(REAL TIMES MEDIA)—A few weeks back I was in my barbershop having the kind of demographically rich and entertaining conversation that popular culture now expects to occur in every Black barbershop in America. The room was filled with the sounds of laughter and argument as a college professor, UPS delivery man, community college student, bank employee and two barbers all pontificated about life, money, race and of course, sports.

Eventually everyone started debating the possible fortunes of Ben Roethlisberger, the embattled quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers, who was investigated by police after two women accused him of rape over the last 18 months. My barber took bets on how long people believed he would be suspended from football, but the consensus in the room was that because “Big Ben” was a Super Bowl winner, hadn’t been convicted of a crime yet and most importantly was White that he would not suffer the same fate as other athletes like Michael Vick, Kobe Bryant or Tiger Woods. I am pleasantly surprised to see that for once it appears that at least in the case of sexual assault, justice has trumped race and money in the eyes of the NFL.

Too many define importance and being somebody as someone who is rich, with expensive cars, money, houses and other symbols of material wealth. It is my conviction that richness is a state of mind not a state of being.

The people of Mississippi have not been angels. The history of the Magnolia State and segregation invites the kind of scrutiny and criticism that has recently been visited upon the state. Media reports that the Walthall County School District has been ordered to stop segregating its schools raised the ire of most Americans because it was a reminder of a particularly ugly moment in this nation’s history—a history that Americans have no desire to repeat.

Still it stretches the limits of credulity when a school that is 66 percent White and 35 percent Black is labeled a “racially identifiable ‘White’” school and the county supporting the school is depicted as filled with a bunch of ugly racists just itching to don the bed sheets and ride through the night terrorizing the countryside. Yet, that is exactly the case in Walthall County, Mississippi.