I remember writing about the evolution of the human soul a few months ago and waxing philosophical on what a fascinating phenomenon it is to witness. It is the ability of men and women to evolve after reaching a point of enlightenment regarding basic characteristics of their own being that gives me a lot of hope for humanity. I cannot speak for the evolution of anybody else, but I can certainly do so for myself.
It is fair to say that I have lived life on both sides of many fences. I lived most of my first thirty-seven years as a religious believer and have since become a non-religious non-believer. I spent the first almost nine and a half years of my career in the Navy and Reserve as an enlisted man before earning a college degree and becoming a commissioned officer. I also was born into a social caste system that, by virtue of my skin color, made me a member of the majority race in a segregated community of a city that has an egregiously ugly history regarding race relations.
I remember very limited contact with members of the African-American community in the early years of my youth. In the whole of my elementary education years, my school had one African-American faculty member and only one African-American student in a grade lower than mine. It was not until I began junior high school that I had regular contact black students in my age group. The year was 1971 and there was much community angst generated over the Tulsa Public Schools new policy of desegregation via forced bussing. The sad truth was that bussing was only forced for the black students. Being a seventh grader and having to deal with all the associated issues of being in a new school and having to compete at a higher level, I never was able at the time to fully consider the hardship imposed on my black classmates just to have the same opportunity I had. Indeed, this was one dynamic I never at all appreciated until years later. Also, given the culture of racial privilege myself and so many of my Caucasian cohorts had been immersed in since kindergarten, tolerating such an uncomfortable situation we saw as mostly an imposition upon us was tenuous at best. Speaking for myself, I had little regard for the new normal at the time. To me it was one of many other dynamics I had to integrate into how I dealt with a changing world, a world which was changing anyway but now with a lot more unfamiliar depth. All the same, it never occurred to me that I needed to eliminate certain toxic racial terminology from my vocabulary. In junior high and high school, depth of intellect is typically not a noticeable personal quality let alone a pressing priority. Subscribing to the humor of some of the TV and stand-up comedy stars of the 1970s did not lend itself well to expunging this early learned flaw of my character. As weak as it may seem now, the liberal use of the N-word by certain high profile entertainers made that word and other racial epithets okay in my mind and that of I’m sure just about every other white person who ever heard that word and others spoken by a person of color.
I vividly remember the line in a Richard Pryor routine in the late 70’s that reflected a profound sense of that man’s degree of enlightenment. He was making the point of why certain terms like the N-word and others still remain firmly affixed in our collective vocabulary.
“These are terms that we have perpetuated as a means of describing our own wretchedness!”
I took that to mean that it applies to all racial and cultural epithets but by far to the African-Americans. I have since devoted much thought to that concept as it was a helpful tool in movement toward my own epiphany. At age 18, I enlisted in the U.S. Navy, an organization with a rigid EEO policy. Even though in my first enlistment I made several good friends of the African-American persuasion and, for a brief period, was the only non-Hispanic native born white male in a shipboard division of some 18 members, I really wasn’t yet fully enlightened. It was not until a few years later when I was in my mid-20’s that I heard a story on NPR about the death penalty in the State of Georgia. At issue was a legal case before the state’s supreme court challenging alleged racial disparity in passing death sentences. Who brought the suit, who adjudicated it and its ultimate disposition is not what I remember about the story. What I remember was thinking about the wording of the complaint, that a black murder convict was three to five times (or whatever) more likely to receive the death penalty than a white one. Suddenly I realized that up to learning that pertinent fact that I was indifferent to if not totally okay with what had long been a social norm that was blatantly unfair. I then remember thinking about what a racist asshole I was! Granted, all this aforementioned reaction to this NPR story was happening between my ears and in the middle of my chest but for me, over time, it made the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr take on a whole different complexion:
“True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
It was after that realization that I began a conscious effort to remove unacceptable racial terms from both my formal and informal lexicon. I cannot recall any instances since where I have lapsed back into that old behavior.
America is in a new day with a new and non-negotiable standard of conduct for public servants and high profile citizens. Gone are the halcyon days of turning a blind eye and giving a courtesy pass to those who knowingly associated themselves with unacceptable organizations in their youth and early career in the style of the late Senator Robert Byrd. Today repudiation of one’s past must be followed with falling on one’s own sword. Indeed, the zeitgeist of the “Me Too” era is zero tolerance for past sexual or racial indiscretions regardless of degree of toxicity. Such was the case with Congressman Anthony Weiner and with Senator Al Franken and thus is the case with the Virginia governor. In spite of all Governor Ralph Northam’s good works as a physician and legislator, his heretofore ardent supporters can not suffer an ugly misdeed from half his lifetime ago, be it actual or merely perceived. This revelation of a time of unenlightened character has hamstrung a state chief executive who is now confronted with a lose-lose dilemma: If he stays all his credibility going forward will be suspect and on issues of race it will be nil. If he resigns he leaves under derogatory circumstances and his career as a public servant will be over. The sad analysis is that for Governor Northam there is no good end to the situation. Either way he will become another road kill on Zero Tolerance Highway, a thoroughfare that only Democrats are tasked with navigating too much of the time, so it seems. Regardless, this is the price we pay for ensuring equality and justice in 2019.
