On Learning and Unlearning Racism
Submitted by scharrison on Tue, 01/20/2009 - 8:36pm
Amidst all the speculation about what the election of Barack Obama represents, as far as race relations and equality in this country are concerned, I find myself wondering what some of the black friends I've had in years past might be feeling today. I would like to thank Dr. Frank for jogging loose some of these memories with his haircut story, and I would also apologize upfront if any part of this diary is found offensive by the reader. That's not my intent, but this is a subject that one simply cannot delve deeply into without stepping on some toes in the process.
I was born in Florida in 1960, and lived there until 1971. Florida was then and still is an enigma, as far as racial diversity is concerned. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but my elementary school became integrated sometime in the late Sixties. The reason I can't pin down the date is because it really wasn't integrated. When the black children showed up for school on day one, part of the school had been set aside for them. Their own entrance, their own section of classrooms, different play and lunch periods, etc. Back then, elementary schoolchildren had very little freedom anyway, as they marched us around like little boot camp soldiers. So it was relatively easy for the teachers to keep us in separate worlds, which is what they did.
The neighborhood we lived in was solid white also, although I do recall one of the young neighborhood moms was Spanish. She could have been from Mexico or Guatemala for all I know, and was merely granted the European title so as to not bring down the property values. Whatever, my point is: we kids were kept completely out of the loop at school and at home as regards the Civil Rights movement. And what little we did learn via the playground grapevine or the drunken ramblings of some parents at cookouts was laced with racism and phobia.
It wasn't until we moved away from Florida that I finally came in sustained contact with other races, and the structure that was my understanding of race began to crumble, and the foundation for a new understanding began to take shape in the rubble. Strangely enough, these new relationships also led me to spend more time contemplating what it meant to be white, and what freedoms and benefits I enjoyed that others didn't. It sounds like a lot for an eleven year-old to deal with, and it was.
My first black friend was a guy named Jerry who lived down the street. Within minutes of our first conversational exchange, we got into a long and detailed argument about who would win in a battle between Sgt. Rock and Sgt. Fury. Which was never really settled, even after much exchanging of comic books in which we wrote little notes to each other in the margin, like, "Pay attention to this part" and "Where did he get this gun?". We also became Blood Brothers, although the cuts were so small his had stopped bleeding and was virtually healed by the time I got up the nerve to cut my hand. So he had to cut his again, just to meet the minimum standard for blood exchange. And right after that, like he had planned it from the start, he told me that I now had Sickle Cell Trait, and that if I ever lied to him, my pulse would quicken and it would turn into full-blown Anemia and strike me dead on the spot. It took two weeks of badgering before he finally burst out laughing and admitted it was total bullshit. When Jerry's dad got transferred back to the States, I was lost for a long time.
When I moved to North Carolina a few years later, it was back to the white neighborhood dynamic again, and school was a sort of racial detente. But one day during the Summer between 9th and 10th Grades, I was snooping around the Elon (College, back then) campus when I met Ray Charles, who proceeded to teach me how to play, "Frisbee Chicken" (that's right, you can't move, even if it's about to hit you in the face). Charles was actually his middle name, but his real last name was seldom mentioned. Ray started at Elon on some kind of a sports scholarship, but after an injury, he was forced to work as a manager so he could keep getting his tuition covered. It was a pain in the ass sometimes, but the beauty part was: he had an apartment inside the gym, which was the absolute coolest thing I had ever seen. As the Summer progressed and students started returning to the campus, I lifted with the football team and practiced with the basketball team, which was sometimes painful but always a treasure. Ray also introduced me to a sorority girl classmate of his, which I'm not going to elaborate on here. Let's just say that one act was enough to boost him to my top five Best Friends Ever list, and leave it at that. ;)
Tony and I served together at Ft. Bragg for about four years before he went to Germany. He hailed from Ohio, and like most other Ohioans I've met, he had no discernible accent and a great sense of humor. His dad was white and his mom was black, and he would actually announce which color he was each morning, and then try to act the part. Black was angry and snappish, while white was very laid back and refined. Making him smile when he was black or angry when he was white was the goal, and very often there were beers riding on it. One night when we were out in the boonies looking up at the stars, he told me a story about getting picked up by the cops one night, two blocks away from his parents' house in an upper middle class neighborhood. He was eight years old at the time, and these two white cops kept calling him a liar when he told them where he lived. They drove around for what seemed like hours, and Tony said he cried so much it made him throw up in the backseat. At which point they stopped and let him out several blocks away from home, and then drove off. He never told his parents, even when he got grounded for being out so late. I had totally forgotten about that story until just a few minutes ago.
I've had other black friends over the years, and I know this may sound like one of those, "A lot of my friends are black!" declarations, but it's not. The election of Barack Obama is heartening on so many levels, but it's how we approach people we know nothing about that really matters. We are not symbols or demographics or cultural representatives, we are all just people. We are each flawed in many ways, but those flaws become less important when we share our strengths with each other.
