Downloading some ringtones from Virgin Mobile, I noticed a clip of Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" could be bought as a ringtone.
A ringtone!! WTF?
LM,
A sad story, but you did a gorgeous job telling it.
Having Gilly as a part of my life really drove home a lot of what you said in this post and in so many others.
All the little things.
Like never being able to get a cab when I was with him, EVER. I'll never forget; one evening, we had taken his Dad and the kids to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I had to go back to my gym at Lexinton where I had stashed some stuff; Gilly came with me and his Dad and the kids took a cab uptown to some new BBQ joint up in Harlem (Amy Ruth's was booked for an event or something).
Anyway, I dove into the NYSC at 86th and Lex and Gilly poked around Modells. When I met him at the doorway there, it started to POUR. As in SHEETS.
Empty cab after empty cab coasted after us. An older Black woman in nurse's whites--probably from Lenox Hill--huddled with us in the doorway and tried (unsucessfully) to light a smoke.
She couldn't get a cab either.
Finally, I stepped out not just onto the sidewalk but into traffic.
Got a cab to stop.
Put the nurse in the cab.
Ran back to Gil to shake the water off of me, pulled the same stunt and got us a cab finally.
When we finally got up to Harlem, his Dad and the kids were soaking wet also. No stopping for an old man with a cane and two kids under 12 either I guess.
Then there's all the times he would tell me about getting followed around a drug store because he lingered too long in one section (his Mom always insisted on this one brand of coated aspirin that was a bitch to find), or having folks assume that he worked at Borders or Home Depot because you know, a guy who looks like him just wouldn't be a customer.
And don't even get me started as to how I blame institutional racism as a leading factor of his demise.
Damn.
I'm almost speechless. And with the opening lyrics following, it's as if her pain strikes me personally.
Stunning writing LM.
Poignant, excellent retelling of a malaise that continues to fester, not just in your country, but in mine as well. Thanks for your memories.
Hell, that song scares me now at 54, I cannot imagine being a kid of color and hearing it when things like that still really were happening.
I have to echo Jesse, thanks LM, that was a stunning, truly stunning, piece of writing.
Hugs to Jen, and to LM.
LM, this post is wrenching.
When I was 10, we moved to DC for a little while. We went for car rides in the Virginia/Maryland countryside, and it got dark, and i got hungry.
"There's a restaurant!"
No. He wouldn't stop there, it said "Whites Only." or the names of the restaurants were "White Lilly" or "White Rose". My mom said we'd be no better than the KKK if we ate there.
We went home hungry, we never did find a place that didn't say WHites Only. That was in 1964.
The "deadly weapon": tennis shoes they supposedly used to kick the white student knocked unconscious by the first punch.
If you don't think this is potentially deadly. Lie still while six persons repeatedly kick you.
Had to break up a fight where I teach high school. As I reached the scene one student was on the ground while the other kicked and stomped him repeateldy. The kicker is being processed for prosecution.
tears aren't enough, but that's all I have, after that....
“If you don't think this is potentially deadly. Lie still while six persons repeatedly kick you.
You go first, asshole. Lemme get my Timbs on, and we'll get to the empirical testing.
“Had to break up a fight where I teach high school.”
Liar. You have to graduate from high school before you can teach it.
Dag, LM. Another astonishing post. I just sent this to a dear friend of mine, whose late husband was, with his first wife, involved in the integration of tennis courts in a Baltimore park back in the 1940s. (For their troubles they were both dragged before Joe McCarthy's HUAC tribunal, and you know what's a bitch? THEY WERE BOTH MEMBERS OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY!! He continued to write for the Workers Weekly World until his death four years ago.)
This reminds me of a trip my family made to Wilmington NC in 1971. On US route 301, south of Rocky Mount, there was a pink castle-shaped billboard plain as day, with the message "JOIN THE NATIONAL KLANS OF AMERICA, INC. Help fight Communism and Segregagtion." (HUH? Why would Kluxers want to FIGHT segregation?) Later on, I got restless at a gas station on state road 117 (two lanes, all rural), and my aunt had to explain: "Baby, this is the South. We don't stop at a filling station just to go to the bathroom."
That was the genesis of my own understanding of "knowing where you are."
Well, New Orleans graphically illustrated for us all what we on the left had been saying for years, and yet some still don't want to believe it.
Anytime a white person claims there's no racism in America, just ask them if they can honestly say they'd have no problems being an African-America.
All that said, I do believe race relations in America are changing for the better, and for the, well, different. Look at Atlanta. Forty years ago, Jim Crow and worse. Today, a thriving "black" Mecca, "the city too busy to hate." As for the different, look at relations between Mexicans and African-Americans in L.A. When no one was looking, race became something more than a black-white issue. And some of the old black-white issues have changed in ways unimaginable forty years ago. There's areas of inner cities where the unwritten rule is the white folks don't dare set foot in those neighborhoods, although, again, that's changing, too; I mean, look at the Harlem or the Bronx of the '70s when such a thing was true compared to today, when it's really NOT true, not at all. Things change, inexorably, slowly, but they do change. Is it perfect? Hell, no, not even close, but I believe it is getting better in that regard. Jim Crow -- apartheid in this country -- ended just 40 years ago. That's the blink of an eye in the history of most cultures, and yet so much has changed.
Racism still exists, institutionally and on personal levels, no matter what anyone claims. But I truly believe we are closer than ever in America to judging people not by "the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
Daaamn.
You're writing a book, right, LM? If you're not, start now please.
"We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone."
I've been artistic all my life, and at 5, I LOVED to laborously re-print the menu signs at the truckstop that my dad and his dad owned in Pompano Beach, Florida. "Chicken Fried Steak." "Ham Steak and Red-Eye Gravy." "Calf Brains and Eggs" (eeeeew). I sometimes had to have them read to me but I could draw the letters just fine. The day Mother walked in and found me re-lettering the big sign that hung over the grill, she flipped out like I don't think I had seen before or have seen since. That I can remember every word of the sign, now, almost 45 years later, that I was working so hard on getting lettered *just* right, (I can even still see the childish faux-Olde English script I was trying to copy) tells you how much of an effect it had. Even now, these decades later, I feel a nauseating twist in the gut, and honestly, just typing this makes me ill...and embarrassed. Growing up with a progressive mother and a southern bigoted father was real interesting... I think he tried to overcome it, some, in his later years; or perhaps he just got better at pasting a pretty veneer on it...
I don't know what to say. This is a story that I know is going to roil inside for days (or longer) while it decides what to do with me. LM, that was majestic writing. Thank you from my heart.
Jen, so good to hear from you again. There isn't one time I come here and don't think of Gilly and you.
