Friday, 10 July 2020

What I Learned About Racism, Protests and Injustice when I was a Girl in the 1960s.



When I was a young girl I read, Gone with the Wind. I loved Scarlett O’Hara because she was nothing like me. She had spunk and let nothing stop her, whereas I was like a shadow in the corner of a house, observing but unheard. I wanted spunk.

One day, after I finished reading, I ran downstairs to my mother and said, “Mom, It says in this book that slaves were happy. They didn’t want to be free!” She looked at me with pity and told me how evil slavery was and why. She encouraged me to study the subject.

On our next visit to the library, I took out the book called, “Black Boy,” by Richard Wright. I will never forget the impact that book had on me. I was horrified, sad and disgusted by what he had gone through. After that, I read many biographies on how black people had been treated by white people throughout their lives. I wish I could remember the names of the other books but one that I read recently, that was just wonderful is, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou.

I grew up in the 1950s and 60s and remember when Martin Luther King and his followers marched in a peaceful protest to Selma, Alabama. My parents subscribed to Life magazine and I poured over the pictures of snarling dogs and water hoses being turned on the protesters. I admired King so much, and even now, when I read a quote online attributed to him, my esteem grows larger.

When I went to high school, (Southern California) I noticed that white students hung around together and black kids and Hispanic kids did the same. It was puzzling to me because in the church school I had attended previously, I had black and Hispanic friends. Now I was in public school and it was certainly different. I will say though, I never heard any of my white friends say or do anything racist. In fact, later on, after I had left school, I met up with an old friend and she had married a black guy. I went to her place and met him and their new baby. The last year of high school my boyfriend was Hispanic. I was crazy about him.

Now, since the terrible death of George Floyd, we are again having peaceful protests. Of course, there has been some acts of violence and looting, which has been the actions of only a few and some have been committed by white protesters. Whenever there is a movement or coalition of any kind there are good people, bad people and crazy people involved. I saw this in churches I attended. My mother noticed it in the feminist movement and the Author’s Association to which she belonged. And we cannot forget politicians. Yes, good, bad and crazy.

A lot of people can’t understand the slogan, “Black Lives Matter.” They say that every person’s life matters and they are right, but they can’t seem to see that when someone is hated and oppressed, it looks to them as if their lives don’t matter to other people. White people don’t generally feel that way. We expect the police and those in the medical field to care about our problems. When they don’t, we tell everyone we know about that policeman or doctor. We feel insulted, get angry and will sometimes complain to those who are in authority over these people.

But what if we knew police and doctors hated us? What if we knew they would get rid of all of us if they could? And what if we knew some of them would like to kill us? What would it be like to live with that all our lives?

I have a friend online who is black. She told me her beloved uncle was in the hospital and very ill. It was possible he could die. Yet she was afraid to go to the hospital and visit him. Why? Because of the way the white doctors and nurses talked to and treated her and her family. She went anyway. I felt so sad for her. It is hard to believe people can be so cruel, and for no reason in the world but their hatred of the color of a person’s skin.

I remember an old Star Trek episode where the crew of the Enterprise came to a world that was in the midst of a terrible civil war. Captain Kirk tried to intervene and bring peace and couldn’t understand the basis of the two sides hatred of each other. Near the very end of the show one man said to Kirk something like this, “Are you blind? Can’t you see? My skin is blue on the right side of my face and his skin is blue on the left side!”

That’s racism in a nutshell: utter stupidity. Victor Frankl once wrote, “There are two races of men in this world but only these two: the race of the decent man and the race of the indecent man.” I believe this to be true.

(I began this blog post thinking I would write about what justice is according to God. But I got carried away with my feelings about what is happening right now. I’ll write the one on how God feels about justice next time. He feels very strongly about it.)