Are Race Relations Worse Under a Black President?

         Are Race Relations Worse Under a Black President?

                          Published in Marietta Daily Journal Oct. 2, 2016

            Waiting for the school bus, I saw them coming.  I sensed something was wrong with the picture, but my childhood values were not developed enough to understand that I was observing a sorrowful tradition.

            Every school day morning, waiting to ride into town to an excellent school, I, a white boy, watched as 10 to 15 black children and teenagers walked from the edge of town on past our house to a rickety shack.  There was no signage on the shack or the grounds.  The shack was a school for black children.  Its grounds were never kept.

            I know nothing of the quality of instruction received there and doubt that anyone wondered.  Segregation had a way of numbing the human spirit and the conscience.  Tradition can inspire or debase.  It can foster nobility or ignobility.

            Segregation fostered ignobility.  But segregation wasn’t an active evil.  More horribly, it was an unquestioned social order.  I never saw or heard of any mistreatment of black people.  My parents, as well as all of the adults I knew, would have quickly punished their children for the mistreatment of anyone, regardless of their color.

            Nevertheless there was no questioning, and seemingly no awareness, of an existing social order that was absolutely de-humanizing.  It must have been de-sensitizing as well, because as a college freshman I wrote an essay titled “A Defense of Legal Segregation.”  (Segregation was the law.)  If nothing else, the essay indicated that something which grieved me at ages 8, 9, and 10 no longer bothered me at age 19.  Apparently, tradition sucked me in.

            The essay received much attention, mainly because my English professor showed it to other professors, all of whom praised it highly.  I wallowed in their praise.

            The following summer I attended College Student Week at Ridgecrest Baptist Assembly in North Carolina.  I simply desired to grow spiritually.

            Did I ever!  At Ridgecrest, a man whose current social and political views I don’t share spoke on race.  At the time, Bill Moyers was Deputy Director of the Peace Corps.  A Baptist minister at that time as well, Moyers laid bare the truth about man’s inhumanity to man and how a Christian should respond to it.

            I was convicted.  Leaving the meeting, I wept.  How, within a decade, could I have allowed a tradition to change me from what I felt so keenly at age 8?  How could I have written that essay and enjoyed the attention it garnered?

            Back home, I tore up the essay.  My shame was instantly replaced by release and even joy.

            But how genuine was my conviction about race if I did not act on it?  Maybe I could string together some paragraphs on race for the college newspaper.  I did, but it wasn’t quite time for the student editor and faculty advisor to allow “pro-integration thought.”

            Four years later in my second year of teaching, I volunteered to teach at an all black school, resulting in one of the most memorable years of my life.  The outstanding faculty at Carver Jr. High in Meridian, Mississippi endeared themselves to me.  Their grasp of the race issue and their hopeful acceptance of gradualism were inspiring and instructive.  Mrs. Kornegay, teacher and wife of the city’s only black physician said often, “Mr. Hines, we’re making progress.  Let’s just keep it up.”

              My efforts to help promote racial unity over the years have been miniscule.  Unlike so many others, I have paid no price.  I’ve only received satisfaction and unforgettable black friends. 

So here’s my beef.  Why has racial conflict intensified under the leadership of a black president?  Why has he not taken a stand against rioters and thugs who call themselves protestors and have set back hard won gains? Why hasn’t he spoken out strongly on how to respond to the police?  Why has he not encouraged black citizens to observe the progress made in race relations, his election being a prime example?

Why haven’t Rep. John Lewis and Andrew Young, who paid so much, tried to influence the direction of our errant president?

Our black president has been elected twice.  Our nation’s lawyer is black.  So is the head of the nation’s homeland security.  My home state of Mississippi has more black elected officials than any other state.  The first state to secede from the Union has an outstanding black U.S. senator.  Every week I see good race relations everywhere I go. 

A black president who could have moved us forward has clung to the attitudes of professional, no-real-job protestors, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.  He could have extolled the self-reliant, forward looking mindset of accomplished men like Ben Carson and Herman Cain.

What a waste we have witnessed of an incredible opportunity.

Roger Hines

7/28/16