Punkster:
All I can say is...wow.
Thank you for your comment. Truly.
Best,
LM
So glad you posted on this.
The great job all of you are doing keeping up the energy of the NewsBlog cannot be saluted enough.
Still, it's posts like these that really hit home as to the void Steve left. He would really stay on top of everything and stories like this, to say the least, was his forte. The Dunbar Village Florida Gang Rape is another recent story that I know Steve would have followed.
But I'm glad you guys keep keeping on. You all are a big part of my day, the part that makes me feel that all is not lost.
Beautiful job!
LM: i know how hard it is to go there. thank you. i moved back to my birthplace in arizona a couple years ago and it took me a few weeks to reconize one of the things that was bugging me. the segregation. unspoken rules, undrawn lines but they might as well have been etched in the stone of the canyons and blasted into the night sky with lasers.
i'm mixed race (apache mom, irish immigrant da) and grew up during the extremely unenlightened fifties. there's so much fucking shit i thought i was over.
but folks, it's here. it's real. it happens every day whether you fucking see it or not. there's an excellent book out there by the same author who wrote lies my teacher told me called Sundown Towns which documents the very real, very present facts of "don't let the sun go down on your ass in. . ."
along with strange fruit i'd also like to recommend nina simone's
Mississippi Goddamn
iichá yaa hizdah
chich'ii bitsen yénaldi'ih
(the axe forgets
the tree remembers)
taza
Speaking as a pale male, I wish my people WOULD. JUST. GROW. THE. FUCK. UP. ALREADY.
LM - as always, your writing is phenomenal - compelling and impossible to simply read and process. I don't know if I'll be able to get to sleep tonight.
Oh, and what the rare bird said.
Fer fuck's sake.
LM thanks for posting about the Jena 6, for face book users there is a jena 6 group raising profile as well.
And TokyoTerri recommends looking into helping at Color of Change
http://www.colorofchange.org/
they are doing lots for the Jena 6
tlg
Minstrel, I LOVE mississippi gd.
alright now
LM,
I don't write about race very often. As a very pale female (Swede from Minnesota) I don't feel like I know enough about it. You made me cry, a lot (and so did Jen) but you also steeled my spine. My black best friend reminded me a few months ago, "this shit changes when y'all start talking about it." I've been shirking my duty.
Thanks to both you and Jen for giving me a lot to think about, to pray about and to try and change about. In my family, people still use the "n" word without blanching. I'm still trying to get out of my throwback upbringing.
LM, simply amazing. Should be required reading for anyone who says "there is no more racism in America."
WF
This will haunt me for a long long time. Not just because of the raw, supperating, wrongness of it, but because there is a reasonable likelyhood that some of those ig'nernt squinty people in that little NC town are kin to me in some form or fashion. Most of mom's family has been in SE NC for 200+ years and up until the last decade the gene pool, with exception of the Sunny South colony of the 1930's, has stayed stagnant. Everybody there or from there is kin somehow or other. Those of us with an interest in geneology have found that we're almost certain to be kin to ourselves, often in 2 or 3 different lines. Not 1st cousin kin, so no branchless family tree jokes please, but kin enough
So, knowing the area, knowing the people, I know, in a crawly bile-seared certaintly that I most likely share scraps of genetic code with some of these people. And it makes me want to bathe all night and into tomorrow.
Mom left home for exactly that reason. She'd always known how it was but I suppose it got worse after her father made the mistake of standing up to the klan. He owned a feed store and gave credit to all his customers, white, black, or Lumbee. Seems like a small thing but back then it wasn't. He didn't save the front door for whites only either, another small thing that, in the minds of his neighbors might as well have been mixed race orgies on the steps of the Baptist church. But he wouldn't compromise his principles even when they burned a cross in his name and sent people by the house in pick-up trucks to holler and shoot. So they ran him out of business, left him with nothing, left him so in debt that he worked every day, 7 days a week until he died because he wanted to pay what he owed. He was that kind of man. People he went to church with did this to him, parents of my mother's school friends, people he'd known all his life, who shook his hand in the daylight and stood hooded outside his house at night, people he was almost certainly kin to. They either did it or watched it being done and stayed silent. No wonder mom got out just as soon as she could.
I don't know how to process it all. The cognative dissonance, if I consider it too long, is almost overwhelming.
Those of use from that place, or marked by that place, would like to believe it's better. Segregation isn't state sanctioned anymore, most stores don't care what door you use so long as you're buying from them and not the Wal-Mart at the country seat, the N-word, in its many forms, isn't so casual as it once was. People get along, but they get along by...going along. No one says it, they don't need to - Everyone Knows. There's a Christian Academy now to make sure that the right kind of kids get the right kind of education. Why rile everybody up with ugly words when using "them" or "those people" with the proper inflection will do just as well? Sure things are a little different now, but when push comes to shove Everyone Knows how it'll shake out. They know but they don't have the guts to say it out loud. And until more people do it will continue.
Thanks LM for what you wrote.
Prejudice is universal. Being self aware isn't. As a human, I try everyday not to judge. At 60, I'm getting better at it. (But, bush is a real challage.) Thank you for sharing your engaging story
LM, great story and well told.
Anonymous, the white victim was released from the hospital emergency room after three hours. There are places you have to wait that long just to see an emergency room doctor.
It may be possible to kill someone by stomping, but it's possible to kill someone with a shopping bag. That doesn't mean that all assaults involving a shopping bag are attempted murder.
Black students in Jena were attacked as well, without charges being filed against their attackers. A white student drew a gun on black students, and charges were filed - the black students were charged with assault and robbery for wrestling the gun away.
I trust even you would concur that more people have been killed by guns than tennis shoes. Noticing any kind of theme involving the charges?
Powerful piece, LM.
And I second what Ivory Bill Woodpecker said. I've never understood what's so fucking great about being white that we need to hate anyone who isn't. I don't even know how people get into that kind of headspace.
Onager:
Thank you for your comment. The tale of your grandfather, and his travails are very familiar. There was a lot of peer pressure and outright terror inflicted on the Whites who dared show enlightenment during those darkest of days. And your noting the subtlety of how the game is run nowadys is dead-on.
Plus, You know the area well. It is indeed down the coast on the southeastern foot.
Randy in Baltimore is hip to it too. SR 117 cuts right through teh gut of the area I spoke of.
And a hearty thank you to all of the commenters on this thread. You've enhanced the original post greatly. You're completing the idea something fierce with your words.
You people rock.
If this isn't enough to outrage you, look into the events in Tulia TX a few years ago.
“If this isn't enough to outrage you, look into the events in Tulia TX a few years ago.”
