A Witness To Changes For The Better On Race, But With Caveats
First published in April 2013, but with an ending note added, July 27, 2017 and a small addition on June 1, 2018, with another addition May 13, 2021.
I've seen a good many changes in my life. Change isn't always easy to accept for some, probably even most of us, at least early on in the process. I was lucky, my parents were not racists and that helped me to look at racial issues in what I think were balanced ways. In the 1960s racial issues exploded across much of the United States, including in my high school, where something less than 10% of the students were black. Race was a red hot issue, but even back then there was cause for hope, as I found most people, regardless of race or background, wanted to get along. I sat next to a black girl in my biology class. When Martin Luther King was assassinated, she came into that classroom, looked at me and said, "I'm supposed to be mad at you." I just played dumb, something I do VERY well, since it comes naturally, and I asked her why. She mentioned the assassination, but then followed with, "but I can't be mad at you." This incident, be it seemingly ever so small, has stayed with me all of these years. I was elected to the school interracial council, a small group developed to diffuse racial problems before they became explosive.
My paternal grandparents were divorced and my father and one uncle lived with my grandfather in Baltimore during a good part of the 1930s. The black population of Baltimore back then was around 18%, a considerable percentage for a non-southern city at that time, but I never heard my dad say anything negative about black people when he talked about his Baltimore days when I was growing up. He always used the term "Negro," the "proper" term in white society back then. He talked about how Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby broke the "color barrier" in major league baseball, and he even recalled how badly black athletes in general had been treated.
I grew up in an all white neighborhood and when I was about five or six, I was standing with a couple of the other kids on the sidewalk when a black guy came down the street on a bicycle. One of the other kids said, "That's a n-----." Later, when I went in the house, I asked my mother, "Mom, what's a n-----?" She grabbed me and said, "Don't you EVER use that word again, or I'll wash your mouth out with soap," a common saying back in those days. I don't recall what she did or didn't explain, but the thoughts of bubbles flowing from my mouth is still with me to this day, although I'm sure my mother did the best she could to explain things to her little son, who unknowingly had uttered a derogatory word.
I don't want to place the crown of sainthood on the heads of my parents, but they were generally ahead of their time on the issue of race, although their views were never tested by having a black family move next door, but then again, they came to my house later on, and I lived next door to a couple from a racially mixed marriage. I certainly wasn't troubled by this fact, nor were my parents, who had seen discrimination toward blacks, segregation, the attitudes of white superiority, and the beginnings of the reversal of these ideas during their lifetimes. Further, a cousin of mine on my mother's side married a black man and I don't recall my mother declaring this would end civilization. No, my parents may have asked little questions about race between themselves* and my dad continued using "Negro" long after he should have dropped the term, but on balance I'd say they knew that things like bombs going off at the Boston Marathon, hijacked planes being flown into buildings, or bankers exploiting the mortgage business were far more important than people allowing race to divide them.
So I've seen lots of changes for the better in my life, although it's been a pretty slow process, which still continues. With the inclusive attitudes of today's young folks, there will be many more positive changes, changes I won't be around to witness, but the country might just truly become the UNITED States, with liberty and justice for all.
NOTE: 7-27-17: We still have a long way to go on racial issues. The presidency of Barack Obama showed how many Americans were able to move past race and elect a man of mixed racial heritage to lead the nation for 8 years. The early belief and giddiness of some, that we were in a "post racial" era, was far too naïve, as some Americans still felt fearful of voting for Obama, and still others, seemingly a smaller, but more outspoken segment, chose hate, racism and bigotry in reaction to his presidency. To not have voted for Barack Obama does not make a person a racist, just as having voted for Donald Trump in 2016 doesn't make a person a racist, although there are racists in both groups. Addition 5-13-21: Americans still continue to struggle with race, but when I saw protests in the 1960s about civil rights, most protesters, by far, were black Americans. In more recent times, protests about racial inequality almost always have large numbers of Americans of many races and backgrounds included, but as these Americans seek to bring change to racist and bigoted attitudes of a persistent hardcore of Americans, the ugly head and voice of Donald Trump, "the racist in chief," incited acts against Asian Americans, just as his rhetoric had told extremist groups holding torchlight parades in Charlottesville, Virginia and shouting "Jews will not replace us," that they were morally equivalent to people there protesting racism and hate. There has been a tragic rise in anti-semitic incidents, including killings, over the last few years. Fighting such evil is a full time job and we cannot afford to take a vacation from this struggle.
