Violence in Black Clubs

Violence in black clubs has become something of a dog-whistle topic, the premise being that it happens in black clubs but not white ones, which is inaccurate. White clubs can be pretty damn violent.

When I was younger, I had friends who liked to go to boot-scootin’ country clubs because of a proposed elevated level of feminine companionship there. They wouldn’t ever go without me because they believed my presence increased their chances of getting out alive. The experience put me off of country music clubs for life. Seeing a grown man cry because his hat got broke made me question what I was doing. The girls were pretty, in a big hair sort of way.

I know a boy who got knifed at Martin’s and suffered pretty intense brain damage from it for the rest of his life. They used to have fights at Poets, but they were all from Ole Miss, so once their shirt got ripped, the fight was over. One time, I got bit in the back of Sundancer late at night, but that’s another story. Knowing things like this about people’s grandmas amuses me more than it should.

Back in the days when I used to spend most of my nights at CS’s, Inez used to pay me and Bonehead in cokes and beers every time we ran interference when some peckerwood decided to beat up on a college boy. One night, somebody asked two Iranian fellas if they were N-words or Mexicans, and they produced, out of nowhere, the biggest handgun I had ever seen. It looked like the gun the Joker used in the first Batman movie. I suppose in Iran, they learn a trick or two. Inez called everybody baby, and nobody got shot.

I used to think that Inez was why violence at CS’s never got that bad, but when she opened her own very popular, mixed-race club, she ended up having to shutter it because one black girl shot another one in the face. I never knew what the fight was about.

One of the most violent regulars at CS’s was a boy I’d known since we were thirteen. I asked him once if he ever worried about things getting out of hand. He said, “Nah, I have guns, but I keep them where I can’t easily get to them. I have a life, and I have a future. I ain’t going to no Parchman because some pissant talked shit to me.” His little brother wasn’t so lucky; he got in a fight with some baseball players once, and they split his skull open with a bat. He suffered health issues for the rest of his life from that.

I think this business of believing you have a life and a future might be the key to controlling nighttime violence. Everybody has a temper. I have a temper like you wouldn’t believe, but as odd as my life has been, I’m not about to trade it for a life in Parchman.

Mississippi does a horrible job of making our tawny and chocolate-colored citizens believe they have a future and a life. That’s our fault, and to be very, very honest, I don’t know if there are enough of us who care to change this to get it done in a reasonable amount of time. We have to try, though.

It’s better among middle-class Mississippians of African Descent. If somebody cares enough about them to send them to APAC or St. Andrews and then Millsaps or Ole Miss, they’re millions of times less likely to ruin that because some pissant talked shit to them.

I keep a list of problems that are probably too big for me to ever solve. This is one of them. Because of our past, I do believe Mississippi has an obligation to make our Citizens of African Descent believe in themselves enough to make that dream of a "better life” a reality. One benefit of this would be a considerable reduction in the amount of violence after dark that happens here in Mississippi.