Indeed, Mike. Bob Herbert's NYT articles on the Tulia scandal were amazing—and his championing of its victims helped to shine light on the injustices, and move justice's wheels just a bit in the right direction.
Those articles can be found here, and his book which also covers Tulia in depth should be required reading for those wishing to read up on ethe souring of the American dream in the last few decades.
Thank you for citing him.
I grew up in the seventies in a small town by the Mississippi river, not far from a larger city. Racism was alive and well there and I was so disgusted I moved to the northeast as soon as I had a chance.
Unfortunately, I find that here, in one of the whitest states in the union, racism is also alive and well.
The era of Ronald Reagan and now Bush have done more to drive these people out of the closet than any mass klan meetings could have.
You wrote a great piece and a real part of life for many people in this country.
I am white but have had relatives of color since a wee one and the assumption that my white skin makes me a bigot as well allows me the unfortunate pleasure of being reminded daily of how far people are still separated by color lines and class lines.
I've got stories to tell, but my experience as a white person cannot even come close to yours as a person of color.
We are all brothers and sisters in my heart and in this world and I am pained always that loving and knowing all of them is still regarded as a social anathema among many.
Thank you for sharing your poignant and superbly told experience. I will retell it to my friends, as many as who will listen.
One HELL of a premise in the title, one hell of a song as illustration, and one hell of a job of writing to make it come alive for ANY reader.
I hope this doesn't come across in any other way than I intend it to, as a major compliment . . . but I SWEAR I could hear James Baldwin talking . . .
Hoss, about that book someone mentioned . . . it's your story, you prolly should tell it, cathertic wise at the LEAST, and you could influence in a mighty good way a lot of the choir who forgets . . . and I'd be honored to read it, as I was this piece.
Here's hoping . . . things get better. I lived in SE Asia as a kid, a white kid lemme clarify. I saw people of those countries do worse to those of their OWN indigineous differences and varieties than what they did to me or foreign whites.
And so Racism knows NO bounds. Not that I've ever seen in MY life.
And I hate that it's been 'purified' and gentrified among us in USA, cuz THAT took some of the steam out of the fight against it, but it's still the same hoods and evil fucks, be they clean in the big city, or a bit more earthy in the rural areas.
It's evil, and it destroys, destroys completely. All of us.
Here's to better days and better lives for all.
You reminded me of why I will never go home, LM, even though home is less than forty miles away in this same state. I grew up in Prince George's County, Maryland, back when it was still mostly white and mostly rural. We experienced every kind of racism you can name, up to and including Klan rallies on our property and an attempt to blow our house up. (I still had nightmares about waking up to the glow of the crosses for years afterwards.) My siblings and I heard the word nigger all day, every day in school from kindergarten onwards. It was only after we moved from the old family home that things got a tiny bit better, though it was still rough.
In the years since we've been gone, PG has undergone a transformation. The majority of the population is now Black; it prides itself on being the wealthiest majority-Black jurisdiction in the country. One thing hasn't changed, however: the PG County Police still shoot Black men at will, whenever and wherever they choose. Hell, they'll even shoot the occasional Black woman or white man if they want to. The Post ran a series on the many police shootings in PG; it went on for weeks. When the cops aren't blowing us away, they're beating us to death for nothing. Back in '76, a twenty year old man was beaten to death for allegedly dropping a donut wrapper on the ground outside a 7 Eleven. Fifteen years later, a teenage boy met the exact same fate under the exact same circumstances.
Thirtysomething years after I escaped that hell, and not much has changed. Being Black is still potentially a capital offense there. I'm leery of even driving through the place, even though I have no fear in Montgomery County, where I now live. The cops here may be just as racist (one stopped my brother a few years ago for running to catch a bus after dark), but they won't shoot down Black folks just for breathing. Until the Black leaders in PG County get their act together and rein in their murderous cops, I won't even consider living there.
I should add that the cops doing the killing in Price George's County are Black as well as white now, but their victims are overwhelmingly Black. (The one white victim I can recall was shot while he was urinating on the side of a road, with his back turned to the shooter. The cop may indeed have mistaken the man for Black before he blew him away.)
I thought that this song by Mark Knopfler is also poignant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9...h?v=9-
ejCQBCLg0
Baloney Again
We Don't Eat In No White Restaurant
We're Eatin' In The Car
Baloney Again, Baloney Again
We Don't Sleep In No White Hotel Bed
We're Sleepin' In The Car, Baloney Again
You Don't Strut Around In These Country Towns
You Best Stay In The Car
Look On Ahead Don't Stare Around
You Best Stay Where You Are
You're A Long Way From Home, Boy
Don't Push Your Luck Too Far
Baloney Again
Twenty-Two Years We've Sung The Word
Since Nineteen Thirty-One
Amen, I Say Amen
Now The Young Folk Want To Praise The Lord
With Guitar, Bass And Drums, Amen
We'll Never Get Tired Of Jesus
But It's Been A Heavy Load
Carrying His Precious Love
Down A Long Dirt Road
We're A Long Way From Home
Just Let's Pay The Man And Go
Baloney Again
The Lord Is My Shepherd
He Leadeth Me In Pastures Green
He Gave Us This Day
Our Daily Bread And Gasoline
Go Under The Willow
Park Her Up Beside The Stream
Shoulders For Pillows
Lay Down Your Head And Dream
Shoulders For Pillows
Lay Down Your Head And Dream
You would have to write this. It brings back a ton of memories for me, not only of things that I’ve experienced but the incidents my mother told me about that happened before I was born.
The trip my mother and father took to visit her relatives in the Florida panhandle a couple of years before I was born, when my father got stopped for speeding in South Carolina and so irked the officer because my father had the nerve to be driving a brand new Cadillac that he was hauled off to the local cop shop; warning my mother as he was taken away that if he wasn’t back in an hour, she was to get out of there…leaving her crying her eyes out because she was sure they were going to kill him. Fortunately, they brought him back, none the worse for wear.
Of course, the fact that he had bought said Cadillac caused him to lose ALL the white business at the service station he ran in Philly. So much for good work.
Years later, when I was a little boy accompanying my parents down South for family reunions in the 60’s, watching Mom pack a humongous lunch in the basement of our apartment before we left; leaving in a caravan of three cars (my family, one uncle and one aunt and their respective families), passing by the big well lit service stations in Maryland and Virginia and wondering why we couldn’t stop there to eat like everyone else, questioning my mother and not really getting an answer from her. Why did we have to stop at some lonely rest stop on US 301 between Richmond and Emporia and eat a picnic lunch? I understand now what I could not have understood back then, that because you were a little black child there were places you could not go and things you could not do, especially in the South.
