Everything is not black and white. I've always believed that the reality of almost any situation will have shades of gray mixed in among the darks and the lights.
I grew up in a small town where the blacks and the whites were kept separate, like laundry on wash day.
The world I grew up in was a safe little world. We left the keys in the car. We did not lock our doors at night.
The first time I became aware of race, I was four years small, and was in the doctor's waiting room with my mom. I liked the colorful children's chairs they had in there, and I was pulling one over to sit near Mama, when I saw an old black man in the room next to me. He smiled and beckoned me to come to him so he could give me a little piece of candy wrapped in paper. He had a sweet smile that old people do when they love children. So I politely rose from my seat, but was immediately stopped by my mother. I couldn't talk to him or take his candy, she told me firmly. He was colored, and little white girls didn't talk to colored men.
The old man's smile turned into sadness, and mine did as well. I'll never forget how that cold rejection from my normally kind mother had hurt that poor man's feelings.
Until that moment, I hadn't noticed that black people were so different from white people. After all, we always had them popping by to do various jobs around our house. My sister and I loved Robert, who worked on the yard with my dad. They had been friends for years. And we had a housekeeper who kind of looked like the mammy from Gone With the Wind. She came several times a week to help Mama. Her name was Ruby, and she cleaned, washed, and changed my baby sister's diaper and rocked her to sleep. Unlike the movie mammy, Ruby was genteel and rather sophisticated. Mom treated Ruby like she treated other friends. They laughed and chatted, sometimes even about politics.
Forward to 1960's.
The '60's were not the peaceful years that the '50's had been. While Martin Luther King attempted to do peaceful demonstrations, the KKK and the Black Panthers were shouting, rioting, burning crosses and churches, and threatening to kill each other and anyone else who got in their way. You couldn't turn on the television without hearing about it. I did not feel safe any more. We started locking the doors at night.
In the late '60's, our high school became fully integrated. The first year they enrolled a black brother and sister, the "cream of the crop", I suppose. But the following year, busing started, and we became an actual integrated school.
Being a completely non-political and self-absorbed teenage girl, I had other things to think about, like boys, friends, clubs, boys and passing Biology. I admit, I wasn't the least concerned about the integration thing. There was one nice black guy in my English class who told a friend that if I was black he would ask me out. I knew I'd have accepted. If I was black.
I do remember one particularly rainy day. I had on moccasins with leather soles which got soggy when wet. I was walking along one of the outdoor walkways, watching for puddles, when I came upon an obstruction in front of me. I looked up, and before me stood a large black girl. Menacingly, she glowered down at me, accusingly. Her rigid arms were held down at her sides, hands curled into tight fists.
I was a skinny little white girl with straight blond hair who didn't want to get her feet wet. I knew that this stranger had deliberately stepped in front of me, in defiance of...well...of my severe and undeniable whiteness, I believe. A condition I was born with and had no power to change, any more than she could change the color of her skin.
What did she want from me? Did she want me to protest? To insult her? To fight? To run in terror down the hall screaming?
I had no beef with that girl. In fact, I didn't even know her. I simply was there and I was white. I said nothing, but moved around her, and went on to class. That was the end of that. My one 1960's confrontational moment.
2012 - Shouldn't it feel different? Better?
Things have come a long way since those days. No longer are we a segregated society here in the US. We now have black congressmen and senators, black doctors, movie stars, talk show hosts, and everything else. We have a black president, for goodness sake! This is a radical change, which those of us who grew up in the '50's could never have imagined would happen so quickly.
So why do I feel unsafe, again? Why do I feel like we are once again becoming a nation of lights and darks, sitting in two separate laundry baskets, waiting to be hung out to dry? In spite of the progress, the '60's have returned to haunt us. Like the young white girl who didn't want to get her shoes wet, I don't understand why people who don't know me stand before me, accusingly, simply because of the color of my fair skin.
If you are a conservative, you're racist.
Politically correct speech has become so dominant that most of us have no idea what is allowed any more. We are afraid to communicate honestly with anyone. Especially if they lean to the left, because we fear inadvertently saying something that will offend. Because no doubt we will, and it will. And we don't want to offend. Mostly, we don't want to be called racist.
This week, everyone is in an uproar about the killing of a 17 year old, unarmed black man by a 28 year old Hispanic man. At first, I was appalled by this seemingly cowardly, unjustifiable act. But the more I learn, I realize that big pieces of this story are missing, and must wait until after the Grand Jury is held. I have a feeling it is far more complex than we have been led to believe.
Until then, I want tell you some things I've observed.
When I first saw this story on the Internet, I noticed that the headline read that a black kid had been killed by a "white Hispanic" man. I thought, what's a "white Hispanic?" I looked at the man's photo and couldn't help but notice that he looks Hispanic, or of mixed race, but not "white". As it turns out, he is of mixed race, but was adopted by his white step father and given his name. Because of his name, they assumed his blood father was white.
I must add that the photo they showed of the black man was from when he was 12 years old. His innocent little baby face peered back at me. I thought a child had been killed.
