Dialogue cracks door for action on race relations
By JIMMY GALVAN

Jasper leaders believe that now that the racism dialogue has been opened, further action is needed to help move it forward.

CNN reported on the town of Vidor last week and drew a fire storm of controversy as residents of the small town claimed the national network painted the town wrong. CNN wanted to hold a town hall meeting in Vidor to discuss the racism issue but was turned away by Vidor Mayor Joe Hopkins.

Several Jasper residents participated in CNN panel discussion held at Beaumont’s Jefferson Theatre. Participating in the discussion were Walter Diggles, Rev. John Hardin, RC Horn, Booker T. Hunter, Ben Breed, Paul Woods and former Jasper County District Attorney Guy James Gray.

“Everybody is not going to lie about racism,” Diggles said. “The dialogue will help those people who are sincere about making things better for everybody. I think it was a good dialogue and I think people need to step back and say am I doing enough?”

Diggles said he was contacted by CNN a couple of weeks ago to find out how Jasper dealt with the issue of racism after the James Byrd dragging death.

Diggles pointed out that racism is a part of American history and it can’t

be denied.

“You can’t ignore your history,” Diggles said. “In the first CNN report on Vidor, they said there is no more Klan and no more hate but discrimination still exists.

“While it is not attractive and real popular to talk about these issues, the fact of it is that it is true,” Diggles said. “People who are really racist, you are not going to change them. But we need to realize that it is still there.“

Gray, who served as district attorney over the Byrd murder cases, said Vidor and East Texas has been painted in a bad light.

“The vast majority of the people in Vidor are good, solid people,” Gray said at the forum. “But there is a presence of Klan there that has been there all my life. There are pockets of racism all over this state and all over East Texas.

“Vidor may have a slightly deeper pocket than some of the others but it is there,” Gray said. “And I don’t think it will be a long time before it’s erased.”

The forum brought to light that pockets of racism still exist in areas throughout the country. Diggles pointed to panel discussions in which a Houston pastor said he faced

racism in Vidor, as well as a Jewish man who had problems in the city.

“If you listen to some of the whites that are really proactive about it, they know that slavery had some real horrific aftereffects,” Diggles said. “Slavery in America was a really dark period in America.”

He said that progress, though, has been made in the battle against racism.

“We have made a lot of progress but to say that the playing field is equal is not true yet,” Diggles said. “You don’t start a race as far behind as blacks were and expect to

catch up having to jump the many hurdles that we have had to jump over.”

He said that the lingering effects of racism, though, are still evident in the criminal justice system, poverty and drug usage.

“Those are the areas that racism are still more noticeable than anywhere else,” Diggles said.

During the forum, author Tim Wise pointed to the disparity of healthcare for lowincome blacks in the nation.

“In 1998, when James Byrd was dragged to death behind that truck in Jasper, the Centers for Disease Control

reported that there were 70,000 blacks in this country who would not have died but did die because they did not have the same access to highquality healthcare as white folks. That’s 70,000 James Byrds.”

He said the forum did take steps in the right direction to bring the issue to the forefront of conversation once again.

“I think racism is more of an issue than we really want to admit,” Diggles said. “The discussion and the dialogue is good especially among the clergy because spiritually there is a role that the church has to play in racial reconciliation that politics and economics can’t play.”

Joyce King, who authored “Hate Crime” on the murder of Byrd in Jasper, spoke the same words during the forum.

“I do not believe in closure. I believe in healing,” King said at the forum. “I believe in racial reconciliation and we haven’t done that in this country.

“Part of the problem is trying to forget history when we have never learned history,” King said. “Black and white is in a marriage arraigned by God. Neither one of us can get a divorce. We ought to stop trying.”