As an American who was born into unearned privilege, I can honestly state that I have made a good faith effort to erase my vocabulary and by extension my character of unacceptable flaws of my upbringing. I feel like the boundaries set by all my intrapersonal relationships exist as a means to keep me honest and true to the character that I realized I lacked upon experiencing my essential epiphany. All I regret is that it was something that had to happen to me. Here’s to a more perfect Union defined by an unquenched desire for peace and guided by justice.
Stan, you prodded and jabbed awake sleeping memories of my own junior high school years and the atmosphere in my classes as we grappled daily with learning not only academic subjects but also human diversity at a time in our personal lives when we were just immature buttholes. I had never had any contact whatsoever with anyone so obviously different from myself (Native Americans were prevalent and proud in my elementary school, but not really so different in speaking, learning, interacting with everyone else.). Now I greeted angry, resentful, loud peers who communicated clearly the rank injustice dealt to them in the interest of integrating schools. They had, mostly, eagerly looked forward to attending Marian Anderson Jr. High, and here they were, stuck in a bus going to old white Alexander Hamilton Jr. High. Gym periods for the first several weeks of school were devoted to reviewing a booklet titled “Rights and Responsibilities” to instruct us in behaving like rational human beings. Nevertheless, when the booklet was closed and the teachers’ backs were turned, we interacted pretty much like junior high buttholes. When several Black girls persisted in jerking the shower curtain of my shower stall open when I was undressing and showering, I finally turned the nozzle outward one fateful day and waited. Sure enough, the curtain opened, angry screams ensued, and I was brought to one of the girls’s gym teacher for justice. I don’t recall saying anything (I avoided trouble like the good little “daughter of school teachers” should, and kept my head low to avoid attention that might earn me the horrid moniker “Teacher’s Pet”) but I do recall her neutrally commenting “How did you girls get wet? Did you open her shower curtain?”. My mother later told me that she had had a conference at school some time later, and the teacher had told her about it, with the advice “Don’t get mad and punish her; she handled a problem we had been having pretty effectively, and I owe her my thanks for that.” At times, I have been ashamed of that incident, but as I have aged graciously, I realize that there was no animosity about race or social class or anything complicated like that. Someone did something I didn’t like to me and I stopped them, however immature I was. I did struggle, however, with the realization that it was much easier for me to talk with white girls than with Black girls, in general, and I had no clue what to do about Black boys. I probably learned more about races from television (for better or worse!).
I agree that injustice is the root problem that must be solved for people to be able to begin to live in any semblance of harmony. I no longer hope and dream for “world peace” and “justice”, and I am further discouraged by what appears to me to be deeper conflicts and divisions. Still, there are fleeting moments from time to time, and there are still people who give me a flicker of a sign that I mustn’t give up on hoping that as dark as it gets sometimes, there is still some light around the edges.
Thank you, Stan, for another thoughtful, thought-provoking essay. I love to read anything that you write!
Nice exposition. I must dispute your beginning premise however… the human ‘soul’ has not really evolved all that much in the course of it’s behavior. (And use of that term while claiming to be a “non-religious non-believer” is also somewhat problematic.) Our species has held quite firm to it’s original belief that any ‘stranger’ (meaning anyone different from our own kind) is to be feared and mistrusted. – to the point where it is now ingrained in our genetic makeup.
Yes, individuals can & do overcome such prejudice, here and there, now and again, but the underlying premise of human behavior has not changed one iota over the ages – and I sincerely doubt that it ever will.
The majority of humans will always want to build walls, rather than tear them down.
Excellent article. While my parents were from the Arkansas Ozarks, I don’t remember them being overtly racist. However, they they used the usual epithets when speaking of them
There were about six black (the African-American term of my day) kids in my class in high school and they were almost exotic creatures. They kept to themselves, spoke to the white kids only when necessary and we just didn’t know how to interact.
The O.J. Simpson trial was the closest time I had to examine my racial feelings because I couldn’t see why black people wouldn’t find him guilty. A black woman friend swears that had Nicole been black, they would have roasted his ass.
Whatever, I just don’t understand these deplorable racist …