1968 and 2012: Musings of an Old Man

In the summer of 1968 I had finished a master’s degree, and was commuting from Athens, GA to Clemson, SC to teach a UGA course to teachers in Clemson. During that commute, my first experience of the phenomenon, with no obnoxious talk shows spewing their venom to distract me, I had time to think. I thought about the times in which I lived, and dreamed about the future.

The Vietnam War was one of three very hot issues during that summer of youth and passion.

The U.S. was involved in an unpopular war to which we sent thousands of draftees, reluctant patriots who found courage, fear, drugs, mental and physical disfigurement, and death in the jungles.

People were demonstrating in the streets against this war. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was engaged. I brought the president of the Athens chapter in to speak to my persuasion class—probably have a file because of that.

Kent State had not yet happened.

Race and racism was the second passionate issue that summer. Dr. Martin Luther King had just been assassinated. The Black Panther Party was in full swing, taking up arms to end what they saw as extreme oppression. Some white preachers in Georgia and South Carolina were preaching the Biblical support for the proposition that black folks were inferior, cast aside by the Old Testament God. Some black preachers in Detroit and Chicago were just beginning to preach the same message, using the same scriptures, against white folks, the ice people, the blue eyed devils.

It was an election year, the third hot issue. The 1968 Democratic National Convention was scheduled for later in the summer. Robert Kennedy had just been assassinated.

My Quaker, Methodist, and UCC friends and other activists were in the streets passionately fighting against injustice.

In the summer of 2012 I am retired, do not commute but am still teaching, and continue to think about the times. Passion is in short supply as the U.S. Tea partiers chant tired, middle-class, white slogans sounding like robots, looking like robots. Occupiers try to find traction with the working class and minorities, but their tires keep slipping.

Racism is as prominent as it was in 1968, but has taken on new forms. Instead of President Obama being called the “n word” in public, as were Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and other leaders, he is called “a socialist” by people who do not understand what the word means, but do know it’s another “n” word. The percentage of unemployment and underemployment in the U.S. is debilitating. For people of color it is embarrassing, to them and us. The number of black people we legally kill each year should be embarrassing, but instead it is seen as a badge of honor by some governors who proudly proclaim themselves as pro-life.

We are now engaged in at least two wars to lesser or greater extents. Unlike Vietnam, people aren’t being drafted to fight these wars. I wonder if that’s why it is easier for us to ignore them. Also unlike Vietnam, these wars were declared “off budget” and “unfunded” by those avid supporters of fiscal responsibility who argued for the wars, and we now struggle to figure out how to pay for them while our economy has crumbled in part because of them.

As in Vietnam, our current troops are finding courage, fear, disfigurement, and drugs. Unlike Vietnam veterans, many of whom died slow deaths connected to the war, these troops are committing suicide at alarming rates. We struggle to figure out why.

And there is an election coming up in the fall.

There are still activists working within and outside the system with unflagging attention to issues of war and social injustice. Some are young activists fighting the good fight, like my Libertarian-with-a-conscience politician friend in Colorado. These people give me hope, and to them, and those in 1968, I humbly say thank you for your service to our country.

But as I sit in the summer of 2012, as wars and injustices continue to multiply, and as many of us whimper about our taxes and sinful women who use contraceptives, I wonder what happened to those changes I dreamed of in the summer of 1968.

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.