Last night I spent an hour watching a documentary that included some footage from the civil rights movement. It offered a short clip of Dr. Martin Luther King saying at what appeared to be a press conference that it was his request that President Kennedy sign an executive order declaring segregation illegal. At the time he made this statement, President Kennedy was under great pressure to advance civil rights without threatening his own chances for re-election with southern Democrat voters who weren't sympathetic to the plights of African-American citizens. Kennedy said, in what was perhaps his most important address, "This nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened."
The potential for true inspiration never expires. Forty-six years later, I come from a generation with a great apathy towards civil rights, yet these two statements, from two men on totally different sides of the country - from polar opposite regional, socioeconomic, and racial backgrounds - caused an introspective inquiry rare from someone born just months shy of the election of Ronald Reagan.
A southern white girl can watch a video of civil rights protests in 2009 and have a hard time conceptualizing that it was even possible that this happened in her fathers' lifetime. These things attribute to the Kennedy legacy. Sometimes saying the things that aren't easy to say makes the biggest impact. Those of my generation - we may be called Gen Y or Gen X - often smile about our otherwise perfect role models. Parents and grandparents who worked and sacrificed and taught us our values but in their deepest, darkest moments harbored prejudices that would keep us up at night if we knew the full extent of them. These prejudices don't make them evil, they're not harbored by one particular race or gender or sex - but they are prejudices that are so ingrained from childhood that years of change and tolerance have only dimmed them and taught them when may or may not be acceptable to give them voice.
Those of my generation that believed in the ideals of which Barack Obama spoke, campaigned tirelessly on his behalf. The fact that he was black was irrelevant to most. Perhaps the fact that we were apathetic to his race is the most powerful testament to the work of Dr. King, President Kennedy, and later, the work of President Johnson - who so bravely championed civil rights further than any President before. Once it was noble to be tolerant; now it's just repulsive to not be.
These days, it's no longer acceptable to be brazenly racist. There are certain symbols that are explainable in mainstream society - pictures or phrases that are explainable enough to those who want to believe the explanation but portray the message clear enough to those who see it for what it is; a confederate flag; words and phrases like thug, welfare queen, ghetto rat - offensive to those honest enough to admit what they are but vague enough for those who wish to remain in denial. These are the ambiguous phrases that divide our society.
We, as a generation, must acknowledge and reject these antiquated racist symbols and phrases. They are ghosts of an America past that too many have fought and sacrificed to see acknowledged as anything other than a shameful picture or paragraph in a history book.
Good job, Kelly!
Wombo, i propose rather than racism, we all have fear. It just manifests itself in different ways. Substitute hate-for-blank and insert fear of the dark. If mommy caves and lets ya use a duckie-nite lite, you may never learn to overcome that fear. Obviously, duckie isnt talked about at the dinner table (think American History X), doesnt play in front of you on the Fb, BsB teams, doesnt date the girl you think should be with you...Look at some of these sad little creature that make up the majority of supremist groups-outcasts, half-wits, misanthropes all. Those dudes have been punked so many times over their lives they go running to the only ones who will take them! And feed their fears...
Speaking of which, theres a certain group which uses that strategy...
Those of you familiar with the Houston area will note the difference between Clear Lake and Pasadena. I worked in Pasadena for the schools when I was in high school. One of the kids I worked with would always utter, "look at this wetback and look at that wetback." My legitimate response was, "what in the hell is a wetback." I never heard those terms growing up. I'm thankful I didn't but one of my big problems today is that those terms are used by the kids themselves as some kind of slang greeting. It's depressing really to see all that work get wasted.
In my younger days, I wasn't aware of overt racism in my hometown. Looking back, I am more aware that it existed. Not long ago, I read a story in my hometown newspaper about the first black firefighter, and the racist attitudes he had to deal with.
Were my parents racist? Yes.
Funny thing, though....I remember my FATHER being the worse one. We lived in an integrated neighborhood. (personal side note here: parents were divorced; we did not live with my father). My dad HATED that neighborhood. So many times I remember hearing him talk about that, that he hated that we lived in that "black neighborhood". You can insert profanity of your choosing.
Thank God for my grandparents who taught me differently, that you don't judge people for their skin color. And for neighbors who proved that; such as the neighbor who was the head of the local NAACP, who to me was just the neighbor lady who picked me up after I fell off of my bike.
I think Wombat has hit on a valid point: that some people seem to think that by offering freedom and equality to all, they would be losing something.
I can only wonder what is wrong with those people.
My parents were born in Louisiana in the 20's and reared there, so I heard plenty of the "N" word as I was growing up. But even as a child, I knew there was something not right about that word. Fortunately, my parents had little-to-no influence on me in that regard, and in fact, their words later caused me to carefully examine the plight of blacks. I didn't like what I saw.
I lived in Midland in the early 90's when a huge bruhaha occurred there over whether one of the local high schools should change its name (Robert E. Lee High School), its symbol (the Confederate flag), and its school song ("Dixie"). We could not beLIEVE the racist things we heard! It made us ashamed to be white folks. But it did present us with an opportunity to teach our kids some very important lessons about the ugliness of racism.
I hope to never have to live in that town again.
Cobbo, you and I are the same age. I too, was raised in Houston and remember all too well that HISD was the LAST large independent school district in the South to totally desegregate in 1975! and how they openly BRAGGED about it! Racism and bigotry have no place where people truly believe all men are created equal. Too many politicians have benefited from the divisions they help to create by playing on the fears of people. Now, we are reaping the harvest. Our hope is in our youth, but also, must be reinvigorated in all ages. Our country MUST win over this demon of destruction.
