You would be surprised how many people lived through the Kane Ditto, or better yet Ed Peters years, and had no idea what was happening in their city and county. Or they knew and didn't care. And very little of it had anything to do with Mr. Ditto as far as I can tell. He was in the right place at the wrong time.

Our "GOOD Issue: Crime" issue included some great research-based ideas about "eyes on the street" and other ways to lower crime as well. [Flip through it here, starting on page 14.][1]

[1]: http://www.jfp.ms/crime

"Honey," if you're trying to make an impression, you certainly are. We don't play fair. Right. We quote too many actual facts that y'all don't want out there. And that's not fair. It's not fair that I left the reservation as a white woman, either, is it?

It's nice to see you spend so much time trying to take down such a "journalism joke" as ours. Why bother showing up and trying to scold me into submission if we're such a "joke"? You don't have to answer that. I know why you're here. And you'll fail.

I don't know more about black people than they do (and why it is that white folks who blame them for everything love to say that so much? Hmmm. Another failed silencing technique, I presume.) Again, it's clear that you can't match my facts about all of our *shared* history with anything so you hurl something goofy like that.

Actually, I know more about white people, including folks with your attitudes. And methinks that's the part that makes so many of y'all bonkers. It's one thing if people of color don't agree -- that's to me expected of them -- but white Mississippians? We should be sacrosanct for y'all.

Finally, I rather doubt you would ever post under your real name, at least the kinds of stuff you say here. I've been in this arena long enough to know that people who post ugly things about groups of people using fake names don't have the courage of their convictions, and they're just lashing out. Meantime, over here, we use our names and our faces, and get called all sorts of names, and lied about, and disparaged, and belittled, and bullied, and harassed -- all because we are willing to stand by our statements and beliefs. And that has never stopped us. Once. So suddenly, 11 years into this paper, you think it will? Remarkable.

And it really is wacky what men like you try to do to silence women. You've tried a couple of times now to belittle me because I don't have children. You have no idea why, nor is it any of your business, but you think such a low attempt at a personal attack somehow makes me feel worse about myself ... I guess. It just makes me shake my head at your willful stupidity and lack of finesse at debating.

Darlin', anything that could be made up or hurled has been said about me because I don't follow the proscribed program of yesteryear. At this point, I'm especially Teflon because I've had such practice at getting a tough skin. And I'm spiritual enough to even have compassion for you even as I watch your arguments and attacks crumble into a heap of dust on the floor without you even knowing it. Let me be clear in case you're still confused: Your insults roll off me.

Put another way: Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

Actually, the root cause is white supremacy, long before white flight. Supposedly the schools were desegregated, but most white families wouldn't stand for it and fled. Actually, part of today's solution is understanding these roots and then joining with others to dig them out. One way to do that is to live and do business and move around in the whole city as many of us do.

One of the most enlightening I've ever done was to spend the first year or so of the JFP driving nearly every street in Jackson first establishing relationships and distribution routes, and then distributing the paper ourselves throughout west Jackson every week for over a year. I've been afraid very few times anywhere in Jackson, and most of those times were when I was along on Frank Melton's joy rides.

"As for downplaying the flight, I won't because the people committing the crimes and forming the gangs were black and that's what we were escaping. "

Can you be this naive??? You do realize that the first gangs in Mississippi where white, right? >They were night-riders, Klansmen and Citizens Councilors. They rode the streets of Jackson and the dirt roads of Rankin County terrorizing black people *in my lifetime* (and from your posts, I'm guessing yours).

People didn't flee the city of Jackson and its public schools because of "black gangs"; they fled because the federal government made us integrate schools. As for the gangs themselves, do you really not know who and what race created that culture and pumped the drugs into inner cities? When you first started posting, I honestly didn't realize how little you understand about our race history and, apparently, the drug war.

I really do recommend spending some time reading, doing research and thinking. Like many Mississippians (my own included for a long time), your education on these issues is lacking. No wonder you blame the victims. You don't know any better. And I say with compassion.

Ha, got ya. That had as much to do with moving the zoo as your comment about the tourist stuck on the end of your post did. Crime is everywhere and committed by people of all races. Horrible crime.

Ah, I'm less informed because I don't have children. There are plenty of idiots with kids, Scott, and plenty of smart ones without them. And that's a shaky in a world where so many want to only blame crime "on the (black) family." By your logic, it sounds like having kids turns one from a moron into a genuis. Um, no.