(And just in case folks think that shit didn’t happen up north, I can still remember at the tender age of six having my babysitter take my brother and I up to the 8th floor of the John Wanamaker department store in downtown Philly, sit in the gorgeous Art Deco cafeteria and NOT be served. So much for that Civil Rights thingy that got signed the year before).
more...
...cont.
There was one incident in 1974 that still stands out in my mind; one of my uncles had gotten in a motorcycle accident while we were down on the family farm during the family reunion and his injuries were severe enough that he had to be airlifted to UAB-Birmingham Medical Center. About a week later we decided that certain family members were going up to see him; I went since I was designated the navigator, and since we got hungry during the trip up there, we decided to stop and get something to eat…which is how we ended up in a roadhouse off I-65 in Clanton, Alabama.
When the twelve of us walked into the restaurant, it was like we’d suddenly walked into an episode of the Twilight Zone…the only black person in the restaurant was the waitress, who looked at us like we’d done something utterly awful. The entire restaurant was full of white people, and I swear every one of those people stopped what they were doing and looked at us HARD. To this day I remember the hair on the back of my head rising as I got the distinctive vibe that we weren’t supposed to be here. At. All.
We hauled ass FAST, got back on I-65 and we didn’t stop until we got to Birmingham, where we found a McD’s two blocks from the hospital that had no problem serving us.
I drove past that exit about nine years ago on my way to visit a friend in Indianapolis and it STILL rankled. (Don’t think I didn’t entertain thoughts of arson, I ain’t that holy).
Do I still harbor bitterness toward those days? No, mostly because I was a child and a teenager when most of this stuff happened, so I learned to deal with it because that was what you were supposed to do. Part of the problem is that so many people think that because everything seems to look so hunky-dory today because they can go where they want and live where they want and sleep with who they want that they have allowed themselves to be blinded by the fact that there are still places where YOU CAN’T DO THAT SHIT. You have places and people who have allowed themselves to continue to embrace a mindset that says that because they have a particular skin color that it confers on them a feeling of superiority and nobility that not only masks their true situation of ignorance and desperation but also allows them to be manipulated by people who really, really don’t give two shits about them either way as long as they can get theirs. It’s a classism that uses racism to mask what it really is. And the poor slobs, for the most part, either never get a clue (and are proud of it) or if they do begin to figure out their place in the food chain become so repulsed by what they see that they inherently reject it. Unfortunately, that’s the ONLY way they’re going to be able to truly move onward with their lives.
The funny part is…I can drive all around Jackson County, Florida and feel comfortable. Every time I go back home to Philly I get nervous anytime I’m anywhere in the Great Northeast section…go figure…
And yeah, down here in my neck of the woods in Central Florida we still have a bunch of folks who act like the Civil Rights Act never got signed.
But as I told one of them at work one day, "Just keep in mind that this time we're ALL ARMED."
Amazing piece. It's hard to say congratulations on writing it because it's so personal and so painful. But you made it so very real.
Thanks for your willingness and courage in sharing it.
Every time I think LowerManhattanite won't blow me away, he does it again.
No comment from me would or could possibly add anything further.
It wasn
’t only blacks who had to fear lynching and other violence in the South in the middle of the 20th century.
As a child I was horrified by the TV news scenes of civil-rights marchers being set upon by police dogs, and firehoses.
And then my father, literally a rocket scientist (or rather an engineer in rocket engine testing) was sent to work the summer of 1960 at an airforce base in the middle of Tennesee.
The drive down from New Jersey seemed a trip into the heart of darkness. There may have been racism in nearby communities outside our country- becoming-suburbs all-white New Jersey small town, but nothing prepared me for the shock of the Colored and White labeled restrooms and water fountains of the South.
And I was shocked to my 10 year-old core even before the threat of violence hit closer to home.
My father is nominally a Protestant, my mother was Catholic, and in order to marry in 1948 my father had had to agree that any children would be raised Catholic.
So while in Tennessee, my mother took us to what I remember as a pretty white steepled church near Tullahoma, Tennesee. After mass, as I was thumbing through some religious children
’s books for sale in the foyer, I remember my mother complimenting one of the local parishoners on the church.
I
’ll never forget the chill I experienced, the fear and my viscereal reaction to what that Catholic church woman replied, “Oh yes, we like the new church, too. And we’ve been very lucky with it, the last three burned down.”
This was during the period that black churches in the South — often the base for civil rights action — were being bombed in retaliation by the KKK and freelance white bigots, killing women and children.
So I was an aware enough ten year old to know that those three Catholic churches hadn
’t just burned down, but had been burned down by local bigots.
And every day in Tennesee I was walking among, as a 10 year old Catholic girl, complete strangers who hated me simply for my religion, and were willing to commit violence directed at me and my family.
Nearly fifty years later, and I
’ve never since been interested in travel in the South.
So perhaps I can identify with the Jena 6, in a way many whites can’t.
Can I just say again, that you guys are making this post.
Your additions, your sharing and experiences put real muscle on the bones I hung out here.
Xeno, Thor (I now have to get that song!), Deacon G...you have added in a big way with your words, as many of the others before you did.
Amazing. All of you. Thanks again.
Ivory:
I second that.
LM:
Sad to say, none of this shit surprises me. When the disease goes this deep, real change only seems to come in two flavors: glacial, and way too fucking slow.
Especially when it's such a damned useful parasite, whenever there's a need for some of that old time divide-and-conquering, or for deflecting rage at the hollowing out of our country from its real authors to fictional "welfare queens" and other undesirables-du-jour (usually distinguishable by an overabundance of melanin).
And Jen, your musing on Steve made me cry. Literally.
Thank you for your words, and for staying strong.
All my best,
LM
LM, commenters all, you are just amazing. I keep rereading it all over and over again (I do that anyway) and I just can't get over it.
>>You will often find yourself questioning your place. Your presence. “Should I be here?” It's a sad, and pathological spectacle too many of us do—but do it we do, for good reason.
LM, this is the story of my life. I'm not black but so what? I'm not white either so as a practical matter I am black. I choose to live where I live b/c it's a place where I know I will be tolerated, and that's how it's been all of my life. But tolerance is a cold place that is usually a wallpapered front. Because when you least expect it, you can hear CHINK said loud and clear right at you by a nicely dressed white man Grand Central Station and he knows he can say it and no one will stop him.
Jen, thank you for talking about Steve. Not a day goes by without thinking about him.
LM, I had to take a day to get far enough away from what the post brought up - Tokyo isn't far enough. far from it.
In Pensacola, in Augusta, in the other places where we drove south from Queens each summer to visit relatives in trailers and beat down old houses, as I read, stretched out on the back seat of the car and loving the feeling of that moving cocoon, we would slow down in certain places. And I'd hear whispers, like: "can we stop here?"