It's the downside of living in a pluralistic society. People come here from dozens of different places and cultures. The tension is always held between staying true to your culture and assimilating into the collective. Funny, but both sides argue both in different moments. Traditional Judeochristian people want others to assimilate and adopt their cultural norms (religion, marriage, and family) while shunning what appears to be other predominant cultural norms (materialism, promuscuity, ect). Meanwhile, those that want freedoms on the other side want universal adherence to other things.
I think the racism comes in recognizing cultural differences and yet attaching value to those differences. We can't help but do that because we always want to validate our own way of life. I find it funny that conservatives want everyone to behave the same (heterosexual, Christian values, ect) and yet are fearful anytime you talk about common sacrifice or societal needs. Just using a word like collective sends them into a tizzy.
Ultimately, I think Wombat is right. We all have a little racism in us. We all have to hold some prejudices. We don't accept polygmy or pedophilia. We have to draw the line somewhere. It's just a question of where.
everybody is at least a little bit racist....it's part of our makeup to be untrustful of that which is strange or unusual to us. Everyone makes automatic assumptions about people we're don't really know based on what we THINK we know about them. It's all right so long as you know where those reactions are coming from and don't let them rule you.
One thing i don't understand many people seem to feel that tolerance involves some sort of loss on their part. We saw it in the 60's with the civil rights backlash, in that the rhetoric was all about defending white culture from some type of encroachment by minorities. We see it today in the fight over gay marriage....all the talk of "defendign traditional marriage", as if two gay people getting married somehow invalidates pre-existing heterosexual marriages.
It's almost as if some people think there is only a finite amount of freedom and equality....and to extend it to others means that someone has to lose it.
AstrosGirlKel you hit the proverbial nail on it's head.
Vague symbolism has been exploited for decades by the racists in this country. Nooses and confederate flags are two blatant examples. If you listen to the rhetoric behind these symbol from the side of hate, the explanations are mild and misleading. When most rational people know that they stand for lynching and enslaving...
I grew up in 70's and 80's in southeastern PA, outside of Philadelphia. Never really experienced blatant racism. My catholic school was mixed. Wasn't until I moved south in the early 90's where I really felt more under currents of racism and anger. Anger towards blacks, immigrants, both illegal and legal, Mexicans, poor, Katrina victims, etc. All characterized as lazy, spongers, moochers, etc. I just feel a lot of people still have hate and anger, extreme anger for whatever reason in some cases. Artemus might be right, maybe they have anger and hate because of their own lack of educational and employment opportunities or maybe it's being raised in a home with obvious racial bias. Whatever the reason, I can honestly say there is difference between the racial issues still remaining between north and south and how they deal with racism in general.
I grew up in the 50's, raised in a racially mixed neighborhood in the industrial midwest. I had enough black friends when I was young to know that racism made me angry. It made me particularly angry when I found it being expressed and acted upon by my own parents, people who actually had a great deal in common, economically, with black families in our neighborhood. It was as if my parents -my mother in particular - blamed black people for their own economic straits, while the real enemy was a lack of education.
But I think I redeemed my family with my professional career, one in which I helped build a plant that employed laid off autoworkers in Detroit, built homes bought, mostly, by single black moms, and built parks in older, declining primarily black neighborhoods. Improving the lives of those who have been discriminated against raises up all of us, I believe.
I too often use the phrase "sense of community", but it is one that the right wing shouters and the racist thugs clearly do not comprehend. We are all in this together.
I hope that is true, Cobbo, I really do. But I think the south and small town America still has a way to go. When you see adults screaming at rallies with their children beside them, doing monkey impersonations, you know that there are children still being raised in ignorance. And I suppose that there are still young, black families that teach their children never to trust the whities.
Excellent piece!
I grew up "behind the Pine Curtain" in East Texas in the 60's. It took a while for civil rights to get there and, in some instances, they're still waiting. Sadly, they are not alone as evidenced by what we see and read about almost daily from those who seem to pay homage to the statement that "beauty (and skin color and ethnicity and political leanings) may be skin deep, but ugly goes to the bone."
At some point, you have to think that the cancer of some people's personalities will get them in the end.
I was born in 1950 in Birmingham AL and came to Houston in 1953. I grew up with segregated water fountains (coloreds only), separated schools and all the other trappings of segregation here in Texas. Houston outgrew that evil when Houston civic leaders decided behind the scenes that integration was the wave of the future and slowly led the city into the future. And so did I. Unfortunately many of my generation never moved forward and even now are unable to recognize the vestiges of racism so firmly affixed to their view of the world. You guys are our hope for the future. When the rest of us dinosaurs die off maybe we can truly judge men "not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
First of all, this was an excellent piece. I suppose I am much like you even if I was born a bit earlier (which Woodward and Bernstein were nipping at Nixon's heels). Growing up in Clear Lake, we were a bit immune to race. There were people of other races, but as embarrassing as it is to say, they acted "white."
I think the big issue now is how we can have an honest discussion about race without being called racists. This is happening on both sides of the coin. African Americans that point out obvious (to them) discrepancies get called racists by the likes of Glenn Beck. Yet, I work with students that come from parents that I just want to shake some sense into. They make me want to scream, "do you realize what MLK, Malcolm X, and the other civil rights activists were fighting for?" Yet, if I do that then I will automatically be labeled a racist. It is this lack of honesty that is keeping us from taking the final step. It's what creates people like Beck that can play on the deep seeded feelings of those that can't voice their opinions.
Great writeup. I hope that we can live up to its ideals.