Prejudice & Racism: A Rejection of God

It came to pass that in my fourth year, the state decided that the desegregation efforts were still not enough, as there was still an all-white school in town, mine. It became the reverse “token”, the place to hold on to the white supremacy ideology. And even their attempts at projecting a segregated picture by letting in a few “not completely black” Mexicans would not help them prevail against social demands for unity. Among us students, who had never seen a black kid in school, we didn’t know how to act. Now, read that again. I want you to see the underlying pressure that was upon us kids. We didn’t know how to act, but we somehow knew, whether assumed or told, that we were supposed to act different. But, that’s the point, we knew something was expected of us and we had no idea how to answer those expectations.

As for myself, I tried not to bring it up much. I could go to school and come home and the whole matter wouldn’t have much effect on me in the immediate. As to how we were supposed to act, that came out at home, from those we had to answer to. It was the same things I’ve heard now ongoing for many years; “You have to go to school with them, but you will not play with them, and do not bring them home with you.” “We have to work with them, but don’t tell them where we gather after work.” I was during this year that, due to my parents’ divorce, I transferred to a much bigger school in the Dallas area. There were kids of all colors there and you wouldn’t believe what we had to do there! Every day we went to school, we did just plain old school work. Imagine that.

All during this time my family was failing miserably in their racist training efforts. When I look back, I can now say their actions show that their heart couldn’t really have been in it. In fact, their heart told another story all together. It told us that their actions, at least from some of them, were due to a peer pressure of their own. Fortunately, I never saw any negative actions except those statements of “us” being better than “them”. The old and very true saying “your actions speak louder than your words” was already at work removing the vail that their peer pressure had put in place.

My dad was, of course, to be the example in our upbringing. He was also trying to follow his examples and gain approval from them, his elders in the family. But, there was a clash between two separate sets of examples we were all supposed to follow. The second set came from the elder women and was based in a deep desire to follow and please the Lord! This resulted in both beliefs showing up on the surface, but one got lip service while the other got the action. “We are just not going to have anything to do with blacks, but… well, we need to help those babies, I mean it’s not their fault, right?” “You kids move over.” And with that the rear door of our car flew open in a blinding rain storm and a young black mother and her three very little children piled into the backseat with us. “We can take where ever you need to go.” Most racist thing I ever saw. Then, I was home on leave one time, my Dad and I were about to enter a local store, “Mr. Duncan” we heard. An older black man came up to us, shook hands with us both, and handed my dad $600. The man thanked my dad profusely and apologized for taking so long. My dad asked him was he sure he could do this all at one time. The man said no, but he would not keep his money any longer. Dad only accepted half the money and told him not to worry about the rest. I was told later that the man’s wife was a woman that we had talked to for years out at the lake where we lived. She would come to fish on the banks near our house with her long cane poles. She had been diagnosed with cancer, which took her rather quickly but, there was a period of great pain, and no medicine. What a racist thing to do, Dad.

These stories far outnumber the real episodes of racism that I saw from any of my family, extended or otherwise. But, these happenings were separated instances and without much weight in my life for a long time. I never took up being actively racially prejudice, it was just something I wanted to leave alone. So, I avoided the subject because I didn’t really understand it, its meaning or its purpose. But, just like all things, there came the time when I found myself in the middle of it and both sides asking me choose. The first few times that happened, I managed to skate by without losing too many friends on either side. Hope you caught that. And I held in my mind, that someday I was going to have to formulate a response to this situation that I could really stand on, one way or the other. I had agreed with the whites, when needed. WHEN NEEDED! I didn’t need to be the victim of a racist beating when all I had to do was – ” oh yea, you right, well see you fella’s later.” And I agreed with the blacks… …fill in all the same stuff here.