Swing And A (Ole) Miss

In 2007, Michael Lewis, author of "The Blind Side," explained what the Touhy family and Michael Oher got themselves mixed-up in: 

"Google him now, he's on the Dean's list at Ole Miss, which, which says a lot about the Dean's list at Ole Miss. There are schools like Ole Miss, and Ole Miss isn't even the best example, they seem mainly to exist to sustain a football team and then they take these kids many of them are from the underclass - poor black kids from ghettos around America - and let them into the school. And then they make a track for them inside the school - and the track is not designed for them to get an education, or even to engage with the school outside the football team."

So Ole Miss - the school that barred James Meredith at the door a few months before I was born - is making another appearance on TMR, in less than a week, for mistreating blacks. And Michael Lewis said they do it like it was almost common knowledge.

Michael Oher trusted the Touhys (what choice did he have?) and the Touhys, probably innocently, fed Michael Oher into the racist Ole Miss system. And now, Michael Oher is, at the very least, under-educated, and becoming quite paranoid, having been through the sinister system, and situation that, upon recognition that this is your life in a 'America' that represents "freedom" to so many, you can't even start to fight back (that shit's practically not allowed) also, probably, turned his mother into a crackhead decades before. I mean, what-in-the-fucking FUCK?

Like I said, I'm 62 years old. Born right after James Meredith staged his protest at Ole Miss, for Michael Oher and I. That's too long for all these people, in all these powerful institutions, to be openly getting away with any form of racism (in a society supposedly enlightened to it) for many blacks to ever believe we'll win. Because the evidence, all too often, says it ain't necessarily so. 

No matter what happens from this, the Touhys will come out of it, maybe emotionally scarred, but essentially fine. But Michael Oher - no matter how much money he has - started his life in this situation, and he will end his life in this situation. And that's the reality of racism, that escapes Michael Lewis, the Touhys, all the folks at Ole Miss, and even America itself.

But not me, Michael Oher, his Momma, or probably most of the people we know.

Hell, I was once chased from an ATM by a mob in France.

And there's your reason for reparations, again: this is our lives, and it's just not been fair.