I never had a problem with race. I grew up in an all-white neighborhood and to my recollection now, never spoke with a black person before I was eighteen and joined the Army.
When I was in the Army in the 1960s, half of the enlisted men may have been black. The Army was integrated then, but it was certainly not equal. I noticed the difference and I was glad to be white. My last year in the Army, back in the United States, I was stationed in The South; specifically Kentucky, and Judy and I lived off-post, just over the line in Tennessee. The difference in treatment between black and white there was alarming, most particularly off-post. Off-post we witnessed some black people literally being treated as slaves.
In the 1980s I worked at a minority-owned CPA firm. For five years, all my bosses were black. That was a cultural experience for me, and I suffered occasional bouts of racism, mostly from clients, that were vocally disappointed to hire a minority-owned CPA firm, then have a white boy show up. My bosses, by the way, always stood up for me and never pulled me from a job to satisfy a client’s racism. I’m far from suggesting that I’ve had anything like a “black” experience. At the end of each day I always went home to my white privilege of being assumed to be smart, honest, and law-abiding; always given the benefit of the doubt; and expecting it.
So, over the years, my perspective on race has expanded, but there is one experience that broke my heart then, and I still don’t know what to do. Judy and I were in Key West, in a neighborhood, on our way to admire a lighthouse. There were a couple black kids, maybe each ten years old, playing in the street; and as Judy and I were circling our bicycles on the street and sidewalk, idly discussing our day, we must have invaded their space. Suddenly one of the two boys went off on us, yelling I don’t remember what, as he whacked Judy’s bicycle tire with the stick he was holding. The other kid was horrified, surely imagining what his parents (or the world) would do to him if they found out about his insubordination, and he was desperately pleading with his friend to stop. My first response was to be angry at the aggressive boy, but that evaporated as I started to wonder what made him so angry in the first place. We might have triggered the outburst, but there was a lot more going on there than whatever our infraction was. He might have just been a “bad” kid, but what seems more likely to me is that, in all of his ten years, he had suffered enough unfairness from the world around him, most especially from white people like us, that he lashed out in his rage. What could I do? I wanted to reach out and hug him and make it better. I couldn’t. I wanted to say something to calm him. I could think of nothing. We rode away and went on with our day, but I can’t count the number of times that encounter has replayed in my mind. Even if I totally misinterpreted that moment and it wasn’t accumulated rage against an oppressive system, but just a child misbehaving, I have a sense that what I felt and still feel is closer to the truth, if not for that particular situation then for situations like that in general, for a large segment of our American and World populations.
Where am I going with this? I still don’t know what I could/should have done. I don’t know what I could/should do now. I don’t have a problem with race, but is that enough? Is it enough to not instigate difficulty, or does that just make me neutral? Does neutral help in a time like this? I hear our black brothers and sisters, and I don’t feel neutral. We are all in this together. They should be heard. I should be heard.
The sign says “Silence is Violence”. Well then, I repudiate silence.
Black Lives Matter!