I appreciate
your memories. Reminded me of my sixth grade teacher, Mr. McFadden. I was born in 1954, so in 1966 Selwyn Elementary in Charlotte was still pretty white. The first and still most potent personal influence on me growing up was John McFadden, a young black man who came to teach there my sixth grade year. I'd never seen a man as an elementary school teacher, much less a black man. But he was without a doubt the best teacher I had in grade school. He went on to become NC Teacher of the Year in 1970. Quite a feat in North Carolina at the time.
Do you have any idea
if he's still alive, Jonathan? I did some Googling but didn't come up with anything recent.
In my first year of college (ACC), my Political Science teacher was black, but I can't remember his name to save my life. I was pretty conservative back then, and he and I spent almost a whole class period one day debating the Constitutionality of Affirmative Action. He asked me to stay after class, and I thought, "Uh oh...". Then he asked, "Where are you going for lunch?" :)
He also engineered a class trip to DC, and he and I stood shivering (it was Winter) in front of the Lincoln Memorial for a long time talking about various stuff. Like why there weren't any black students in his Poli Sci class. I think that night might be when he won our old debate, although neither of us were aware of it at the time.
Last I heard
from him, he was teaching multicultural counseling at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. That's been 10 or 15 years ago. Don't know if he's still there.
Well said, Steve.
Do good. Be nice. Have fun.
Yay for blue blockquotes!
nt
Do good. Be nice. Have fun.
I've read this three of four times, now.
You and I are the same age. I grew up in NJ, in a town that had very, very few black people living in it. Most of the black people I knew were my father's friends and their children. I didn't go to school with them; to be honest, I'm not sure where they lived. Probably Paterson, which was right next door. The battle against prejudice that I remember from my elementary school days was about Jews. My dad became embroiled in that fight as the President of the school board. I didn't know it at the time, but Mom and Dad were very scared for our physical safety at the time. Shots were fired at our house a couple of times, and once a brick came through our dining room window. My parents kept us safe then, and stuck to their values of being open to people because of who they are, not how they worshipped or the color of their skin.
Because they protected us from those things, and always taught us their values, I had a very interesting experience when I was about 7. We were travelling by car from NJ to FL to visit my mother's parents. At that time, there weren't that many fast food places along the highway. In fact, there weren't even that many highways in some parts of the south - at least where we were travelling. I don't know where this particular incident took place. It could have been anywhere from Virginia through Georgia, I imagine.
We pulled our well-travelled white station wagon into the parking lot of a little diner. Being the oldest, I was tasked with going into the diner with my Dad to help carry the drinks out. Hand-painted on the wooden door of the diner were the words: "Whites Only". I puzzled over this as we waited for our order. As we waited, the curiosity became too much for me, and so I asked my Dad - in a very loud voice, I remember. "Daddy, does that sign mean only people with white cars can eat here?" As you can imagine, everything stopped. Every one in the place looked at us. My dad looked at me, and said "I will tell you later. Be quiet." We got outside and he told me what it meant, and I laughed. I couldn't believe it. The rest of the trip, my mom and dad took turns telling me about racism, what had happened in our country, and why they didn't go along with it. I still didn't understand it -- because I hadn't been raised to think about things that way.
But it wasn't until I moved to NC that I really developed friendships with people of other races. I don't know why. It's just how it happened.
Great story, Linda
I grew up in Modesto, California leaving to go into the Air Force a little while after graduating from High School. Your story about "whites only" signs interested me because in my younger years...actually all the way through high school...most of us didn't believe there truly was such a thing or that people were really THAT racist/segregationist. Yeah, we knew about prejudice...but not to THAT degree. I never had a class with a black person. We saw the civil rights struggles that were happening mostly in the South (we did have some in Calif., believe it or not) on TV and heard about them in social studies classes etc. It seemed like I was watching something in a foreign country somewhere. Most people referred to black people as "negroes", mostly with an occasional "N"-word reference certainly. My folks, contrary to yours Linda weren't as "progressive". We heard the jokes and the references and the misconceptions. Most of us in school did too and we, of course, echoed that and being in our formulative years, believed it was how it was supposed to be...rather, how WE were supposed to be. Blacks didn't have their own high school, but all of them went to one high school along with some whites and hispanics and a few asians. I think it had something to do with zoning). In my high school, we had quite a number of hispanics and now that I think about it, they weren't seen as different than "us"....or at least not as much. If memory serves me correctly, I think LoftT was raised in Calif. Not sure how old he is so he may have had a very different experience. After I left high school, things like bussing and civil rights laws changed what I experienced in a big way. In the Air Force, it wasn't much different. There, especially at first, I witnessed true racism. I was enlisted and there were people from ALL races, religions, backgrounds who served together. But, they migrated to be in their own group.
I'm a much better person now in that regard because of a lifetime of interaction in just so many ways with blacks that were mostly positive. I admit to still having some of those stereotypes ingrained in me sometimes. I've caught myself being cut off by another car on a highway and finding out that person is black and thinking..."yep, a black person". I know a bunch of white people like that.
All we can do is work on our beliefs. We're the sum total of our experiences in life. Sometimes those experiences make you something you end up not being proud of. When you do finally realize that....it's time you worked on change.
