the race issue.....

i was born in 1955. i grew up in a segregated society and didn't attend school with other black children until i was 12... and then it was a handful under the "free choice" option. free to any parents willing to take their children usually across town to a school where they knew they would face bullying. not much of a choice if you ask me, but there were those brave enough to do it.

i loved it. we had bomb threats almost every day and we got to stay outside for hours. ( i wasn't much of a student if it didn't involve reading fiction). the girls in my pe class were mostly great athletes so we got along fine (in my very naive opinion) because they were both good competitors and good for the team. also, they were kind of dangerous feeling in a exotic way, one was known to carry a knife for protection and had the most fluent use of profanity i'd ever heard... of which i had only heard the rare excrement discretion... and the one night my 11 year old neighbor and i asking each other what fuck meant... actually he asked me. i had never heard the word. i told him i didn't know but it must mean something really bad. so it was kind of exotic and adventuresome to hear profanity used with such elegance. i was really quite impressed.

i didn't fear these girls, outnumbered as they were because i knew that they were on white turf, and i had no contact with the boys. don't even remember if there were any... maybe not.

which is strange because i didn't grow up hating black people or calling them names, but i did grow up fearing them, especially the terrifying black male. it was nothing that was ever spoken. it was just in the air i breathed. besides nightmares about frankenstein  and giants, my fearful dreams were of accidentally finding myself in the black part of downtown... oddly enough a place now on the swamp rabbit trail across from the peace center where condos are sold for more than i could ever afford.

and women were safer than men. why? because we had contact with them. a woman came to our house to help my mother with the cleaning and the ironing. none of them were ever dangerous looking. in fact, one of my first memories of childhood was when i was sick with a virus and our young, black cleaning lady spent time by my bed rubbing my tummy and talking low and kind... something my frantic, adhd mother never did in my memory. (she just wouldn't think of being still that long).

and my mother was always for the poor and downtrodden. when this same woman had a baby of her own, we went to nicholtown to take her vegetable soup and cornbread. i was afraid then. it was poverty such as i had never seen. she lived in a one room house with a small kitchen in the corner. the bed took up most of the room and the baby was lying on the bed. i didn't know you could have a baby without a crib. and i was also terrified of all the blackness around me. it was irrational and real and it is one of my strongest memories of childhood, of which i actually have very few.

my parents and my family are good people. there is not a one who has mistreated a person of color to my knowledge. most of them have people of color that they love.... but this does not make us without prejudice. those imprints from our childhoods and our place as the majority (and favored) race are within us. all we can do is recognize them when they appear and either fight against them or act in opposition to them. it must be intentional. and of course, the more often this is done, the more natural it becomes.

i really find it confusing when people my age say that the whole white advantage thing is over and the people they know get along fine. my best friend happens to be a person of color but i would never deny my heritage of racism. i grew up where "colored people" were second class citizens who lived in poverty and worked for lower wages than any white person would. things have improved but are by no means gone.

my high school, wade hampton, was integrated by busing but there were still conflicts all the time. we were blessed by one very fine black student named clyde mayes. he was a star football and basketball player who went on to play basketball for furman and professionally... but mostly he was just such a great leader and managed to control the reasonable anger that his fellow black students brought to the table. it is so strange to me now that i feared black people when they had so much more reason to fear me. i was never subject to the fear of violence because of the color of my skin.

racist violence toward black people are a huge part of our history in south carolina. our own governor, ben tillman, encouraged it openly. the last governor to accept any form of black rights after reconstruction was wade hampton, but his supporters in the red shirts were famous for lynchings and violence towards blacks. it wasn't until the civil rights movement and southern opposition to it begin to hurt our tourism trade that there was any acceptance of the rights of "negros" in this state. and to its credit, except for the orangeburg massacre, it was mostly non-violent. the use of slavery in this state was always about economics and when economics was a stake, we conveniently changed our ways... in government. you can't change years and years of prejudice in people.

south carolina has always been a one party state. and generally the party of the one percent. we have been excellent at using social issues to make the 99% vote against their economic interest. democrats ruled this state as the party of the elite until ben tillman became the "populist" of sc... but he was the representive of poor white farmers and textile workers, and unlike the rest of the populist movement, had no interest in improving the plight of black people. a few progressives followed, mainly led my church going women, but when the civil rights movement hit, democrats became republicans after thurmonds brief flirtation with the dixiecrats.

yes we did elect a president of color. (not sc of course) and the backlash of blatant racism raised its ugly head. people began to be much more open about their prejudice, having gone into hiding after the civil rights movement. that a person like donald trump could be the frontrunner of the republican party really about says it all. the way the tea party has taken over the republicans with their proud enthusiasm over ignorance is another sign.

yes, all lives matter... but middle class white people's lives have always mattered. now it's time for black matters to matter, for native american lives to matter, for immigrants lives to matter (whether they are legal or not) for poor white children's lives to matter, for incarcerated men and women and children's lives to matter.

race and poverty are intrinsically linked. so many people refuse to recognize their racist background because they have a black friend or friends that they love and get along with. that is not enough. it doesn't change the structure of our society that classifies people on the basis of skin color with white being the preferred color. i have been treated differently (for the better) because the color of my skin as well as by my middle class standing. this advantage is a given in this country. we cannot change it without being intentional. it will be a slow process. it's like weight management. it takes a long time to put it on and a long time to get it off. but it doesn't happen automatically. it must be intentional.

we have spent a long time in this country giving white people the best of our resources. it is time we learned to share and it will not happen quickly. but it must be intentional. it will not happen without hard work by a lot of people.