By Rosetta Miller-Perry
Throughout the history of oppressed people in America, and particularly Blacks, there has always been those within our population who cooperate and assist the evil forces of systemic racism. Every slave revolt that failed, whether it was Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey or Nat Turner, was unexecuted, in large part because there were slave snitchers informing their masters about the plan. Fast forward centuries to the present, we still have collaborators who hate being Black so much they are willing to help undermine others, while serving as apologists and mouthpieces for white injustice.
The most recent collaborator is Kenny Collins, the police chief of Brookhaven, Mississippi. While his skin color is true Black, Collins’ heart and sympathies are with the system – true white. He told the world that Brookhaven doesn’t have any “race problems”. To make matters worse, he stated this right after a horrible incident Jan. 24 involving D’ Monterrio Gibson, a Black 24-year-old FedEx driver. Gibson was simply doing his job, delivering packages on his route, when self-styled white racist vigilantes Gregory Case and Brandon Case (father and son) got in their vehicle and chased him for several miles while shooting at him.
If this reads like a rerun of what happened to Ahmaud Arbery it was, except fortunately, this time Gibson wasn’t killed. Collins’ police force allowed Gregory Case and Brandon Case to walk into the Brookhaven Police Department with their attorneys eight days later and turn themselves in. Thankfully, the father was charged with conspiracy with a bond set at $75,000, while his son was charged with aggravated assault with a bond of $150,000. But Gibson’s family and team of attorneys are fighting for an upgrade of charges to a hate crime and attempted murder, which it was.
This isn’t the first racially charged incident to occur in Brookhaven. Back in 2020, 23-year-old Vivian Hathorn, 37 weeks pregnant at the time, went into early labor after an incident with a white Brookhaven police officer. Officer Lisa Jackson responded to a call from Hathorn, who reported a traffic emergency—her vehicle’s accelerator became stuck at approximately 90 miles per hour. When Officer Jackson arrived at the scene, she drew her gun, pulled Hathorn from her vehicle, pushed her onto the ground, stomach down, and handcuffed her. Black Chief Collins supported white Officer Jackson, who faced no disciplinary action and still remains on the police force.
So what we have here is an unfortunate familiar sight, a gutless, cowardly collaborator happy to participate in the continuing oppression of his own people. According to Collins, there’s no racism in Brookhaven, and no problems in his department. If there was a lynching, Collins would probably still claim there was no problem and lynching was real. Mississippi whites put another Black collaborator in power, and they may rest easy now, knowing absolutely nothing will be done to stop acts of violence against Black citizens, regardless of how egregious they are because they have this Black man in charge in Brookhaven.
Kenny Collins is far from the only collaborator happy to keep a racist system operating with impunity, There’s South Carolina Senator Tim Scott. He calls himself a Black Senator, but actually he’s only another Trump Black lapdog. In the last year he has helped scuttle the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in the Senate after it passed the House, and voted with Republicans as they kept the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act from even coming up for a vote. Scott claims to understand the history of racist police mistreatment of Blacks and the ugliness of Jim Crow, but he’s just another spineless Black collaborator.
That’s also the case with Black clowns like Candace Owens and Larry Elder, so-called “conservatives,” who do nothing except spew out hate-filled messages that denigrate and demean Blacks and poor people. Candace has been condemned online and accused of “verbal gymnastics” after she alleged that Black Americans were the country’s :most murderous group, a comment that is so racist not even Klansmen and Nazis would say it publicly. Unfortunately, Owens is in our midst, dispensing her moronic garbage through Ben Shapiro’s organization “The Daily Wire.” They’ve relocated and set up shop in Nashville, content to dispense 24/7 hate speech and Trump worship. Elder’s garbage is thankfully mostly confined to the West Coast, where he thought white folks loved him so much he would become Governor but thanks to God he lost and he found out that conservative didn’t like his Blackness either. However, those two, and others like Jesse Lee Peterson and the Black female minstrel duo of Diamond and Silk, have no power, influence or respect from any race. They only have access through right-wing media. But people like Black Tim Scott are truly dangerous, because he is part of the system which actively help continuing running roughshod over Blacks and other people of color. The Tennessee Tribune will continue to identify these collaborators and let folks know what they’re doing. No one should be fooled when they claim to care about Black empowerment and advancement. Their true interest is keeping in good standing with whites as they fatten their bank accounts by spewing hate about their Black brothers and sisters even though they came out of the womb of a very very Black mother. So if they hate Blacks, they hate and disrespect their mammies.