Jackson Jambalaya

Jackson Municipal Court Judge Ali Shamsid-Deen is running for Hinds County Circuit Court Judge against Jeff Weill and Bruce Burton. Mr. Shamsid-Deed was a prolific columnist for the Jackson Advocate back in the early 1990's. His columns reveal some rather interesting thoughts. These two columns were written in late August of 1992. Apparently he didn't think too much of Grace Simmons of The Clarion-Ledger back then. Ms. Simmons, now the editor of the Gannett newspaper, was a regular staff reporter. Mr. Shamsid-Deen had a few things to say about her in his columns posted below.

The August 20 column criticized Ms. Simmons and the CL for not posting the race of a bank robber still on the loose. Here is what he had to say:

"Most African-Americans have learned to observe this type of news coverage over the years and know that the omission of a description in these types of stories meant that the person involved is a caucasian."

"The reporter for this particular story was Ms. Grace Simmons, an African-American graduate of JSU's School of Communications. JSU has a very good school of communications. It is right now ranked tops among Historically Black Universities in the area of mass communications. Having such a well-developed program would indicate that Ms. Simmons did not learn her style of news reporting from there. She did not pick up this technique while she was an intern at the Jackson Advocate, so apparently this style of reporting was impressed upon her when she started working for the white media.

When Ms. Simmons reports on conflicts involving an African-American, she never fails to make it very clear that the African-American is the culprit...

He then "suggests" she go back to JSU for re-education and learn to "recognize her bias that causes her investigative reporting to be subject ot her attitudes toward the 'common' African-American, which in her eyes, seem to be all the rest of us"

However, Mr. Shamsid-Deen was just getting warmed up. He wrote another column the next week titled "Grace Simmons can you see yourself". He said a few things that not even Donna Ladd on her worst day would have written:

"It is absolutely shameful that we as African-Americans have to endure this type of attitude from the caucasian media and it is pitiful of an African-American such as Ms. Simmons to be so caught up in imitating the 'white folks' that they are of no use to us. They act as if everything that we as African-Americans do is wrong and that everything that the 'white folks' believe is right. They really believe that they are different from the rest of us just because 'white folks' say so....

Wake up Grace, you are chasing the dream of being excepted by the 'white folks' too hard. This will cause you to lose credibility with everybody, including the white folks that you are in awe of."

Yes, it is true, I support Jeff Weill in his candidacy but I would have fun with this stuff regardless of who the candidates are. There is plenty more where this came from and you will have an opportunity to read it on this website for the next few days. Its quite clear Mr. Shamsid-Deen has some racial attitudes that should disqualify him from sitting on the bench.