The Criminalization of Joy and the Legalization of Intimidation

Once you think law enforcement in the South has reached the nadir of stupidity, someone in Georgia, Alabama, Florida or Mississippi turns around and shows that their intelligence and morality can sink even lower into the muck:

[T]hree people are facing charges and the prospect of $500 fines and six-month jail terms after they were accused of cheering during the [Senatobia High School] graduation ceremony, held at Northwest Mississippi Community College on May 21.

“We were instructed to remove anyone that cheered during the ceremony, which was done,” Zabe Davis, the chief of the campus police and a Senatobia High alumnus, said Wednesday. “And then Jay Foster, the superintendent, came and pressed charges against those people.”

As I read this, I immediately suspected that the people charged would be black and the perpetrators of this idiotic waste of taxpayer dollars would be white. As it turns out, Jay Foster, the superintendent, and Zabe Davis, the chief of campus police, are white. And, yes, the accused are African Americans, according to the report from WREG TV, which also indicates that the number of people charged was four rather than three.

Don't the cops in Mississippi have better things to do than put people in jail for expressing happiness?

Meanwhile, in Texas the governor is about to sign a bill that will allow people to carry guns on college campuses. But Texas is behind the times: Mississippi passed a similar law in 2011, and Northwest Mississippi Community College is one of the schools where you can pack heat as long as you got your certified instruction from the NRA.

That makes Mississippi the state where you can go to jail for shouting someone's name, but intimidating people with guns on college campuses is a God-given right, dammit!

It makes you wonder: if someone had shot those people for disturbing the peace in such an undignified fashion, would the cops have taken them in for questioning? Or would they believe it to be a clear-cut case of justifiable homicide?

I guess these proud family members -- instead of shouting the graduate's names -- should have fired their shootin' irons into the air in celebration. Who could possibly object to gunfire? It's a Second Amendment right! Freedom of speech is just the First Amendment, and everyone knows two is greater than one!

This is what white people just don't get about the situation of African Americans in this country. They have to put up with kind of crap every ... single ... day of their ... entire ... lives.