My "Blog Against Racism Day" Post

Racism is troubling for me, and I am sometimes challenged to confront my own unconscious prejudices. It is hard to admit it, but I was infected in my youth with some racist notions that I have had to work at to overcome.

When I was very young, the schools in my community were still segregated. The town schools were integrated when I was in grammar school, but the county schools were practically all white even after integration because black people lived for the most part in one particular area in the city. I didn’t know any black kids until the 5th grade when there were a couple of them in my class. Black and white kids did not play together in the schoolyard, and the black kids ate together in the cafeteria. We didn’t socialize at all outside of school. This continued into high school, and the only chance you might have to socialize with black people was in team sports. Even then, contact was largely limited to team activities. I did not know why this was so, and I never questioned it. It was just the way things were.

There were churches for black folks and churches for white folks. Our church had a separate chapel where we allowed black kids that were bussed in to attend “Children’s Church”. We weren’t interested in having their parents in the main sanctuary, and the children of regular members certainly did not go to Children’s Church. Looking back, I realize how patronizing the whole Children’s Church program was, but at the time I volunteered to work in it and thought I was doing good by setting an example for black youth. I never questioned that blacks and whites would worship apart from one another. It was just the way it was.

I had some casual acquaintances among black students and was liked my many. I earned the nickname “John Boy” due to a supposed resemblance to the character on the Waltons. This, and my family’s insistence that black folks were not to be hated because they could not help it that they were born black, allowed me to believe that I was not a racist.

I carried this conviction with me to college in Washington, DC, the population of which is mostly black, where I found, to my consternation that, in fact, I harbored some racist attitudes. I found that I was a little frightened at being surrounded by black people who were not especially deferential to me. I found myself avoiding neighborhoods as dangerous solely because black folks lived there. I had a negative visceral reaction to interracial couples that I had to work hard to conceal. It was a painful but enlightening experience, and I think that recognizing my own racist streak was the first step in recovery.

I think of myself as a recovering racist. In a way, awareness of racism in myself has been advantageous in that I have never been one to labor under the illusion that racism is not real or that black folks make too much of a big deal about race. I realize that it sometimes makes little sense to be “color blind” in a society that clearly is not. Race is a big deal, especially if you are on the receiving end of discrimination.

I try not to discriminate irrationally and to advocate against such discrimination by others. I probably fail all too often. I live where I would probably have to go quite a way to find a black neighbor. I have no black friends, just acquaintances at work with whom I never socialize outside of the office (of course, that’s true of my white co-workers as well). There is sometimes a single black person or perhaps two at my church, but there are usually none, and I don’t know the black parishioners at all (of course, I know only a few of the white members as well, having been attending for just a little over a year). I don’t think I consciously avoided black people in my choice of housing or in developing a social circle, but the society in which I live is structured in such a way that I would have to make a conscious effort to cultivate black acquaintances or to live among black neighbors. I should perhaps make an effort at church to be more welcoming to black fellow parishioners, but it is difficult to decide how else to overcome the obstacles that keep me away from black folks. It would feel artificial and unseemly to cultivate a friendship just as a social experiment, and I am far too antisocial and lazy to make any kind of effort.

Racism as a social fact has made it possible for me and my white neighbors to avoid black people almost entirely without any of us personally engaging in any direct discrimination. The discrimination of others has done the job for us.