Talking about Racism

Wondering if I am a recovering racist. Or just a recidivist racist looking for redemption? Yeah, I know we live in a world where such questions are seldom raised, especially by an old white man from Kentucky. Old white men these days seem a bit scared, or maybe it’s just me.

In any event, this wondering is about me. I have not, do not, and will not call anyone else a racist. It is not in my power to read the hearts and minds of others. It is not in my morality to pass judgment. And I’ve never been the target for racism so can’t speak from experience.

I do wonder about myself, though, and about the power of talking about racism. Here’s why.

I grew up in a segregated  Kentucky town of about 3000 people. Black folks lived at the outskirts of town, in their own community. My interaction with the folks living in this area was almost non-existent. I knew there was a separate high school, although I never met any of my counterparts from that school until I got to college. I learned later that there was a separate hotel and small business district in this area. I was almost completely ignorant of this as I grew up.

But not quite. I did go with my father and uncle to buy bootleg whiskey from a couple of black families in this business district.

We did not discuss race in my school. I wish we had.

There were two families that lived outside that segregated area, just over Iceplant Hill from me.  Back in the day, my father had worked the mines with the two heads of these black families, Lighting and George. Although my father frequently used the “n word”, he told me that if he ever heard me use it, he’d take his mining belt to me, and if I ever used it in front of Lightening or George, they would whip me first then turn me over to him.

We did not discuss race in my family except in this one context, which was confusing at best.

I left this segregated town to attend an integrated university, where I occasionally ran into black students from my home town whom I had never met before. We did not talk about race.

I joined a fraternity and had three black brothers. We did not talk about race.

In 1964 or so, I attended a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee convention. Dr. Martin Luther King was the keynote speaker. I saw the importance civil rights fights and of ending discrimination on a global scale. But I did not avail myself of opportunities to talk personally, about me and racism. It was a missed opportunity, to say the least.

In1968, I finally began to have discussions about race and racism with other people. After finishing a master’s degree, I took a job teaching high school, and found myself to be the only white teacher in a black high school in Middle Georgia. I made friends with the football coach and the biology teacher, both charismatic black men who took me fishing after school and helped raise my consciousness on a host of subjects. One topic dealt with how I should be very careful in my relationships with my female colleagues; in this charged environment no one should even presume that I was interested romantically, or physically, in these women. There was too much history of white men taking advantage of their power in this way, and folks were extremely sensitive. I appreciated the advice, and kept it.

This was my first experience actually talking to two bright black men about racism and myself. I was a better man and teacher because of the talks. Kept my teeth as well.

Black kids never got very far in school in this part of Georgia. I had seniors who could not write their names. However, I had one very bright student in my speech class, expelled from the integrated school across town for attacking a white teacher, who would enter the classroom with a parody of the old shuck and jive routine,  “Good mawnin Mr. James, how y’all doin this mawnin, boss.” He would sit in the back of the room with a karate book open on his desk, smile at me and practice his chops.

One of his better speeches was to convince the class to burn down the town. I gave him an “A” for content—it was a well-crafted speech—and a “C” for effect—the town was still standing. This was a gamble on my part, but it did open him up a bit. He, and thankfully the class, laughed, and he swore that since I “was one of the good ones”, he’d give me thirty seconds’ notice should the burning actually come to pass.

Yes, he and I were talking about racism, and I became a better person for it.

Toward the middle of the year, I discovered the real reason I was hired to teach in this school. In these days there was a fairly widely-accepted theory that went like this. There is “standard” U. S. speech, equated with the white speech of newscasters and successful white and a few black folks; there is “substandard” speech, spoken by black folks and equated with their lack of success in the U.S. If those black folks learn to speak standard U.S. speech, they will be successful.

So, as the white guy with the master's degree I was hired to help black students speak like Walter Cronkite. Without talking about race, of course.

I shared what I found out with my seniors, as an exercise in critical thinking. Their response was put best by one of my brightest students who said,  “So Mr. Dorris, how come the white governor of this state sounds like me? Isn’t Governor Maddox considered successful? I think success is more about the color of my skin than the way I talk, don’t you?”

Yes, we were talking about race and racism, they and me, and I gained from the talking.

A number of years later, I was vice president of academic affairs in a small liberal arts college. I was hired as a “change agent”. I arrived at the college in January. The previous Spring all the black students had marched off in unison to protest what they saw as institutionalized racism. The college is the second oldest multi-racial, co-educational liberal arts college in the U.S., so this charge by these students was significant.

A young black man had converted to Islam viz. a viz. the Nation of Islam about a year before my arrival on campus. The guy spoke at a chapel event about his experiences the preceding summer working with the Nation. All the students and faculty, mostly white, were present. At some point during the presentation, he began a rant about the “blue-eyed devils” and “ice people.” The audience got very quiet. Afterward, I pulled him aside and told him I liked his presentation, but suggested that he should take more time analyzing his audience and purpose. He agreed, but with a knowing smile.

This began several personal talks about race and racism between him and me and all of the Detroit media--he brought them to campus every Friday. Yes he was that good. I was the beneficiary of our talks.

Years have passed. But as a 68 year old man I remember the “Coloreds Only” signs at restrooms and water fountains. I remember the “Coloreds Only” balconies in theatres. I remember lynchings. I remember preachers  preaching about the “curse of Cain” in reference to black folks (also remember Nation of Islam ministers using the same argument against whites). I remember being told that black people were lesser animals. I remember black men being harassed, and worse, for looking white women in the eyes.  I remember black women being thought of as fair game for white men’s amusement.

But I also remember passionate conversations with young black and white men and women about these things, and about them and me in relation to this past.

Now, in my lifetime, the U.S. has a black president, running for a second term. Yet, on a person-to-person level, I don’t talk about race or racism anymore. And I don’t hear others doing this either. Of course the vicious personal attacks on the man who is our first black president have nothing to do with his race. It’s just that he isn’t an American, he is Kenyan, he is a Socialist/Marxist, and he “is a threat to the U.S.”

Why aren’t the conversations happening? Is that because younger folks have advanced to the point that the topic is not relevant anymore?

Is it because, in my recovering state of racism, I overvalue the importance of such discussions?

Or are they happening but I don’t hear them or engage in them because my original racism has reared its ugly head in my old age?

I do miss the talk, debates, arguments, passion.

And I do wonder.