That Race Thing

Sorry, but race and ethnicity are not the same thing.  In my initial post on this topic, I suggest that there is no satisfactory answer as to what consitutes race in any objective or scientific sense.  That is the point of modern research on the development of race science.  Race is a social and political construct that has a powerful impact on modern society.  We all buy into the concept of race.  When I'm filling out some form and it asks me to identify my race, I check black or African-American.  But genetic science doesn't support the notion of race which in essence would divide human beings into subspecies.  The prevailing genetic belief holds that human beings are a single species and given our relative youth on the evolutionary calendar, we haven't been around long enough to evolve into distinct subspecies. Homo sapiens is defined as, "The modern species of humans, the only extant species of the primate family Hominidae." That one group considers itself to be a race is relevant in a social and cultural context, but it doesn't make it a fact supported by scientific evidence.  Often when people speak of race they are really talking about ethnicity.  Ethnicity is defined via a set of shared characteristics--linguistic, cultural, ancestral, national or regional ties.  Ethnic groups commonly have shared behavioral and religious traditions.  Ethnic identity is not based on scientific principles but on cultural and societal norms.  The People's Republic of China has officially designated 56 ethnic groups in China!

Certainly ancient cultures recognized that people looked different as far as skin color, hair texture, etc.  However acknowledging and commenting on difference is a far cry from using it as a basis to determine who is superior and who is inferior. 

I did not mean to suggest that slavery as practiced by the ancient Romans or Greeks was a simply benign institution.  Ownership of another human being is not justifiable under any circumstances. 

The significant change in the 17th century was that race was given a biological basis and began to be regarded as a scientific fact.  Human nature being what it is, of course there have always been efforts to categorize and classify people based on various criteria. 

Ironically, the first Africans brought to Jamestown in 1619 were not slaves but indentured servants.   It wasn't until 1641 that Massachussetts became the first British colony to legalize slavery.   Other colonies followed suit but it was the Slave Codes of 1705 that fully sealed the fates of Africans as slaves.  The Slave Codes of 1705 specified that all persons of color be considered as real estate, i.e. property.  There was no punishment in law for causing harm or even death to a slave. It was a distinct set of economic, moral, and social conditions that fostered racial slavery in the US and the subsequent continued discrimination long after slavery was abolished.  What evolved into the system of slavery in America was a peculiar institution with lasting impact on the development of this country.

When I was  a child, I cut my knee rather badly.  In the 1960's, everything came in glass bottles, not plastic and I dropped a bottle of rubbing alcohol on the floor.  It was 1963; I was eight-years-old and not too bright, so I knelt down to pick it up.  My mother noticed the blood gushing from my knee, grabbed me, wrapped a towel around my knee, and herded my younger brother and sister out the door and into the car.  When she got to the clinic, she picked me and the now bloody towel up and raced to the entrance.  In her panic, she went to the wrong entrance, the white only entrance.  As she attempted to enter the door with her bleeding and loudly wailing child in her arms, she was told that she needed to go around to the colored entrance.  My mother did what she was told, recognizing that protest would have done no good and wasted valuable time. 

My knee was repaired but for the rest of the summer I had to return for periodic visits to the clinic.  The repair job consisted of using clamps to close the outer skin together, necessitating my keeping the leg fully extended at all times.  For some reason, although there was a separate colored entrance for the emergency facilities, there was one main entrance that allowed one to reach the waiting room.  Each doctor's visit, my mother and I would traverse the expansive waiting room reserved for whites only, a waiting room that was brightly lit, had green plants, and comfortable seating, including recliners.  We walked through this waiting room to get to the colored only waiting room.  A small, narrow room with no windows and two benches on opposite walls.  As I could not bend my knee, the only way I could sit on the bench was sideways, with my leg up on the bench.  However, the waiting room was always crowded so rather than take up extra seating space with my extended leg, my mother would help me sit on the floor.  This was the summer that I finally understood what being colored meant.

My experience is not special or unique; it was the status quo of the time.  My point is that slavery as practiced in America, by white America, was a monolithic institution that fed off of a determined belief that the superior people were entitled to own the inferior people.  This belief in the natural superiority of whites made it impossible for a blending of blacks into mainstream society after emancipation.  White America was faced with a serious conundrum after the Civil War--what to do with the millions of suddenly free blacks?  To simply accept them as equals was impossible.  The entire southern culture (and to a somewhat lesser extent, the north, east and west; even northern abolitionists weren't convinced of the equality of blacks but of their right to freedom ) was firmly based on a legal and social belief that blacks were genetically inferior to whites.   Many whites were fond of their slaves and treated them like family members, much in the way that a family pet is adored.  They did not consider them their equals and were uncomfortable with any new order that attempted to put them on the same level.  The period of Reconstruction saw the rise of Jim Crow laws that were specifically designed to continue to assert white superiority and affirm black inferiority. 