The best thinking is independent thinking.
I think for most of us.
There is a moment when you're talking with a good old boy, maybe a relative of another generation, and suddenly in the middle of a boisterous conversation there is a whispered response about "niggers". I remember every time this has happened to me because it left me feeling sad, sad that someone I thought I knew, someone I thought I respected could be so out of touch with where the world was heading. It wasn't like some brainwashed skinhead spouting off white-supremacy crap, or some country fella where I grew up throwing the word around when you just knew he hadn't ever MET an African-American, it was worse. It was that deep south feel that "they" were inferior, that they SHOULD have separate bathrooms and water-fountains. It was made worse in each case that it came from the mouth of an elder, someone you are born and raised to respect.
However, on a positive note, I should say at least one of the people I'm talking about voted for Barack Obama, I happen to know that for a fact. So, maybe, just maybe, the times really are changing.
Jesus Swept ticked me off. Too short. I loved the characters and then POOF it was over.
-me
"White Cars Only" :)
That's classic. Thanks for the laugh.
North Carolina is a trip. There is definitely a lot of racism afoot, and God knows it's caused a lot of equality issues. But I honestly believe the widespread and often subconscious low-level "stealth" racist views are fading. They're still there, but I don't think they're playing nearly as strong a role in the way we judge each other anymore.
Which is probably a foolish thing for a white man to speculate about, but I see so many examples of positive interaction between people of different races, and I know damn well there aren't that many good fakers out there.
Colored to Black
Growing up in a small (1,500) eastern NC town during the sixties and seventies (born in 58) I have a great many memories related to race. Most if not all colored people had a white benefactor if that is the correct term. Someone that could act as a go between to navigate through problems, someone to loan them money when times got tough, that sort of thing. My mother was in graduate school and then working throughout my childhood so we had a colored lady that helped around the house, looked after us and cooked. There were three ladies, one that worked for us when my brother and I were young, another after we both started school, and another during our teen years. I sat with the first lady and watched the Kennedy funeral and she cried. I sat with the second one and watched the King assasination coverage. I remember well when the station my father worked at was torn down and rebuilt. The old building had four bathrooms and the new one had two. The movie theater had a seperate entrance and balcony for the colored kids and we would sometimes have milkdud wars with them always having the advantage since they fired down on us and we had to lob them upward. About the time the schools were integrated so was the movie house. Intergration was at first "freedom of choice" with only a few colored kids in each grade. I remember looking over at Joe and seeing his colored friend eating with him and I nearly threw up. While the black lady I loved prepared our meals she had always eaten before or after we did so the races eating together was extremely foreign and strange to me. I got over it. I remember my brother and other older boys coming up to him on the playground and acting like they were going to pull out a knife only to reveal it was just a pencil. I remember how scared he was and that I felt sorry for him. Then we intergrated completely and went to the colored school. Some people started a "private Christian School" to avoid it. I didn't think much of it. I always viewed it as a school for people that were "afraid to go to school with" well you get the idea. I remember discussing how we planned to go armed to the first day of school that year but no one did as far as I know. I remember being bullied by a handful of black boys in that first year. It was humiliating because I wasn't strong or brave enough to stand up for myself. There's still one of those guys I hate (hates a strong word) because of how mean he was to me. I tended to use humor to deflect the bullying and it worked enough that I didn't become one of those perpetual targets. I remember when colored people had to go to the back door of a resturant to get a to go order. My Daddy owned a small business and a salesman from Charolette was coming in a couple of days. He would be there about lunch time. Daddy didn't know what to do since there were no integrated resturants in town. He went to the lady that owned the nearby dinner and told her his situation. She told him to bring the man in that there wouldn't be a problem. It must have been in the summertime because I ate with them that day. Nobody said a harsh word and I don't recall any stares or anything. I also remember Daddy encouraging a colored man that use to hang around his business to apply for a job as a county deputy. He was the second black man hired in our county. I remember when the colored lady that worked in our home began eating at the table with us rather that before or after. And I remember my daddy encouraging her to apply for a FHA loan so that she would own her own home and encouraging her to take a job at a local factory so she could make more money and get benefits. Then when she was unjustly accused of shoplifting I remember my Daddy testifying for her and him telling that one of my friends mom was on the jury and when they went out to decide the case how she winked at him. She was found not guilty. I remember when nigger was as common a word as hello and everybody I knew used it. Don't ever think that we haven't come a heck of a long way.
I'm a moderate Democrat.
Small towns have a different dynamic,
and a lot of that has to do with economics. Many rural towns have a much higher percentage of black citizens than the national (or even state) average. And some have fewer, of course. But in the former, white-owned businesses simply couldn't afford to write off 30-40% of their potential market. I'm not saying improved race relations was just about the money, but I've seen numerous accounts where white business owners attempted to normalize relations with blacks, only to be chastised and/or threatened by outspoken racists in the community. I've also read about instances where businesses in rural black communities were torched in the middle of the night so a white business wouldn't lose trade.
But you're right, we have made great strides. And much of that has come from smaller towns where people depend on each other for survival.