Actually, my views were shaped growing up in Neshoba County around people like you who told little white boys and girls that we shouldn't talk about race and that "all that" was the fault of black people. I'm the person I was today that I became when I turned 14 and learned exactly what all those white people weren't supposed to tell us about our history. I've learned more since, but I am shaped and molded by the red clay of central Mississippi. And that bugs some of you the most, I know. You want us all with the program, and many of us are choosing a different path. Because, you know, it's our state, too. Get used to it. The younger generations are really going to prove it to you.

Fortunately, the choice doesn't have to be between supporting the execution of an unarmed wayward kid you think is trying to steal your car (direct analogy to shooting horse thieves there) -- and not caring about people being victims of crime.

Unfortunately, many people don't seem to get that. And we will have more violence as a result. Yay.

None of this changes why all this happened in the first place, and over-simplistic comments exclaiming the obvious "blacks leave, too!" in order to somehow change that history are just bizarre. And they have no purpose but to try to revise our history and, I'm guessing, make it sound like people of color are wholly responsible for the problems that white supremacy and Mississippi segregation laws and redlining and lynching reaped in their communities—from the inability to create wealth to creating a violent, fearful culture.

I simply don't understand people who don't get that if you refuse to look at the roots of problems the black community faces, then you are implying strongly that black people have problems just because they are black. And that would be a textbook definition of racism. Y'all can't have it both ways.

Don't you want to figure out what caused our problems and then fix them? Or, it is really all about casting blame, calling names and running from problems?

Thankfully, our younger generations are different, and there is immense hope in that. I applaud them.

Actually, Scott, I didn't see your comment about "what to call" black families that leave Jackson. I had surgery and haven't spent a lot of time in site discussion or even reading posts.

I would probably call them "black families" just as I would call white families who leave Jackson "white families." That kind of seems like a no-brainer.

I guess you haven't seen the various things I've written (and I believe in the column above) that talks about how economic flight of families of all races inevitably followed white flight, but that fact doesn't logically change the very real problem (racism) of what caused it in the first place and, often, keeps it going. It feels a bit like you haven't thought this issue through at all. I'm guessing you don't know where the phrase "tipping point" came from? It's a research phrase for the point that a neighborhood "tips" into being too non-white for whites to stay. Obviously, when whites flee and take historical wealth (and businesses and other services including the best-paid teachers and law enforcement), people of other races follow. Then, whites pick up and move again, leaving dead malls and closed businesses and such in their wake. Others follow until it tips again. It's still happening. Some white folks from Jackson are going to end up in Vaiden if they don't change their attitudes. (smile)

Again, though, it's younger generations who will and are changing this (the point of the column for all you folks freaking out over me daring to speak the truth about white flight). Midtown Atlanta is experiencing a renaissance in no small part because younger people want to live in cities and don't mind (and even crave) diversity that they're not often getting at home or at school -- a major characteristic of people born after 1980. They find suburbs boring (as do I). Meantime, many black families have moved to the suburbs there (and here), which is leading to race dust-ups in previously lily-white areas. (I was at a school-discipline conference last weekend in ATL where I learned that Gwinnett County is now guilty of using harder school discipline on kids of color than white kids; Gwinnett has become less white in recent years due to this demographic swap of sorts).

Scott, you would be surprised what I know about you call the "Kane Ditto" years—largely thanks to my research on Frank Melton and friends. If I ever get this dang book finished, you might be quite surprised at the rest of the story.

Your understand of the realities of "white flight" seem very limited. Why do you do what I do when I'm curious about something that I don't know enough about and go a lot of research and be open to what you find. Or, have you decided what you want to believe and don't need to learn anything new? That's a sad place to be if so.

As for the characterization of my writings as "always, without exception, hav(ing) racial implications," that alone shows how willing you are to be wrong and hyperbolic, which doesn't help the credibility of your other posts. That is simply patently false.

However, I am certainly a white woman and newspaper editor who is willing to actually defy the rules many white folks think they set and enforce in my home state that say that I should honor my skin color and not talking about race, just as Hazel Brannon Smith and other inspiring white women have done. As such, do you really think you could possibly insult me or call me down by complaining about how I'm breaking the white code not to talk about racism and its implications for our city and state? I'm always amused and bemused by people who think that such complaints would have any effect on me whatsoever.

Do you really think I mustered up the courage and wherewithal to start a progressive newspaper in the middle of Mississippi to speak the truth and report facts other media skip and, suddenly, when someone who doesn't have the balls to use his real name on his comments shows up on my site or an anonymous blog and starts griping about it, I suddenly lose that gumption?

Y'all boys crack me up.