This framing is brilliant. The Delta as microcosm really shifts how we see poverty from personal failrue to structural design. I grew up near similar places that celebrated heritage without teaching the painful economics behind it, always seemed like we were only getting half the story. It's kinda wild how we normalize extraction then act suprised when entire regions stay poor, dunno how we fix that without rethinking what development actually looks like.
Thanks for this great discussion by two of Mississippi’s finest minds. Yes, learning not to see poor people as failures but to see the failure of a system that was designed to oppress and maintain selected people as the permanent labor base is a major step toward change. Yet, celebrating the blues without teaching the sociopolitical matrix that created the blues is the farce that maintains plantation culture in all aspects of life. Moreover, all non-religious private schools founded after 1954 are all in reaction to The Brown Decision. Finally, the rhetoric of “depopulation” was taught to me by my maternal and paternal grandparents, when they would proclaim often, “the racist white man hates black people so much that he’ll hurt himself to hurt us,” which is to understand that Mississippi is purposefully designed to be last in everything so that it can be remain ground zero for the Confederacy and the Neo-Confederates that arm President Agent Orange.
Two of Mississippi's finest minds!
Indeed!
This framing is brilliant. The Delta as microcosm really shifts how we see poverty from personal failrue to structural design. I grew up near similar places that celebrated heritage without teaching the painful economics behind it, always seemed like we were only getting half the story. It's kinda wild how we normalize extraction then act suprised when entire regions stay poor, dunno how we fix that without rethinking what development actually looks like.
Thanks for this great discussion by two of Mississippi’s finest minds. Yes, learning not to see poor people as failures but to see the failure of a system that was designed to oppress and maintain selected people as the permanent labor base is a major step toward change. Yet, celebrating the blues without teaching the sociopolitical matrix that created the blues is the farce that maintains plantation culture in all aspects of life. Moreover, all non-religious private schools founded after 1954 are all in reaction to The Brown Decision. Finally, the rhetoric of “depopulation” was taught to me by my maternal and paternal grandparents, when they would proclaim often, “the racist white man hates black people so much that he’ll hurt himself to hurt us,” which is to understand that Mississippi is purposefully designed to be last in everything so that it can be remain ground zero for the Confederacy and the Neo-Confederates that arm President Agent Orange.