The aftermath of slavery, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow has had a lasting impact on race relations in this country.  Some white people have expressed a belief that blacks are obsessed with slavery and bitterness and that we need to let it go. For our own health as a people, I agree.  But letting go of bitterness is not the same as forgetting, as turning a blind eye to the past.  Slavery was not a finite institution that ended with emancipation.  The impact of slavery continued long after its legal end because the basic beliefs of white America that linked skin color to intelligence, work ethic, moral character and personal worth persisted long after slavery.  I grew up in Wilson, North Carolina, a small southern town of about 30,000.  I attended segregated schools.  If my mother wanted to take a break from cooking, she could go to the back door of a local restaurant, the colored entrance, purchase the food and leave.  When we went shopping downtown, some stores were reserved for whites only.  We could shop in other stores but were often not allowed to try on the clothes before purchasing them or had to commit to purchase if we tried them on.  It was important that no white person inadvertently try on clothes that had been on a black person's body.  I recall watching my mother try on hats with a scarf on her head that was provided by the hat shop to all of its colored customers.

I recall my mother accepting a part time job at a local bakery.  The new owner was from New York and Jewish.  He fired the white woman who worked there because he was dissatisfied with her work.  My mother happened to come in to make a purchase on the day he put the help wanted sign in the window and he hired her.  She worked there for less than a week.  One morning she went to work and we walked to school.  My mother had enrolled us in a small Catholic school that was three blocks from our house.  One reason she wanted a job was to pay the tuition.  My father wasn't clear as to why we couldn't just attend the free public school.  My mother says that the black school in our neighborhood was so overcrowded that grades K-2 went to school in half day shifts.

On our way to school, a car pulled over and offered us candy and a ride.  My little brother, sister and I hopped in and accepted the candy.  The driver was white and had on a collar like our priest wore.  He told us that he was visiting our priest.  He dropped us off at school and drove away.

Later that evening, I heard my parents talking in hushed voices and did what all children do with their parents are whispering, I eavesdropped. 

My father had just been hired as a local police officer.  He was one of the first four black officers hired on the Wilson police force.  He was not allowed to drive a patrol car, none of the black officers were, but he walked a beat.

My parents were discussing a phone call that my mother had taken.  A man had described the clothing that we wore to school that day.  He knew our names.  He warned my mother that unless she quit the job that she had stolen from a white woman that the next time we were picked up, we wouldn't make it to school.  My mother was crying and my dad wasn't saying much of anything.  I think back on it and realize how powerless he must have felt.  Even with his new position as an officer of the law, he couldn't protect his family.  My mother quit the job immediately and drove us to school for the next few weeks.  My dad never bothered to report the matter to his superiors.  It was common knowledge that members of the local police force were Klan members.  This took place in 1964.

I don't know any other way to speak of race history in this country without stating that white America created and perpetrated the system of racial exclusion that still affects the United States.  It doesn't matter that they learned it elsewhere; they practiced it here.  It doesn't absolve them of collective responsibility that the seeds for race discrimination arose out of publications by pseudo-scientists from Sweden or Germany or wherever. 

If the end of slavery in 1865 had truly ended all race conscious practices, laws, and policies in the US, I doubt that we would continue to struggle with matters of race and equality in this country.  Slavery would be a regrettable but distant memory.  However, when the intrinsic value and dignity of a human being is unequivocally tied to their skin color, then something horrific happens to both the oppressor and the oppressed.  Both lose a measure of their humanity, that once lost is difficult to regain.

When I began this journal, I never planned to write about matters of race here.  I planned to write about far less weighty issues for my own amusement and the amusement of my readers.  However, rightly or wrongly, I feel an obligation to try and communicate the complexities of race relations in the US.  I don't pretend to have all the answers nor do I speak for all black people, but I have devoted a great deal of my life to trying to understand why my country is still trapped in the quicksand of race.  I don't have an answer yet, but I'm working on it.  I think that's all that any of us can do.

Tags: Jim Crowe, racism, slave trade, white privilege, race and privilege, ethnicity, colored, white only, racial discrimination