What I've Actually Seen

The Testimony

I'm 61 years old, born and raised in Mississippi. In six decades of living here, I have never once been attacked or threatened by a white person. That's my real, lived experience. Not a talking point. Not a narrative I inherited. What actually happened to me. The rudest people I've encountered weren't white Mississippians at all — they were foreigners who'd recently moved here, and even most of them have been kind.

And yet, watching the media right now, you'd think every Black person in this state walks around in fear. Creators are jumping on trending outrage, piling onto stories before the facts are even in, because outrage gets views and grievance gets clicks. I wrote about this in “A House Divided” — impatience for a verdict isn't justice, it's just division wearing justice's clothes.

Here's what troubles me most, and I say this as someone who loves my people fiercely: in the last thirty years, I've watched division get kept alive from within my own community as much as from outside it. Old wounds get reopened, word curses get spoken over an entire state, and anyone who says “that hasn't been my experience” gets treated like a traitor instead of a witness. That's not healing. That's harvesting bitterness and calling it awareness.

“And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.” — Mark 3:25 (KJV)

I'm not saying racism doesn't exist anywhere, or that no one has ever suffered real, documented harm — they have, and that suffering is real and shouldn't be dismissed. What I am saying is that a whole state, and a whole people, shouldn't be defined by the loudest outrage cycle instead of the actual testimony of the people who live here. Present-day Mississippi is not the Mississippi of the 1950s and '60s. Holding it hostage to that era — from either side — isn't remembrance. It's refusing to let anyone move forward.

I used to soften this part. Not anymore. I am done adjusting my testimony to make it easier to swallow. The gospel offends — it always has. It offended the Pharisees who built their whole identity on being right, and it will offend anyone who's built an identity on being a perpetual victim instead of a redeemed son or daughter of God. I am a truth-teller. That's what I will speak, and that's what I will write — even when the truth cuts deeper than the comfortable lie ever did.

The Measure

1. Let your own testimony matter, even when it's inconvenient to a narrative. If your real experience doesn't match what you're told you should feel, don't override it to fit in. Truth doesn't need permission.

2. Separate real harm from manufactured outrage. Ask before you share or repost: is this documented, or is this a story racing ahead of the facts because outrage moves faster than truth?

3. Refuse to let bitterness masquerade as awareness. Holding onto old wounds doesn't protect you — it just keeps you standing in the mud instead of walking out of it.

4. Speak life over your home, not curses. Whatever state, city, or nation raised you, choose to bless it publicly as often as you're tempted to tear it down.

5. Let the gospel offend before you soften it. If your message never offends anyone, it may no longer be the gospel — it may just be a message people already agreed with.