Can Racism Be Cured?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 1/8/22

            Several years ago my wife and I walked to our car from a movie theater, having just viewed “The Help.” The book and movie were Kathryn Stockett‘s true-to-life account of growing up in Jackson, Mississippi in the cultural tradition of domestic Black help, particularly maids. Stockett’s family engaged in the practice that vividly illustrated the unequal world of segregation.

            The movie highlighted the utter subservience of Blacks to Whites and the cruel and silly social distancing that White women, particularly, expected of their Black help. Black maids never ate with their White employer. They set aside the plate and fork they would use so that utensils were never mixed with those of the White family they served. Actually the movie was about class as much as race.

            As soon as my wife and I got inside our car I began to weep. After getting hold of myself I managed 5 words: “That’s exactly how it was.”

             I grew up in Mississippi where segregation was rank.  I watched as Black children and teens walked from the edge of town past my family’s house to a crumbling shack called a school. I knew about the unpaved muddy streets in the “Black section” of town. That too was how it was.

            I cranked my car and drove from the theater toward the street. Just before reaching it I became emotional again and had to pull over. The memories in my pocket would not stay put. Of all things, it took a movie to make them explode.

            Why had these memories not exploded sooner? How could I at age 18 write a column for the college student newspaper titled “A Defense of Legal Segregation”? Why did I move from a sensitive child who understood and abhorred the power structure of segregation to a teenager who was a racist? The answer to these questions is that tradition is strong. Whether good or bad, it clings to us. We honor it and it shapes us. As I left childhood, I began to accept the tradition around me.

            My years of racism were from age 13 to 19. The time was 1958 to 1963. During those years I was not one bit bothered by White men calling grown Black men “Boy,” or by the fact that my brothers and sisters and I weren’t expected to say “Sir” to Black men or “Ma’am” to Black women.

            What I am describing is not “systemic racism,” a horrid expression that almost makes racism excusable. My racism was acquired. Segregation was a social order. I was no victim of a system. I was certainly no “privileged White.” I was an adherent who at the bottom of his heart knew that Blacks were not inferior and that Whites were wrong to employ an evil social order for their own benefit.

            When I was 19 something happened that changed my heart. Guess what. It was a national conference of Southern Baptist youths sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention. Did I say “Southern”? Did I say 1963? At the conference, speakers boldly approached the topic of segregation and race. Preachers and other prominent leaders challenged approximately a thousand youths to examine their hearts and minds regarding “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

            I stood convicted and I confessed. Once again I was a 12-year-old who had not been tainted by an evil tradition. I felt free from the weight of my sin and free to oppose openly the sin I had committed.

            Often when confession is made, forgiveness is needed as well. Wealthy Al Sharpton, a Reverend, has not forgiven. Neither has wealthy Jesse Jackson or wealthy, joyless Joy Reid of MSNBC. I wish they would. I believe they would experience the freedom I and so many others have experienced. They choose to rattle old bones rather than forgive and live. Countless Blacks refute them.

            My freedom led me to teach in an all Black school in my second year of teaching. The faculty at George Washington Carver Jr. High School in Meridian, Mississippi remains one of the delights of my life. Today it’s a supreme joy to live in a neighborhood where Blacks and Whites love and respect each other and to attend a church, Kennesaw First Baptist, where the same is true.

            How things have changed. Today Mississippi has more Blacks per capita and more Black elected officials than any other state in the nation. I’m told that America elected and re-elected a Black president. Someone tell the old line media.

            Last week my wife and I watched the old movie, “Sounder.” Watch it and be thankful that things have changed. Be thankful that we are not any longer a nation of racists.

 

Roger Hines

1/5/22