My Daddy helped me feel safe everywhere we went down south - and he made me feel like the places where we couldn't go weren't worth going to.
But I knew why - and the complexity of the sickness, the fear, the pride, and the wanting to just be, of being African American in the land of my birth...LM, you caught it all, in the way it deserves.
I said once on Kos that being black is a feature, not a bug. I do believe that, but it is a conscious belief, one that it takes all my parents' early training to maintain...and still I slip.
Jen, much, much love to you. Sharing this is why we are here.
peace, and thank you all.
Damm, LM steps up to the plate, he has been here before, the crowd tenses, they know what to expect.
Pitch, it's out of the ball park.........
I presume that's the American way of saying. "They think it's all over, it is now"
You sir, should write a book, no really, it's a shame to restrict this ability to reach inside a persons soul to this little corner of the interwebs.
“Driving While Black” which is a recognised crime in Europe as well as in America is only a in-your-face reminder that we black folk should know our place
Not much to add, only that my mother got tired of saying "yessir" to a white store owner in 1955 Louisiana. She was promptly bundled aboard a bus and sent to Chicago. (The most segregated city in America when I was growing up there, but that's another issue.)
I remember my father telling me (when I was fairly young) that they used to called African-Americans "jungle bunnies." This was in the early sixties in middle class CT.
Now he claims racism is over, and people need to get over it. The acary thing about that comment is that I know he believes it. It's this sort of "I am not actively racist in my thoughts. Issue closed." thinking. I guess that's part of the "privilege" of living in the rural northeast - there's no one to contradict that opinion.
Hey guys,
I surfed in through PAndagon's link and I am glad I did.
I grew up perilously close to Jena, went to college with tons of folks from Jena, and haven't been back to my homeland since 2001. I am constantly reminded why when I read things like this.
I know everyone here is on board with eliminating racism and you all (mostly) believe that this inherent racism is pounded into you in a place like rural Louisiana from birth, but I felt I should share. I had a conversation with a relative (who lives even closer to Jena than I ever did; maybe one town over) who though that the charges were just(including not charging the white instigator/gun brandisher), that an all-white jury was a-ok and that "those *racial slur* got what they deserved. Sitting under that tree was not knowing their place."
I'm not perfect. I have gut reactions to things I later realize was the result of my own upbringing internalized and instinctualized...but THAT comment above is how my friends, my family, my race feels in rural Louisiana.
This is the best thread ever.
These things have happened and will continue to happen but I believe as the demographics of this country change these blantant abuses of the justice system will grow in number and in intensity as right wing whites feel more threatened.
If this is how these fools act when they are the majority and they have all the power what will things be like in the coming decades as the power structure changes?
Totally great writing that reminds one of what the reality is in this country. There is a reason Rudi Giuliani is leading in the Republican race, despite his divorces and his stance on gays and abortion. Too much of White America thinks he stands with them on the more important issue - race.
I live near a small town whos high school mascot was the chinks (its now teh dragons) up until 95. People in that town still wear their chinks gear around. I get fallowd around stores, but never get any salesmen to help me (my wife who hates sales people abuses this and brings me with when she gose shoping). We have been told be "nice" little old ladies that they couldn't rent to an "interracial" couple. Im of hispanic descent(I don't speak a lick of spanish and am mixed enough that no one can tell what the hell i am..this was vividal displayed to me when I was in grade school and was called: Spick, wetback, dot head, towel head, and cheif at the same time). I don't see the worst of the racis....and i am damm glad for it, I don't know if i could hadle what you experiened every day of your life LM.
I do get to expereince somesofter versions that you miss out on though...the "where are you from" question...they enver accept the answer (chicago) and then ask "no, no where are your parents from" they don't like that answer either (chicago, pitsburgh)then when they try a fallow up they never like it when I cut in and say "what you realy want to ask is whay am I not white"....that gets tehm fumbblign around for a while.
Iwill also note that racism isn't an american parisite its a human one...I have never met a more racist bunch thean my family in south america...hell that can't utter teh word mexican withotu placeign eth word dirty in front of it....there isn't a nation on earth that dosn't have a large contigint of bigots.
I graduated from Booker T Washington High in 1978. Racism was rampant. Everyday whites were attacked and beaten. They could not use the bathrooms as they would be jumped and beaten. This was my life as a white boy. It is like this today in Prince Georges county where I now live. My youngest will not attend a public high school because of the racist blacks that live here. Some things may have changed but for me and mine racism is still very much in the fore front.
This made me cry. Then it made me angry. Then it made me cry again.
At the risk of coming across as incredibly stupid, this just blows my mind. I'm white, a woman, and from New Hampshire. Obviously I'm aware of racism, that it's evil, insidious and prevalent, but would have said incidents like this ended a long time ago. I've been baffled and angry when I've read reports about the Jena Six. This really drives home that it's not isolated, it's not a fluke or a mistake that's going to get cleared up now that people are paying attention. It's disgusting that anyone can find these pervasive abuses of power acceptable. I'm angry that it happens, I'm angry I was unaware that it happens and I'm sorry that it happened to you.
I was born and raised in rural Washington State, and have lived here all my life, and quite frankly there weren't many non-white kids here when I was growing up. In other words, I'm a bit ignorant in the ways of racism.
A few years back, I was given some job duties that had me intereacting with people in Louisiana on an almost daily basis, but just over the phone.
Shortly after Katrina hit, I heard a very nice woman that I worked with say I hope "those people" go back to New Orleans, so we don't have to be afraid to go out after dark. "Those people" aren't welcome here, and we want our town to go back to normal. "Those people" are dirty and leave garbage laying all over the place. I finally had to ask her, do you mean you want the black people to go away? She ended the conversation shortly thereafter.
Until that convesation I had no idea what color she was, but afterwards, I had no doubt she was proud and white, but aware enough to know she had crossed a line with me that she never crossed again.
Racism, in my white world, seems to be such a subtle thing but if I weren't white I doubt I would find it so subtle. I would probably be very wary of people, and that is not a fun place to be forced to live.
Best post I've read in a long, long time.
"My family came from wherever they had been flung. But these places were mostly northern cities. Philly. Boston. Chicago, et al. Those who came “home” were thousands of miles away physically in most cases—psychologically in almost all."
"Shocked...shocked, I tell you, northern cousins, and grandkids, and great-great grandkids, and fully embraced “outside children” wanted to burn the town down"
I am surprised you take this tone with racism (or lack thereof) in northern cities.
At least in Connecticut, the gap between rich and poor is quite large, and in some cases all you have to do is cross one street to go from a rich neighborhood to a poor one. And typically, the poor neighborhoods aren't as white as the rich ones. Just a couple of miles from ultra-wealthy (and white) Greenwich is very poor (and black/hispanic) Bridgeport.