I don't want to go too deeply into the details, as I think it's been done better by many whose research far exceeds my own. This is what bothers me. The public is being manipulated by this story. Manipulated by a powerful, politically motivated news media, and some especially viral political talkies, Al Sharpton and Spike Lee, among them. The president and his wife have even put in their two cents on the issue.
And the public, like a bunch of fish in a net, are being pulled right into this chaos, threatening, screaming, and spewing their fury without even having access to the complete story.
In this neighborhood a few months ago, a white man was shot in his upper middle class neighborhood, in broad daylight, by a young black man who wanted to rob him. The white man was just walking home from a coffee shop. The black guy was visiting his sister near there, and wanted money for drugs. So he wandered into the neighborhood, armed and looking for someone with cash. He shot the man in cold blood and left him to bleed to death alone in the street.
Our police chief, who happens to be black, made excuses to the press for the young black killer. "He wasn't intending to shoot the guy. It was accidental. He just wanted to rob the man."
What?
We are living in a topsy-turvy world, where saying the "N" word (unless you're black) is worse than calling a conservative political candidate's 17 year old daughter a whore. The killing of a suspicious looking black teen (visiting his aunt in a neighborhood that had had a rash of burglaries), the middle of the night by an assumed "white" man is worse than the killing of a white man walking in his own neighborhood in broad daylight by a black drug addict. It's okay to put a bounty on the head of one shooter, and excuse the other.
We are becoming more divided than ever. Why? Because it is expedient for people in certain political circles to divide the people of America. If they can create riots and diversions along racial lines, then they can divert the public from debating the real issues at hand. The issues that may actually save this nation and bring our beautiful blend of citizens together again.
This is what we must remember in this time of trumped up turmoil and fear:
Every life is valuable, whether black or white, red or yellow, young or old, rich or poor.
Every person must be given respect, whether you deem them worthy or not. What you say about them and to them matters.
Implying things that don't exist matters, too. Misrepresenting things is no different than lying. By lying, you lose credibility.
Believing lies and reacting according to things you've heard before they have been substantiated makes you hysterical, hypocritical, fearful, aggressive and a fool. Instead of reacting to someone else's implications and half stories, learn the truth. If you have to wait for it, then hold off stating your opinion.
This is America. A person is innocent until proven guilty. Don't become part of a lynch mob.
Don't allow anyone to distract you from the real issues at hand. Huge matters are at stake here. Don't allow false charges and implications of race to replace the truth or to influence your priorities, clear thinking and logic.
Don't let anyone drag you down to their level, to where you become just another name-caller, cross-burner or rock-thrower.
Remember. We are not a black and white nation. We are a nation of many colors. We must be one nation, United, if we are to survive these times.
I grew up in a small town where the blacks and the whites were kept separate, like laundry on wash day.
The world I grew up in was a safe little world. We left the keys in the car. We did not lock our doors at night.
The first time I became aware of race, I was four years small, and was in the doctor's waiting room with my mom. I liked the colorful children's chairs they had in there, and I was pulling one over to sit near Mama, when I saw an old black man in the room next to me. He smiled and beckoned me to come to him so he could give me a little piece of candy wrapped in paper. He had a sweet smile that old people do when they love children. So I politely rose from my seat, but was immediately stopped by my mother. I couldn't talk to him or take his candy, she told me firmly. He was colored, and little white girls didn't talk to colored men.
The old man's smile turned into sadness, and mine did as well. I'll never forget how that cold rejection from my normally kind mother had hurt that poor man's feelings.
Until that moment, I hadn't noticed that black people were so different from white people. After all, we always had them popping by to do various jobs around our house. My sister and I loved Robert, who worked on the yard with my dad. They had been friends for years. And we had a housekeeper who kind of looked like the mammy from Gone With the Wind. She came several times a week to help Mama. Her name was Ruby, and she cleaned, washed, and changed my baby sister's diaper and rocked her to sleep. Unlike the movie mammy, Ruby was genteel and rather sophisticated. Mom treated Ruby like she treated other friends. They laughed and chatted, sometimes even about politics.
Forward to 1960's.
The '60's were not the peaceful years that the '50's had been. While Martin Luther King attempted to do peaceful demonstrations, the KKK and the Black Panthers were shouting, rioting, burning crosses and churches, and threatening to kill each other and anyone else who got in their way. You couldn't turn on the television without hearing about it. I did not feel safe any more. We started locking the doors at night.
In the late '60's, our high school became fully integrated. The first year they enrolled a black brother and sister, the "cream of the crop", I suppose. But the following year, busing started, and we became an actual integrated school.
Being a completely non-political and self-absorbed teenage girl, I had other things to think about, like boys, friends, clubs, boys and passing Biology. I admit, I wasn't the least concerned about the integration thing. There was one nice black guy in my English class who told a friend that if I was black he would ask me out. I knew I'd have accepted. If I was black.
I do remember one particularly rainy day. I had on moccasins with leather soles which got soggy when wet. I was walking along one of the outdoor walkways, watching for puddles, when I came upon an obstruction in front of me. I looked up, and before me stood a large black girl. Menacingly, she glowered down at me, accusingly. Her rigid arms were held down at her sides, hands curled into tight fists.
