We've Got to Own All of It

Hello. My name is James. I'm a racist.

I want to encourage you to listen to the podcast Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America. It’s sponsored by Ben & Jerrys. There are six episodes so far.

I think it is important because Black people cannot reach racial justice on their own. White people need to be equipped with the historical knowledge we have denied, ignored or have never been taught or exposed to.

Let me just say from the start, I know nothing about ally-ship. I make for a terrible advocate because the scales have only recently dropped from my eyes and what I don’t know could fill the Library of Congress. I have my mind open though. And I am trying to learn.

My parents came from the Deep South. Starkville, Jackson, Hattiesburg and Lumberton, Mississippi, all figured into their stories. It would not have been possible for them to live half of their adult lives in the rural South without racism playing a role.

We did not talk about race when I was growing up in Texas because we lived in a brand new “bedroom community” in north Dallas that was - seemingly - 100 per cent white. My high school became integrated my sophomore year but I do not recall there being more than a couple of handfuls of Black students and only a half dozen or so Black student athletes. And they were brought by bus from some other part of Dallas.

A story my dad told, a story he deeply regretted, and the only story about race I remember him telling was when, as a teenager, he was walking down the street and a Black man carrying a watermelon on his shoulder was walking toward him on the sidewalk. The Black man deferentially stepped off the sidewalk and into the street because that was what was “expected” in the late ‘30s when a Black person encountered a white person. My father told me as he passed the old man he reached over and casually pushed the watermelon off the man’s shoulder. It splattered into a dozen red and green chunks as it hit the ground. My father went on his way as the old man mourned the loss of his watermelon but had no other recourse but to accept it.

That is the only story he told me, but I am sure there were others.

I mention it because I’ve had one of the whitest existence’s on the planet and, perhaps, because of that, I cannot call myself “the least racist person in the world”.

I went from a white suburb to a white small liberal arts college in northern Arizona to one of the whitest and largest public universities in the country (and, even if it wasn’t, I spent my entire year there playing intramural sports with my brothers and my white high school friends) to a state known for its white supremacist roots and to one of its state colleges which was 99% white and then I lived in all of the whitest neighborhoods in Seattle and, eventually, to a tourist town in one of the redder parts of the very same state with only a handful of Black citizens.

It is not surprising how little I know about Black history. But few of us do, Black or white, because, as they say, “history is written by the winners”. And, by every measurable metric in the book, white people have been history’s winners.

Before I started writing these columns I had not heard of the Cornerstone Speech written by Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens which clearly states that the reason the South went to war was because of their belief that Blacks were not people.

I was not aware the Confederate flag, the Stars and Bars common amongst modern day racists, segregationists, white nationalists and ignorant people who do not know any better was a battle flag and not the official flag of the Confederacy.

I was not aware of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre and the destruction of Black Wall Street. Hundreds were killed and the economy they had created for themselves was annihilated. It was a tremendous setback for that Black community and a warning shot for all other Black communities.

Just today, while listening to the Who We Are podcast, I learned about an equally gruesome and psychologically damaging massacre that happened 2 years earlier in Elaine, Arkansas, involving Black tenant farmers and returning World War I vets. Law enforcement officers and the military combined with citizen vigilantes to murder dozens of Black families because they had the audacity to expect fairness when negotiating prices for their products.

I’ve never watched the movie called Rosewood but it’s another massacre and total destruction of a town built by Black people that happened in 1923.

Slavery did not exist in the 1920s but white people were doing their damnedest to make life miserable for Blacks who tried to get ahead.

I don’t know how many other mass killings of whites on Blacks there were but does it matter? The point was to terrorize Black Americans in America. The point was to keep them in their place.

There were - at least - 4000 lynchings from the end of the Civil War until the Civil Rights Act was signed.

And then there were the assassinations of Black leaders - Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, Medgar Evers.

And then there were the bombings of churches, the killing of activists and, even, young girls.

Have you heard of the Tuskegee Institute study on syphilis from 1932 to 1972? Black men were infected with syphilis in order for researchers to study its effects. They were not told it was syphilis and they were not offered penicillin, once it was available, as a cure. It took until the ‘90s before the U.S. Government issued an apology for their treatment.

Have you heard of Henrietta Lacks? Henrietta Lacks was an African-American woman whose cancer cells are the source of the HeLa cell line, the first immortalized human cell line and one of the most important cell lines in medical research. Polio was cured using her cell line. Neither Henrietta or her family ever profited from her prolific contribution to society nor were they ever given the respect or recognition they deserved.

All of these things are of a piece. Some we are aware of because they rose to the level of the nation’s consciousness while some we are not because of those who write the history books and those who choose what history we get to learn in school.

But the overall effect was to hamstring an entire portion of our population for generations - from the conclusion of the Civil War to present day.

It’s the systemic racism our Vice President claimed at his lone debate did not exist in modern day America. How would he know? What great insight would Mike Pence have?

I know I am late to the party. Late to be having this epiphany. There have been Black Studies or African-American Studies since the ‘60s.

But I guess it may be one good thing to have come from this most hurtful, hateful administration. Their churning up the racial divide and coaxing the klansmen from the closet may be the impetus cocooned white people like me needed to really dig into why the scales of racial justice are so unbalanced. So out of whack.

And it’s got me to thinking about where we should go from here.

Never forget. The first step in Alcoholics Anonymous is that you have to admit you’re an alcoholic. I’m sure it’s the same step that needs to be taken with other maledictions.

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If you are looking to support a group of young women making some great music, may I suggest the Chumlilies and their latest release, Runaway Wild. What a terrific stocking stuffer! Virtual stocking stuffer, anyway.

Also, Alicia Keys and Brandi Carlisle team up for a song called A Beautiful Noise. It’s a song for the times.

Thanks for reading, sharing, responding and keeping in touch! - JLM