How a White, Southern Boy Learned About Racism

I learned about racism in a cafeteria line.  I was at school, in the 10th grade, 14 or 15 years old, depending on whether it was before or after my mid-November birthday.  The year was 1956.

It seems strange that I would learn such a lesson at such a late age, given that I was raised in highly segregated Memphis, Tennessee, but I had not been around people whom I knew were racist and I was not familiar with the concept.  It was not something people talked about.

Memphis Central was the oldest high school in town and was recognized as the college prep school.  When someone “lettered” from Central, the letter they were given was an “H” for High School.  Nearby Memphis Tech was the technical school.  Both were all White.  It didn’t occur to me that things could have been organized differently until the next year, in 1957, when our sister school, Little Rock Central in Little Rock, Arkansas, was desegregated by nine courageous students with a court order and a bevy of U.S Marshals.

The high schools in Memphis were three year schools (Grades 10-12) at the time.  In 1956 I entered Central as a Sophomore.  I was added to the ROTC and joined it’s drill team.  As I remember it, the Reserve Officers Training Corps was mandatory for Sophomore boys, and was voluntary for Juniors and Seniors.  The Drill Team was voluntary for all grades.  Girls were not under consideration for ROTC.  I am not sure what they did instead.

There was this one guy in ROTC who had it all together.  Thankfully, I don’t remember his name, but he was really cool.  Everyone looked up to him, including me.  He was the person we all wanted to grow up to be like. We weren't friends, but somehow on the day in question I ended up behind him in the cafeteria line.  As I remember it, we had to have a nickel at the end of the line. Something to do with milk, I think.  I was juggling my tray, a couple of school books and my nickel, so without thinking I put the nickel between my teeth.  I didn’t think anything about it.

So, this hero guy turned around, saw my nickel in my mouth and got the most horrible look on his face.  I don't believe I would remember the look, though, if we're not for what he said – “Eww!  Take that out of your mouth!  Some N***** may have had that is his mouth!”  My view of the world came apart.  I lost a hero.  He had instantly become a jerk instead.  And I began to understand that some White people did not see all people as equal, in spite of what Lincoln had said in the Gettysburg address.  In a sense, I lost my innocence that day.  I am sure it was to my betterment in the long run to recognize what was really going on around me, but it was really painful.

South Carolina's Confederate Flag

Flags mean different things to different people at different times.

When I was a kid I used my bicycle to get around Memphis. My favorite destinations were my Dad’s barber shop, about two miles away and my grandmother’s apartment in government housing about five miles away.  Though I didn’t know the term, I guess you could have labelled my grandmother a “liberal.”  Besides the multiple pictures of her grandchildren she had around, there were two large pictures on her wall – one of John F. Kennedy, the other of Franklin Roosevelt. She also had a three inch brass medallion of Roosevelt that I still keep.  I learned about her heart, though, not from any discussion of politics, but from watching how she treated the people around her.

When I was older, I rode the city bus to school.  That was the 1950’s.  The Black people rode in the back, the White people in the front.  As a kid, I didn’t know to question the arrangement.  That is just how it was.  But I do know that I frequently sat beside a Black woman on the bus about half way back.  I didn’t learn about racism until the 10th grade, but that is another story.

For the four years of college (1960-1963)  I worked in a (White) Boy Scout camp in North Mississippi.  The first summer at the end of camp the staff were all asked if any of us wanted to work another week or two at the Black camp, not far away.  I was the only volunteer and was the only White person at the camp.  I was the most junior staff member.  I served as a cabin counselor and a scout craft teacher, teaching things like knot tying and map reading.  I fondly remember one little boy who asked to sleep under my bunk because he would feel safer there.

My school was Ole Miss, the University of Mississippi, which in my last year there earned notoriety with the federal imposition of the admission of James Meredith, it's first Black student.  My friends and I cheered his arrival, and the arrival of the U.S. 101st Airborne to ensure his safety.