Joe, while Prince George's County is 2/3 black, there are plenty of white kids in a lot of high schools. I have practiced law there, attended kindergarten there. If it matters, I am approximately as pale/Euro/majority/privileged caste in this screwed up country as Johnny Carson or Al Gore.
You can certainly get your ass beaten in high school; got mine beaten, though mine was by rednecks in a 98% white school in Carroll County, because I was new and knew nobody. The ass beatings were brutal and unjust but they represented shitty administration, not racism.
I attended Princeton with both white and black grads of public Prince George's high schools, and not just Eleanor Roosevelt either.
Forgive me if I maintain skepticism about your charge of "racism" when "shitty poorly administered school" under Occam's Razor fits better. Especially when your manifest bitterness tends to induce us strangers to question your objectivity.
Racisms is just as prevalent in the little towns up north, but it's different. My dad calls it closeted racism. I grew up in northern Wisconsin. My little brother is Filipino, he's adopted. Once I got so tired of people asking how it is that my brother is brown that I told my teacher it was the mailman's fault. I didn't know what it meant at the time, but I'd heard it from my mother, who said that's what she wanted to say to people. I guess she probably got a lot of shit from people walking around town with a little brown kid.
Mike:
The “shocked, shocked I tell you” was meant to convet sarcasm (alá Claude Rains in Casablanca) and a certain myopic northern naiveté.
My Uncle R. called the pissed-off kiddies on their dudgeon when he went off in the lunchroom.
”convey sarcasm”
Writing=easy. Typing=hard. 
Joe - What you saw happening at Booker T. was bigotry and hate.
What happened in Jena was institutionalized racism. Those white kids, whether they fully, consciously understood it or not, had the full force of white society, the police force and their local government behind them.
When people hate a particular group, it's bias and bigotry. When those people have the power of society behind them, THAT's racism, homophobia, sexism ...
tamens mentioned growing up in rural Washington State.
One year I was a manager for my high school track team. We were headed to the state finals in Wenatchee, on the eastern side of the state; most of us in a school van, but I was riding along with a team member's father who was coming along as a one-man cheering section (okay, and some chaperonage as well). Since we were coming over from the Puget Sound area we had a fairly long ride; we got hungry, as people do, and we stopped at a restaurant along the way.
It's amazing that they were having kitchen problems and their bathrooms were both out of order, especially since the folks who were already eating didn't seem to have had any problems getting their food.
And the worst part is that I know that if it'd been just the man I was riding with and me by ourselves we'd have been served, because he and I are white, and our team was a fairly wide mix.
This was in 1985. Not that long ago, and it still bothers me to this day. It'll probably still bother me 22 years from now.
Brian Bell says we're closer than we've ever been. I hope we've made progress, but even so it's not nearly enough. Not in 1985, not in 2007.
Very powerful prose - I shared it with everyone I know. I was sickened wen I heard what happened in Jena. I wondered how something like this could still be happening in America. Then I read your account of what happened to your family just 14 years ago and my hope for this country took a huge dip. This country is great in many ways but when we let things like Jena and NC happen, we lose a lot of that greatness. When allow a man like Bush to be elected - twice - we lose even more. As the descendant of poor European and middle eastern immigrants I was raised to believe we are all equal. I thank my parents for that. As the Jena school official said, and I paraphrase, I don't see black and white. I see right and wrong. What happened in Jena was wrong. Very wrong.
I find it so hard to believe that anyone cares what color or gender people are or think it holds generalized meaning. "The browning of America" - I mean, I just don't even get what the issue is, what color Americans are. "Is America ready for a black president," "Is America ready for a woman president" - Seriously, I just don't even get what that means or why anyone thinks like that. It's passed frustrating or angering or saddening for me, and it just rests at completely incomprehendable because it's just so illogical and odd.
I hate to think that we'll never be free of the ignorance and false sense of superiority and the hate. Well, I can't believe that, really, because I refuse to. I don't believe I won't live to see it; I can't believe that.
I find it so hard to believe that anyone cares what color or gender people are or think it holds generalized meaning. "The browning of America" - I mean, I just don't even get what the issue is, what color Americans are. "Is America ready for a black president," "Is America ready for a woman president" - Seriously, I just don't even get what that means or why anyone thinks like that. It's passed frustrating or angering or saddening for me, and it just rests at completely incomprehendable because it's just so illogical and odd.
I hate to think that we'll never be free of the ignorance and false sense of superiority and the hate. Well, I can't believe that, really, because I refuse to. I don't believe I won't live to see it; I can't believe that.
I thought racism was dead until I moved to atlanta. I was wrong. very. atlanta is an education all in itself, an education in the realities of race in america. and it's not a pretty picture.
i followed the link from pandagon, and i have to tell you this, please never ever stop speaking truth to power, you write words that have the force behind them to change the world.
@BadKitty - I've been seeing a push to change the definition of "racism" to mean only institutional/societal racism, but that push needs to fail. "Bias and bigotry" are too general, and could be about anything. (I know self-proclaimed Mac bigots, for example.)
Just from the posts here you can see that we need to retain a word in the English language that means "prejudice based on [perceived] race." Racism is alive and well around the world, and not only the societal kinds, or the kinds we know in the U.S.
I'm sticking with Wikipedia for my definition (at least the definition I see there today [wry smile]).
Fantastic post, and a fantastic ensuing discussion. I'll be passing this along.
Thank you, LM.
As others have said: WOW.
Thanks for sharing, LM. And good to hear from Jen!
The tapeworm analogy is really good. The amount I have struggled at various points talking with people about sexism or heterosexism or even racism (not so much for myself, but I was married to a Sioux for a while), and getting them to understand that it's the subtle, pervasive stuff that's so toxic. The blatant stuff can be scary, but it's also obvious and in the open and thus can be dealt with fairly directly. The pervasive stuff is just there, everywhere and it informs every single decision and it's so hard to even begin to address when everyone assumes it's just part of how the world is.
Thank you for this essay, LM.
You've captured the contradictions of the North and the South, of race in this country, perfectly.
I don't live in Texas any more, haven't for a dozen years. I miss it sometimes, I feel like your father must've. I mean, it's home - it's a wonderful, strange, beautiful place. The people are quirky and stubborn and wonderful in their curiosities. The culture is, I've discovered with time, unexpectedly rich, an amazing blend of being stuck in the middle of so many peoples. And, even though most of my Northern friends don't believe it, the people there of all colors rub elbows a lot more than they do in the North. In Portland, for instance, I haven't seen a black person for the last 6 months. Not a single one. In Houston I could eat lunch next to one at just about any diner and strike up a great conversation if the mood struck and then I could turn to my left and switch to Spanish and have an equally good chat with someone else.
