The impetus for this blog is the recent spate of race-based violence we have experienced following the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. The history of the US has, of course, a long record of race-based violence. How could it be otherwise when slavery was present from our earliest days. It is easy to forget, for example, that the White House was built by slave labor.
I am old enough to remember early TV news coverage of what were deemed “race riots” in the 1950s and ’60s. The principal minorities in the town where I grew up (Los Altos, California) were Mexicans and Filipinos, and my first Black acquaintances were those I met at the College of Wooster, in Ohio. Most of the Blacks at Wooster were there on athletic scholarships, and while I was at Wooster, I spent most of my time with the athletes. While I should have focused more on studying than on athletics, I have continued to value my experiences at Wooster. The combination of not studying and winter in Ohio (I started wearing my winter coat in October), led me to transfer to the University of Redlands in Southern California for my sophomore year.
Most of my friends at Redlands were musicians rather than athletes, and I did better academically. Nevertheless, I dropped out of college after that year and worked in Los Angeles. At one of the places I worked in LA, my best friend was Black. We discussed meeting outside of work. I had a car and he didn’t, so I told him I would be glad to pick him up. He said, “No, you can’t do that. You can’t come to where I live.” So he took a bus and walked to my apartment. He told me that he lived in Watts, but I didn’t learn until later why my going there would not have been safe. The riot occurred about a year after I left LA for the University of Illinois.
At Illinois, I had good Black friends and knew Blacks on the faculty. While I was at the U of I, the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War Protests coincided. The same people (and I was one of them) participated in both. We really believed we were going to change the world. After all, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Pete Seeger were telling us we could do it. While I was busy protesting, I received an invitation to join the Army. I was stationed at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, Ft. Sam Houston, Texas, and Long Binh, Vietnam. In those days, the Army referred to itself as the “Green Machine” because the “everyday” uniform, fatigues, was green. I had a number of First Sergeants and Sergeants Major who were Black. I knew a few Black officers, although most officers at that time were White. Because I could type, I worked in an office environment my entire time in the service. Although I saw some instances of racial bias, the Army was pretty good at being an “equal opportunity employer,” and the rules for advancing were clear.
After the Army, I returned to the University of Illinois to complete the Ph.D. in English literature. My first job after completing the degree was in the English Department at the University of Florida. I was there a year before being offered a job in the College of Business at Western Michigan University, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. In both schools, I taught business communication and related subjects. Also at both schools, I knew both White and Black students and faculty. The Whites, especially in faculty ranks, greatly outnumbered the Blacks. I did not, however, see any signs of overt discrimination. The most important factor in determining faculty advancement was, and probably still is, the number of “refereed” publications. The academic rule is, publish or perish. Reviewers are not supposed to know the names of the authors, nor should they know the school affiliation. That was at least true for me when I served as a reviewer. I have no way of knowing, of course, whether it is universally true or only a hoped-for ideal.
Both the Kalamazoo neighborhoods I have lived in have been integrated, although in both cases Whites have outnumbered Blacks. My current neighborhood is segregated primarily by education: Most (probably all) of the residents have advanced degrees: MDs, DOs, DDS, and Ph.D.s. In some ways, I have been fairly sheltered from the day-to-day realities of race relations. I am not sure the degree to which that constitutes white privilege. On the other hand, (so far, at least) I have never had to worry about whether being stopped for a traffic violation might be a life-or-death matter. We have seen too many instances lately where Blacks have been killed by the police for such minor infractions as selling “loosies” or CDs or reaching for a wallet.
While watching one of the news stories about the current racial strife in the US., I was reminded of one of the songs from the musical, “South Pacific,” by Rodgers and Hammerstein, “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught.”
You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught!
The song and musical were, of course, written at the end of World War II, when those we were supposed to hate were Asian. My assumption is that it went without saying at that time that we were also supposed to hate Blacks. In working on this blog post, I was curious to see whether anyone had written a musical about integration and surprised to discover a Ph.D. dissertation on the subject: Integration and the American Musical: From Musical Theatre to Performance Studies, by James Bradley Rogers, University of California at Berkeley. I haven’t read it, so I’m not sure what it includes. I have seen Jesse Williams BET acceptance speech and understand that we still have a way to go. For most of us, the only thing we see is the finished product, and we don’t know what performers have to go through (or put up with) to complete a project.
Audiences for movies and TV shows are, of course, self-selected, and people tend to be drawn to and watch movies and shows that confirm their pre-existing views of reality. If I am comfortable with Black actors, I will watch more movies and shows featuring Black people. If I think that only White people should be heroes, I will watch shows in which the good guys are White and the bad guys are not. My sense is that we are making progress. We now have more Blacks (and Native Americans) in movies and TV shows than we did in the ’50s and ’60s, and, while I think we are right to complain about how slow our progress has been, we also have the right to celebrate the progress we’ve made. We shall overcome, some day.
Meanwhile, other than early exposure designed to induce fear of “other,” I’m not sure what can account for the animosity some people feel for those of a different race—or gender or sexual orientation. It isn’t as though race or gender are contagious diseases that can be transmitted through affiliation. As Martin Luther King, Jr., said, we need to “look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” And each of us has the responsibility to make sure that it is true for us. I first heard it in the 1960s, and I still believe that we shall overcome some day:
