problems came up. The only time I can remember a racial flare up was when the band director got fired for failing his drug test and he tried to blame it on racism, but that was kind of stopped in its tracks when they hired a black guy to replace him. Interracial dating was generally accepted by all of the students, although sometimes a persons' parents would make a big deal out of it. I feel that in the ten years i've lived in Texarkana I haven't found a place that I'd rather live in terms of racial relationships, even though things definitely aren't perfect.
My grandmother is from that area and I go to family renuions up there. It is near Jefferson, TX. I have to say I get a bad feeling driving through that part of the state. Not like something is going to happen to me, its just a feeling I guess. BTW, Jefferson's claim to fame, visit the old plantations. I guess some people are into that.
Do they have the old houses there? I don't want to see stuff like that because of what they were (slave labor plantations), I just like old houses from that point in American history.
Yes, I know that is the whole point, the old houses, but I know for a fact that my ancestors were slaves in that part of the state so I'm not down. But I have no problem with people wanting to visit those old houses.
Interesting commentary on race relations - especially since I think we truly haven't seen the whole picture until we've seen these issues from both sides. Can't speak for East Texas, but I grew up in the Deep South and the racial attitudes there were not good. For the most part, it wasn't overt - I never noticed any lynchings or cross burnings - but people would segregate themselves and each of the two races (we had no Hispanics to speak of at the time, and few Asians or anything else) felt distrustful of the other. People preferred to get around the issue by ignoring it. When it did come up, though, some people (who were polite to members of the other race, at least to their face) came up with statements like these: -"We have to move out of the neighborhood. It's turning all black." -"I don't feel safe down there. All these black people..." -"We can't go see 'Waiting to Exhale'. We're too white for that." -"You made all A's and B's this semester? What are you, an 'Oreo'?" White and black kids would sit on opposite sides of the cafeteria, join different clubs, and even walk at different speeds in the hall. It was sadly noticeable. Some schools even had separate black and white homecoming queens (a holdover from the difficult first days of integration) - fortunately, our school didn't do that and lots of black and white kids got voted on for offices and awards like that. Every year, there was a formula for who got to go to Girls' and Boys' State camp: one black boy, one black girl, one white boy, and one white girl. This was openly acknowledged. While people might individually have a few friends of the other race, no one would go cross the line and be seen with a whole group of them. Of course, a lot of these things aren't violent, but there's still tension there, and a barrier. Eventually the paper did an expose on local "skinheads"... some of my classmates knew these white supremacist kids, and had never realized their friends were involved in activities like that. Those things did go on, albeit underground... one girl claimed that her parents were in the KKK and "that's why I hate n*****s", though I suspected (hoped) she was lying. The worst things came from members of the older generation. Our parents' generation had problems with anyone who dated interracially (of course, that meaning black and white... same white person could go out with someone Asian, Hispanic, or whatever else they could find, and no one would have cared). Our grandparents' generation was completely intolerant, saying things like "them n*****s are getting an attitude and thinking they're equal to us white folk". At best, any time they talk about someone black, they have to make sure to describe that person's race first, like it makes them another species or subspecies of human altogether. I sometimes got the feeling the civil rights movement was not looked upon favorably and they didn't understand why everyone wasn't happy being "separate but 'equal'" (and we know how "equal" that was). They claimed that things weren't really that bad in the days of segregation. Well, I went to college, took classes, and looked up information on the Civil Rights movement from the perspective of African-Americans and those involved. Wrote a term paper about integration in Mississippi. I got a whole different story from the whitewashed version my family wanted to believe. Apparently the Southern (and, probably, East Texan) attitude, at least among those who are white, is one of the races being fundamentally different. Lots of well-meaning people, including my generation, have this attitude and don't know it. Thank goodness I spent my first six years outside the South; otherwise I might have had that same concept ingrained into my head like everyone else did. I think a lot of us did feel bad about the past and want to help heal things... we just didn't know where to begin. In Houston and the rest of Texas, things were much more reasonable. Thanks for reading my long post, if you got this far...
SirCharlesFan.....actually, he lives between Beaumont and Vidor, so I should rephrase and say SOUTHEASTERN Texas. He says there is a "clan presence" there.
One time about nine years ago our track team was coming back from a meet in Louisiana, and they stopped at a gas station in Vidor to get some food. They got their stuff and the first student in line was black. The clerk totally ignored him and asked the next guy (who was white) to come up. He said "no, this guy is in front of me" and the clerk completely and repeatedly refused to acknowledge the black student. The whole track team took whatever they were going to buy, put it right down on the floor and walked out without buying anything. Every time I drive through East Texas, I think about the racism that I assume is rampant there. Although that is prejudicial and stereotypical for me to think that . . . I guess I just think about the stories I've heard and read about and I formulate a negative attitude towards those places. In a lot of ways that's really the same thing that they do -- assume things and form a negative perspective about a group of people one does not know. I suppose I kindof feel badly about that, but either way, I just don't feel completely comfortable in those areas. Fantastic post Isabel -- I feel the same way about what I've observed as well, although most of my time has been in the midwest -- Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. When I moved overseas, my eyes really opened up to other cultures and races. And here in Houston, I think that there is MUCH better racial integration than anywhere else I've lived. I'm not saying it's perfect or there isn't any tension or that there aren't many problems, but compared to a lot of other places I've lived, Houston is much more racially diverse and cross-culturally integrated. I meant to watch this show on PBS -- on Democracy Now last week they had one or two shows on it and they were both very interesting. It will be shown again I hope?