You can't hardly get along down there without confronting it daily one way or another. Not like up north, where people can choose to ignore it if they want.
Even so - wooooooo-eeeee! I left it for a reason. At least the black folks in the North don't call me Miss Alexis. Never could stomach that. It's 2007 and any time I visit down there, people still call me Miss Alexis.
Moonglum,
You must have grown up in Pekin, Illinois, right? Yes, the school nickname/mascot were the Chinks. Certainly as a Chinese American, I take extreme exception to that name and am glad they changed it.
Joe,
I don't condone what you've experienced, but there is a difference between the poor treatment you've experienced vs. that of a black person experiencing white racism.
Racism = predjudice + power.
IOW, these black folks who bullied you, were prejudiced, but their actions and roles in society are not going to affect you in getting a job, getting a promotion, getting a loan, having the society at large judge you unduly because of your race and having to overcome preconceptions.
It's not that way for a black person coming up against white racism, or institutional racism.
Very powerful stuff, LM. Thank you for sharing and for reminding white Northern girls like myself that this kind of thing still happens. Sadly, it is far too easy to forget when you don't see it everyday. More importantly, this forces me to recognize the subtle racism that Northerners feel and sometimes act on.
Great writing, do the book. There's no way to make this required reading, but a book would find a wider audience. Of course the ones who we most feel like feeding it to would never turn a page. Bigotry and hate, racism and predjudice are passed on by language and choice of words from generation to generation while children are still very young. Kids learn quickly and young by watching their parents' examples. It is a little better now than in the 60s just a little, sad.
"I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
@Silverkris: What the heck, I'll start speaking more about this here.
Racism != prejudice + power
Rather,
Racism = prejudice based on [perceived] race
*Institutional* racism = prejudice + power
We, and I mean everybody, even authors whom I respect tremendously, need to watch out for the lure and the easy out of sloganeering. If we oversimplify we lose the power to speak truly.
What a remarkable essay. I came over here via Walk In Brain, and I'm sorry I didn't do so sooner. I will link to this and visit regularly.
I believe I recognized the town where your reunion was held, LM. In fact, I taught for a year at West Brunswick HS in Shallotte, NC (1990-91) and lived in Wilmington. Crossing the Cape Fear River was akin to a time machine back then; although Brunswick County has grown quite a bit in the ensuing years with the influx of retirees (and money), when I was there it was definitely like stepping back into the '50s.
Thank you for your inspirational essay. And I'll just echo what everyone's said about writing a book: please do.
Gods there's so much I need to say here. First off, I find racism at this level to be completely surreal. I've often wondered what a blind black kid must go through...
"Daddy, why do they call me those names?"
"Well son, it's because your binfoble is gurfish."
"Um...."
That just about says it don't it. Here's one of my favorite dark cartoons.
Something a friend of mine said to me came to mind as I read the replies. Now I'm northern. REAL northern as in northern Manitoba. Most of the reservations up here are cesspools of ignorance, unemployment, alcoholism, you name it. He said that one of the major causes of this was that everyone with brains, talent, will-power, drive, what have you, had left for better parts leaving behind those who couldn't get out. So does this contribute to the problem?
Surreal? Damn right! Most Americans haven't the slightest idea how different things are in other parts of the world. I don't remember any racial insults being tossed around as a child. When I look at my elementary school pictures I notice black faces, red faces, brown faces, yellow faces, but my memories don't contain those colors. There certainly is racism up here but it's a mere flicker compared to what we see down south.
Surreal. I'm a big animation fan and last year as I was looking through some real rare oldies I'd downloaded I got quite a shock. The 1924 Disney short "Alice and the Dog-Catcher" starts with the neighborhood kids getting together our-gang style in the clubhouse and having a fun little pretend game of KKK. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Surreal! I've seen two handguns in my life, both interesting collectors pieces, too old to fire. I have a single shot 22 rifle because I live in the country and once a year feel like plugging a tin can or two with some friends. I have impressions of a society living in fear, armed to the teeth. Why? What is there to fear? What is there to hate with such venom and fire?
I love the internet, it's my home. I love the fact that I can form a friendship with someone and not know their sex, age, race, religion, weight, or appearance. If only all our interactions were as blind as they are here.
Peace.
silverkris: nope currently live near pikin, there is a growing group there trying to change the name back.
I read that entry with tears in my eyes. You spoke the reality that so many would rather pretend no longer exists.
I woke up this morning and remembered school started yesterday. One of my first thoughts...whether the white children who walk past my house on the hill every morning would begin their ritual to tossing things into our yard?
Apparently, they learned that was okay whether we say anything to them or not. Perhaps I should be relieved they're not shooting at the house instead.
I'm forwarding this to everyone I know.
I grew up in Raleigh. I remember educating my ex (MexAm from TX) on the places that in Wake and other counties where "we don't go."
Thank you for telling this story. As a white person I would love to believe that racism is part of a horrible past, but the truth is, it's obviously very present in America today. Having only newly opened my eyes to the severity of this situation, I find myself horribly upset and angry at my fellow white people - the overt racists and the passive apologists and defenders. Though I was never racist in the KKK way, like most white Americans, I perpetuated a racist system by not fighting against it or working to listen and hear the people of color who bothered talking to me about the reality I did not see. I don't know what the solutions are, but I find this situation really upsetting. This American situation. White people perpetuate it from the top to the bottom, and so few of us are ever brave enough to open our eyes.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience. Reading about it made my skin crawl and made me sick. That things like this still happen is horrible. I'm a parent and your father's words broke my heart. That anyone's family should be hurt like this is so glaringly wrong it shines like the sun. It makes me ashamed of the pale skin I have in common with those people. I'm so grateful I was taught better. I hope you do write a book. The people in society who don't have to deal with this need a guided tour so they can feel it for themselves, maybe that way it will become the priority that it should be.
Excellent post, and thank you for sharing. I cant believe people are actually surprised by it.
Thank you for sharing this story about your family gathering. You know, many young men and women are dying in a war abroad to end "terrorism". Yet, we have the worst terrorist right here in America. The real ones.
God damn it, YES. I'm from GA, and I remember when I worked at a TV station down in Macon. One of our photogs came back from a "Freedom Rally" down in East Dublin, GA, which was the kind of small town you're writing about here. He came back in, and as he was editing his video, he looked at me and shook his head.
"It's like slave times down there, man."
-hx
"When people hate a particular group, it's bias and bigotry. When those people have the power of society behind them, THAT's racism, homophobia, sexism ..."