Yet, I remember taking pride in the confederate flag.  I did not see it as a sign of racism.  The Ole Miss marching band had a copy that was as wide as the football field and once each year they would bring it out. It would completely cover the band on the field while they played Dixie.   To me it represented warm summer evenings, thunder storms, playing in the rain, fried chicken, sweet tea, mashed potatoes.

But as I grew older, I learned that it represented much more to others.  To some it represented “Whites Only” signs, segregated schools, the back of the bus, KKK rally's, and even lynchings. What was beautiful to me was ugly to others.  As my eyes were opened to its broader meanings, it became less beautiful.  To fly it from a state Capitol says to the world, “We don’t care about its ugly side, about its hateful past.  We don't care about the people who are hurt by seeing it there.”

So the purpose of this little note is to add my voice to those who are calling for South Carolina to take it down.  Not because you have to, not because of any law or federal requirement.  South Carolina, take it down because it is the right thing to do.

Disenfranchised! No place for me?

My first vote ever in a national election was for Barry Goldwater.  Goldwater’s platform was that less government was better. I had been a very independent teenager and remained, though in the United States Marine Corps at the time, a very independent young man.  I saw no need for the government to go messing in my life or anyone else’s.  A lot of that is still with me.

About 30 years later one of my sons and I helped get Ross Perot on the Minnesota ballot by getting signatures on a petition.  We worked the front of the local grocery store.  Perot’s platform was about what he called “the crazy aunt in the basement.”  The crazy aunt that no one talked about was the budget deficit and the national debt.  Ross promised to eliminate both of them.

Somewhere between those two, Matt and I went to see Jesse Jackson during his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president.  We stood by the entrance door and got to shake his hand as he came into the auditorium.  We even went to the local Democratic caucus to try to get him on the ballot. 

Jesse, of course is as far from Barry and Ross, ideologically, as you can get, but I wasn’t into ideology as much as I was into fairness.  It was time for a Black person to make an entrance onto the national political scene.

Since then I have tried to reconcile what I see as good about the Republican Party with what I see as good about the Democrats.  My grandmother, “Nina” (nih nah) was a dyed in the wool Democrat.  She had family pictures in her little government owned apartment, but the biggest and most prominent photos were of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F Kennedy.  A non-attending, but contributing, Methodist, her heart was with the poor.  In all-white government housing in the 1950s her house was a regular stop for the Black mail carrier for a glass of ice water at her kitchen table.  And the fatherless children knew they could find an open ear at her house.

Today I have problems with both parties.  My beef with the Democrats is their adamant support for killing off unborn babies.  That’s the same reason I cut off support for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP).  Republicans, on the other hand exude meanness toward the poor, toward strangers, and by extension at least toward people of color.  

Neither can I reconcile calling myself an independent because there is a capitol “I” Independent party that picks up the deal breaker positions from one or both of the other two parties.  

So here I sit, with another national election warming up, and no suitable party to turn to.  Do we have to start our own?

The War on Science

This month’s (March 2015) National Geographic cover article is titled “The War on Science.”  I saw a copy in a doctor’s waiting room and later bought a copy to finish reading the article.  You see, in my book, "Does the Church Really Have Good News", I make the point that God and science are not at odds and I wanted to see who is at war with science and on what grounds.  I was also hoping to get some of the scientific facts of the subjects of the supposed war: Climate Change, Evolution, The Moon Landing, Vaccinations, and Genetically Modified Food.

As it turns out, the author, Washington Post Science Writer, Joel Achenbach, was more interested in how people decide what to believe than in arguing the points of disagreement.  That is a fair position for him to take in the article, just not what I had expected, especially from National Geographic.

I have been particularly interested in the evidence for global warming and for the assertion that it is being caused by human activity.  I read a lot about the consensus of scientists on the matter, but I never see any facts to support their agreement.  The only fact Achenbach had in this article was that the earth’s surface temperature has risen 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 150 years.  That’s 10 degrees every thousand years.  Unless there is something else going on (and maybe there is, like melting the ice caps) that hardly seems enough for all the hype.