I was a skinny little white girl with straight blond hair who didn't want to get her feet wet. I knew that this stranger had deliberately stepped in front of me, in defiance of...well...of my severe and undeniable whiteness, I believe. A condition I was born with and had no power to change, any more than she could change the color of her skin.
What did she want from me? Did she want me to protest? To insult her? To fight? To run in terror down the hall screaming?
I had no beef with that girl. In fact, I didn't even know her. I simply was there and I was white. I said nothing, but moved around her, and went on to class. That was the end of that. My one 1960's confrontational moment.
2012 - Shouldn't it feel different? Better?
Things have come a long way since those days. No longer are we a segregated society here in the US. We now have black congressmen and senators, black doctors, movie stars, talk show hosts, and everything else. We have a black president, for goodness sake! This is a radical change, which those of us who grew up in the '50's could never have imagined would happen so quickly.
So why do I feel unsafe, again? Why do I feel like we are once again becoming a nation of lights and darks, sitting in two separate laundry baskets, waiting to be hung out to dry? In spite of the progress, the '60's have returned to haunt us. Like the young white girl who didn't want to get her shoes wet, I don't understand why people who don't know me stand before me, accusingly, simply because of the color of my fair skin.
If you are a conservative, you're racist.
Politically correct speech has become so dominant that most of us have no idea what is allowed any more. We are afraid to communicate honestly with anyone. Especially if they lean to the left, because we fear inadvertently saying something that will offend. Because no doubt we will, and it will. And we don't want to offend. Mostly, we don't want to be called racist.
This week, everyone is in an uproar about the killing of a 17 year old, unarmed black man by a 28 year old Hispanic man. At first, I was appalled by this seemingly cowardly, unjustifiable act. But the more I learn, I realize that big pieces of this story are missing, and must wait until after the Grand Jury is held. I have a feeling it is far more complex than we have been led to believe.
Until then, I want tell you some things I've observed.
When I first saw this story on the Internet, I noticed that the headline read that a black kid had been killed by a "white Hispanic" man. I thought, what's a "white Hispanic?" I looked at the man's photo and couldn't help but notice that he looks Hispanic, or of mixed race, but not "white". As it turns out, he is of mixed race, but was adopted by his white step father and given his name. Because of his name, they assumed his blood father was white.
I must add that the photo they showed of the black man was from when he was 12 years old. His innocent little baby face peered back at me. I thought a child had been killed.
I don't want to go too deeply into the details, as I think it's been done better by many whose research far exceeds my own. This is what bothers me. The public is being manipulated by this story. Manipulated by a powerful, politically motivated news media, and some especially viral political talkies, Al Sharpton and Spike Lee, among them. The president and his wife have even put in their two cents on the issue.
And the public, like a bunch of fish in a net, are being pulled right into this chaos, threatening, screaming, and spewing their fury without even having access to the complete story.
In this neighborhood a few months ago, a white man was shot in his upper middle class neighborhood, in broad daylight, by a young black man who wanted to rob him. The white man was just walking home from a coffee shop. The black guy was visiting his sister near there, and wanted money for drugs. So he wandered into the neighborhood, armed and looking for someone with cash. He shot the man in cold blood and left him to bleed to death alone in the street.
Our police chief, who happens to be black, made excuses to the press for the young black killer. "He wasn't intending to shoot the guy. It was accidental. He just wanted to rob the man."
What?
We are living in a topsy-turvy world, where saying the "N" word (unless you're black) is worse than calling a conservative political candidate's 17 year old daughter a whore. The killing of a suspicious looking black teen (visiting his aunt in a neighborhood that had had a rash of burglaries), the middle of the night by an assumed "white" man is worse than the killing of a white man walking in his own neighborhood in broad daylight by a black drug addict. It's okay to put a bounty on the head of one shooter, and excuse the other.
We are becoming more divided than ever. Why? Because it is expedient for people in certain political circles to divide the people of America. If they can create riots and diversions along racial lines, then they can divert the public from debating the real issues at hand. The issues that may actually save this nation and bring our beautiful blend of citizens together again.
This is what we must remember in this time of trumped up turmoil and fear:
Every life is valuable, whether black or white, red or yellow, young or old, rich or poor.
Every person must be given respect, whether you deem them worthy or not. What you say about them and to them matters.
Implying things that don't exist matters, too. Misrepresenting things is no different than lying. By lying, you lose credibility.
Believing lies and reacting according to things you've heard before they have been substantiated makes you hysterical, hypocritical, fearful, aggressive and a fool. Instead of reacting to someone else's implications and half stories, learn the truth. If you have to wait for it, then hold off stating your opinion.
This is America. A person is innocent until proven guilty. Don't become part of a lynch mob.
Don't allow anyone to distract you from the real issues at hand. Huge matters are at stake here. Don't allow false charges and implications of race to replace the truth or to influence your priorities, clear thinking and logic.
Don't let anyone drag you down to their level, to where you become just another name-caller, cross-burner or rock-thrower.
Remember. We are not a black and white nation. We are a nation of many colors. We must be one nation, United, if we are to survive these times.
