Living in the South my entire life, I have certainly witnessed racism. I have never stated that there was no racists in the South, and this would be a totally absurd viewpoint. There is not an area or state in this nation, that doesn't have racists.
It does disturb me, the way some people apply a stereotype to the South. Perhaps it stems from the Civil War, or the Civil Rights era, or maybe both? I can understand that, but in all honesty, I can't understand how people can be so bigoted and stereotypical about their views on racism. It's almost a contradiction of principle, in my opinion... it's not okay to be prejudiced and bigoted about race, but let's bash hell out of these people because they are racist for being from the South!
I have articulated this thought before, but this seems to be a good time to revisit it. I personally think the level of obvious and abhorrent racism in the state of Alabama, is far less prevalent than other places, simply because of the history. Every school kid educated in Alabama, has learned of our past, we've studied the state history regarding racism, segregation, and civil rights. We have had it ingrained into us from a very early age, that this was shameful and embarrassing, and wrong. This level of guilt simply doesn't exist in places where there has never been a history of racial turmoil. Precisely because of our past, we've come to have an understanding unlike people who never had to face that.
I grew up in the heart of Birmingham during the 1960's. The nights of rioting and fire hoses are a vivid memory I have to this day, even though I was only 4 years old at the time. My father was afraid there would be a race war, and he spend many a night on our front porch, with a shotgun in hand, ready to protect his family and property from potential attacks. He wasn't a racist, he was a realist though, and he knew that things could get ugly.
I've recalled before, the times my Mother took my sister and me to the matinee at the Alabama Theater, we always took the bus downtown, and I can vividly remember seeing black people on the bus, and along the way to the movies... they would never really look you in the eye, as if they were ashamed of something, or they were afraid to speak. Little did I know what was going on, why they seemed to be so distant and cold toward me. I would try to strike up a conversation with them, only to have them uncomfortably disengage from the social interaction and withdraw. I didn't understand this, I couldn't imagine why they didn't want to speak to me, or even look at me, for that matter. Of course, it was because of what was going on at the time, and I was too young to understand. This made a profound impact on me as a child, and I suspect that people who weren't in the middle of civil rights, had no clue of this, and were never effected this way.
I can remember where I lived at the time, it was a small middle class neighborhood, 3 blocks down the street from a housing project... my grandmother called it the "colored quarters" and it was where all the black people lived. One of my best friends was Jewish, he lived right at the "border" between our neighborhood and "colored quarters" and when I would go to his house to play, there were a couple of black boys who would join us in the yard and play. We were just kids, we didn't see each other as different, other than the obvious difference in our color. I remember the Jewish boy's mother always made us pink lemonade, I had never known of pink lemonade before this, it was new to me. When she would call us to come in for a glass of lemonade, the black boys would get this look of fear on their faces, and decline to come inside the house, they would leave and go back to their house, without any explanation. I just figured it was because they had been raised to not go in the house of a stranger or something, I had no idea it was because we were white people. I can remember my 6th birthday, I had invited one of the boys to my party, and they didn't come. Later, I asked them why? They just said their mom wouldn't let them. I figured it was because their mother didn't know my family or something, I never understood it was because they were black and I was white, and it was Birmingham in the 60's.
The point I am trying to make is this, I grew up in a very polarized racially divided community, and I never understood it. Much later in my youth, I would learn about MLK and Civil Rights, I would discover the answers to why things were the way they were. It changed me as a person, because I experienced this first-hand growing up. I think that people who grew up in all-white neighborhoods, far away from this conflict, had a completely different perspective of things, and never realized the things I did as a child. This makes a huge difference in regard to viewpoint, in my opinion.
The thing that really troubles me today, is the way people will twist things into "racism" that really aren't. Some innocent comment, or some stereotype is made, and it's portrayed as "racism" when it's really nothing more than an observation or opinion rooted in stereotypes. We all have preferences, we all have our prejudices, it doesn't make us all racist. To me, a truly racist person is someone who believes that one race is superior to another, or one race is inferior to others. If that is the viewpoint, the person is a racist, and it's abhorrent and wrong to be that way. If they simply have a preference or stereotypical opinion of something, that could be ignorance, that could merely be personal preference, it doesn't mean the person believes as a racist. Condemning these people as racist for these things, marginalizes true racism, and diminishes the problem of real racism in our society, in my opinion.
I think we solve the racial divide by somehow understanding that we all have preferences and we all have prejudice to some degree, and this is not racist, just a part of being human. As long as we are unwilling to accept this, and continue to categorize it incorrectly, we can't ever resolve the problem of true racist beliefs in our society.