Achenbach’s main point was that we tend to take our positions based on our feelings and on what our group of friends and family believe more so than on a logical examination of the facts, and that is true of scientists as well as disbelievers of science.  “We still have a need to fit in,” he asserts and that need trumps science.  Even scientists are very reluctant to take a position contrary to that of the bulk of their peers.  And disbelievers don’t want to go against the beliefs of the bulk of their peers either.  There is much more to the article and it is worth the $5.99 cover price for the magazine.  

Meanwhile, for more on the lack of disagreement between God and science see "Does the Church Really Have Good News?"

What facts do you have about global warming?

The Box by Lascelles Abercrombie

Once upon a time, in the land of Hush-A-Bye, 
Around about the wondrous days of yore, 
They came across a kind of box 
Bound up with chains and locked with locks 
And labeled "Kindly do not touch; it's war." 
A decree was issued round about, and all with a flourish and a shout 
And a gaily colored mascot tripping lightly on before. 
Don't fiddle with this deadly box,Or break the chains, or pick the locks. 
And please don't ever play about with war. 
The children understood. Children happen to be good 
And they were just as good around the time of yore. 
They didn't try to pick the locksOr break into that deadly box. 
They never tried to play about with war. 
Mommies didn't either; sisters, aunts, grannies neither 
'Cause they were quiet, and sweet, and pretty 
In those wondrous days of yore. 
Well, very much the same as now, 
And not the ones to blame somehow 
For opening up that deadly box of war. 
But someone did. Someone battered in the lid 
And spilled the insides out across the floor. 
A kind of bouncy, bumpy ball made up of guns and flags 
And all the tears, and horror, and death that comes with war. 
It bounced right out and went bashing all about, 
Bumping into everything in store.And what was sad and most unfair 
Was that it didn't really seem to care 
Much who it bumped, or why, or what, or for. 
It bumped the children mainly. And I'll tell you this quite plainly, 
It bumps them every day and more, and more, 
And leaves them dead, and burned, and dying 
Thousands of them sick and crying. 
'Cause when it bumps, it's really very sore. 
Now there's a way to stop the ball. It isn't difficult at all. 
All it takes is wisdom, and I'm absolutely sure 
That we can get it back into the box,And bind the chains, and lock the locks. 
But no one seems to want to save the children anymore. 
Well, that's the way it all appears, 'cause it's been bouncing round 
for years and years 
In spite of all the wisdom wizzed since those wondrous days of yore 
And the time they came across the box, 
Bound up with chains and locked with locks, 
And labeled "Kindly do not touch; it's war."

The "Y"

My wife and I used to work out at the local “Y”.  Where we live we see Y buildings everywhere.

Our little church is like a floating crap game.  You have to know someone on the inside to know where we are meeting this week.  The first two Sunday mornings of each month we meet in a public elementary school gymnasium. Our announcer that morning read a thank you note for the school supplies we had donated to the school several weeks previous.  During the week, the same gym space doubles as a morning and afternoon program run by (you guessed it) the Y.

On one wall of the gym the Y has posted 12 behavior rules.  After our worship time this morning which focused on the harvest (it is October after all), I walked over to the wall to check it out.  Everyone else was visiting and catching up on the week’s activities, but as a flaming introvert, I decided to go read the wall.

To my surprise, the twelve rules were mostly Bible based.  The first one spoke of loving each other.  Another said “treat others the way you want to be treated.”  No references were given, but to even a casual Bible student the source was evident.

Beyond my surprise, I was inspired to be hopeful about our school system.  Here in a public school in Minnesota, a state that a few years ago sent the most liberal of the 50 senators to Washington, the Y was teaching kids to live the way that Jesus had encouraged all of us to live.

Perhaps this should not have come as a surprise to me, but because so much is changing, I thought the Y had probably changed as well.  While the organization is widely known as the Y, it is officially the YMCA which stands for Young Men’s Christian Association.  It is no longer gender specific (a good thing), but it apparently retained its Christian values.