The football team (Ole Miss) was filled with blacks, two members of the mini-band were black and there was a black family standing outside their van, eating chicken and taking an active part of the post-game celebration. I'm no sociologist, but does it say anything that everybody in that scenario seemed to be getting along nicely?
Maybe Mississippians, both black and white, have it figured out. The key to any sort of co-existence is tolerance, even of symbols that once stood for hate.
Jake Halpern grew up in Buffalo, New York and attended Yale University. He has written for The New Republic, The New Yorker, Commonwealth and The Jerusalem Report. His newly published first book is called Braving Home: Dispatches from the Underwater Town, the Lava Side Inn, and Extreme Locales. Jake Halpern currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.