As commented by: BadKitty
Thank you for adding that, wikipedia or no, it strikes a chord with me. I've been working on becoming an effective anti-racism alli for over 7 years. I often trip over my own slip and naivete` and struggle when attempting to explain that reverse-racism does not exist. That people often confuse prejudice and bigotry with racism. I guess my efforts have been noticed because the joke in some of my social circles is that I keep my soap-box leashed to my beltstrap and warnings are uttered "not to get Grace started". I have tried to articulate a simple explanation/definition so I wouldn't have to see the eyes of those I'm talking with gloss over.
You have provided me with one, even if it isn't "yours".
Thank you.
i think you did a really good job explaining, to those of us who have never experianced it, the paralyzing difference between personal instances of racist people, and a system that thrives on the racist structure, while showing how personal the attack and how emotional it can be. I liked the person who said it almost sounds like James Baldwin.
thanks. this is the best thing i've read. and it was good for me to read. and help me understand. i'm fowarding it to everyone i know.
Yes, racism is alive and well, if somewhat underground in many places, in America.
I spent four years in West Texas in the 90s (CA before and since). Officially there's no segregations there ... but there are black and hispanic neighborhoods (not necessarily incorporated) and churches. I was - and still am - shocked to hear one of the foremen refer to kids as n*gg*rs.
(My parents broke us of that habit the first time we used the word, and we didn't know what it meant, although we actually had met blacks by then: we thought they were neat people, because they taught us some card games to pass time on a camping trip in the Yosemite back country. They *had* to be smart, they knew stuff we didn't.)
"Will we? It is the year 2007. The same way it was the year 1993. And 1973. 1963. '43. 'Ought-Three."
FYI, it's 'aught, not 'ought.
the closest thing i can compare to the experiences in this blog post and from some of the other posters are some road trips my family took from Phoenix through west TX on our way down to Corpus Christi passing through some towns where everyone looked very much like sunbaked members of Der Bund and glared at us as if they remembered the Alamo perhaps a little too well to be healthy
I was too young to understand it all back in those days, but i remember the fear on my dad's face, and fear wasn't something he showed very often.
This is a very touching narrative and it is sad. It clearly demonstrates that human beings have a long way to go in order to reach that point in which we can refer to each other as 'brothers and sisters' - whites, blacks, hispanics, asians, everybody. To my non-black brothers - let us try to see the differences in others as characteristics which supplement us, let us reach out and try to heal the scars of colonialism, slavery and imperialism. To my black brothers - let us continue to persevere, as we always have, let us rise up and take steps that would ensure that our children have a better future than we do. I find it horrible that I'm thinking like this. It is sad because I live in England, I found myself here through no doing or fault of mine. It is my aspiration to become a lawyer and the closer I get to that dream, the more I see the differences. The more I see how entrenched the foundations of racism has been dug into the very fabric of our society. Effectively, the manifestion of my dream is limited because there are places that society dictates, albeit silently, that I SHOULD NOT reach. The impediments in my way are there, they are vast but nobody can do anything about it. They are society's unwritten code. Some times, they say blacks are lazy, they don't go to university and what not. I have gone to university and spent thousands of pounds to educate myself, well, my father spent it. Still the doors do not open. The very fabric of society is diseased with racism. The notion that racism doesn't exist anymore is a vicious joke. It's an indictment on the government and establishment that these incidents happen presently. This just brings tears to my eyes. As blacks and whites, let us reach out and regard 'them' as 'us'.
this is an amazingly written story and I am going to assign it to my freshman composition class at the San Francisco Art Institute for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that this city in particular thinks it is the most equitable of all and although that may be true to a degree where sex and gender are concerned, racism is still rampant here even if it is often well-camouflaged and subtle. thus I think it is important that our bubble gets a little pin prick from time to time.
I will say that I understand the feeling of not being welcome in one's own country, or at least in large parts of it, although I do have the advantage of being able to relax in most cities as a white but visibly queer and non-conformist transsexual man. I have been in some scary situations in rural areas and my general assumption is that my life is in danger when I venture out of the relative safety of a large city. of course, queers are murdered in the bay area too, but at least widespread intolerance is muted here.
I do not know if there is anyplace else in the world where things would be better, honestly--as others have mentioned, racism, classism and (hetero)sexism are rampant among humans. America celebrates its ignorance these days more than it follows its supposed aspirations to true democracy, which is depressing enough, but as the richest country in the world one would hope we could do better for ourselves. personally, I don't hold out a lot of hope, but I still try to teach some sort of ethical thought at the very least. action? one hopes for it.
anyway. great writing. another 'yes' vote on the book idea.
LM,
I was never a regular at the News Blog, but those times when I visited for Steve and Jen's excellent perspective, I always took time to read the comments so I could enjoy your perspective as well. Thank you for your quality writing and for this excellent post.
In 1969, my family was the first black family to move to our neighborhood in Spring Lake, NC, the small military town outside of Ft. Bragg (Fayetteville is on the other side). I was 6 at the time. Even as I grew up, all of us kids always knew that blacks weren't welcome at the small local diner, Cedar Point. A couple of years ago, my mom (who was born and raised in Panama) told us that she had gotten a meal there a few months after we first moved in. She had been the only black person in the joint and she left unmolested. She eventually concluded that, because her heavy accent identified her as a non-American, the patrons figured she didn't know any better--which she didn't.
As a white guy doing economic work, it would be very comforting to imagine that racism is an issue of the past, but I know from my work that no matter what people say, the rot persists. One study I read noted that despite the stated leanings of white neighborhood residents (oh, my we're not racist!) once ten percent of the n-hood is minority they start moving out. In my own supposedly liberal city, when I told a college alum where I was buying a house, she said, "But isn't that demographically unstable?" Demographically unstable; you have to love those euphemisms.
Having lived in Oakland, San Francisco and Boston (none is a paradise), one of the more jarring incident that I was subjected to was in Chicago. I was taking a cab from the piers there that have the pavilions (Chicago dwellers will know, I can't remember the name) back to my hotel. The cab driver was a guy from somewhere in Africa, speaking french into his cellphone as we came to a left turn to my hotel, when we were rammed in the rear by the cab behind us. The guy in the cab behind us started honking and shouting insults. After he hit us three times, my cabbie got out to ask him what the problem was. The other driver was an older Archie Bunker type who started spewing some of the most racist invective I have ever heard. I couldn't believe this so I got out to help my cabbie, and then, from the next lane over a white guy shouted that he was off-duty Chicago PD, and if we didn't get back in the car he was going to take us to the station. I protested and the cop-guy just got louder, so we both shut up and got in the car.
As we approached the hotel front door, the driver had tears pouring do