Thursday, September 15, 2022

Institutional Racism, Mississippi and Brett Favre

The state of Mississippi is last in America in education and health care. The people living in the capitol city of this state have not had access to clean water. Mississippi is a poor state. Former football star Brett Favre is a native of Mississippi.

It has come to light recently that Favre used his influence to ensure that is daughter's volleyball team at the University of Mississippi got to play in a brand new sports arena dedicated to volleyball. Favre also received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the state of Mississippi for speaking fees at events he never attended. The millions of dollars used for these Favre related activities came out of a state fund dedicated to providing welfare benefits for predominately Black Mississippi residents. This is a $77 million dollar welfare scandal with $6 million going to the Favre sponsored volleyball arena. 

This is another example of institutional racism where powerful white people misappropriate monies earmarked to help poor black people and divert those funds to their pet projects. 

Supposedly Favre has returned the speaking engagement funds to the state and claimed he didn't know that the money came from welfare funds but why would he have taken the money for speeches he never gave regardless of where the money came from. That is theft. His involvement in the welfare scandal has been documented using his own text messages with the former governor of Mississippi among others.

I've been reading a lot of books recently about black people living in the South and the racism they have suffered through for generations both in relationships with their white neighbors and the institutional racism of southern culture. This episode with Brett Favre and Mississippi doesn't surprise me at all. 


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