* Change requires understanding and understanding requires questions to help us understand, and understanding race means we need to answer questions about those who are different in some physical ways from ourselves. Asking questions and wanting to learn about others is not racism. In one of the great scenes in a truly outstanding movie, "Nowhere in Africa," a film that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2002 (it is in German, with English subtitles), when the young main German Jewish character arrives in Africa, the Kenyan cook for the family picks up the girl and she feels his hair as he holds her close. His hair is different from her hair. This is followed not long after by a young Kenyan boy sneaking up behind the girl's mother, just to feel her hair, much to the delight of his young Kenyan friends. Her hair is different from his own. My article about this wonderful film is here: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2013/06/nowhere-in-africa.html
WORD HISTORY:
Learn-This goes back to Indo European "lais/leis," which meant "trail, track." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "liznojan," which meant "to learn, to obtain knowledge;" the notion seemingly being "to acquire knowledge through the track of life." A variant apparently developed which then produced Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "leornian," which meant "to acquire knowledge, to study to obtain knowledge." This then became "lernen," before the modern version. English also once had "laeran" (and derived forms) which meant "to teach," and its close German cousin still has "lehren" which means "to teach," and a "Lehrer," is a male teacher, while a "Lehrerin" is a female teacher. English "teach" comes from a Germanic word the basic meaning of which is "to show," and this eventually prevailed over forms of "laeran." The use of "learn" to also mean "to study" generally began to die out in English when "study" was borrowed from French. Learn is closely related to "lore."^ Forms of "learn" in the other Germanic languages are: German "lernen," Low German Saxon "lehren" (which means both "learn" and "teach"), West Frisian "leare," Dutch "leren," Danish and Norwegian "laere," Icelandic "laera," and Swedish "lära."
^ For the "Word History" for "lore," see my article: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2010/12/german-question-part-sixty-one.html
I've seen a good many changes in my life. Change isn't always easy to accept for some, probably even most of us, at least early on in the process. I was lucky, my parents were not racists and that helped me to look at racial issues in what I think were balanced ways. In the 1960s racial issues exploded across much of the United States, including in my high school, where something less than 10% of the students were black. Race was a red hot issue, but even back then there was cause for hope, as I found most people, regardless of race or background, wanted to get along. I sat next to a black girl in my biology class. When Martin Luther King was assassinated, she came into that classroom, looked at me and said, "I'm supposed to be mad at you." I just played dumb, something I do VERY well, since it comes naturally, and I asked her why. She mentioned the assassination, but then followed with, "but I can't be mad at you." This incident, be it seemingly ever so small, has stayed with me all of these years. I was elected to the school interracial council, a small group developed to diffuse racial problems before they became explosive.
My paternal grandparents were divorced and my father and one uncle lived with my grandfather in Baltimore during a good part of the 1930s. The black population of Baltimore back then was around 18%, a considerable percentage for a non-southern city at that time, but I never heard my dad say anything negative about black people when he talked about his Baltimore days when I was growing up. He always used the term "Negro," the "proper" term in white society back then. He talked about how Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby broke the "color barrier" in major league baseball, and he even recalled how badly black athletes in general had been treated.
I grew up in an all white neighborhood and when I was about five or six, I was standing with a couple of the other kids on the sidewalk when a black guy came down the street on a bicycle. One of the other kids said, "That's a n-----." Later, when I went in the house, I asked my mother, "Mom, what's a n-----?" She grabbed me and said, "Don't you EVER use that word again, or I'll wash your mouth out with soap," a common saying back in those days. I don't recall what she did or didn't explain, but the thoughts of bubbles flowing from my mouth is still with me to this day, although I'm sure my mother did the best she could to explain things to her little son, who unknowingly had uttered a derogatory word.
I don't want to place the crown of sainthood on the heads of my parents, but they were generally ahead of their time on the issue of race, although their views were never tested by having a black family move next door, but then again, they came to my house later on, and I lived next door to a couple from a racially mixed marriage. I certainly wasn't troubled by this fact, nor were my parents, who had seen discrimination toward blacks, segregation, the attitudes of white superiority, and the beginnings of the reversal of these ideas during their lifetimes. Further, a cousin of mine on my mother's side married a black man and I don't recall my mother declaring this would end civilization. No, my parents may have asked little questions about race between themselves* and my dad continued using "Negro" long after he should have dropped the term, but on balance I'd say they knew that things like bombs going off at the Boston Marathon, hijacked planes being flown into buildings, or bankers exploiting the mortgage business were far more important than people allowing race to divide them.
So I've seen lots of changes for the better in my life, although it's been a pretty slow process, which still continues. With the inclusive attitudes of today's young folks, there will be many more positive changes, changes I won't be around to witness, but the country might just truly become the UNITED States, with liberty and justice for all.
NOTE: 7-27-17: We still have a long way to go on racial issues. The presidency of Barack Obama showed how many Americans were able to move past race and elect a man of mixed racial heritage to lead the nation for 8 years. The early belief and giddiness of some, that we were in a "post racial" era, was far too naïve, as some Americans still felt fearful of voting for Obama, and still others, seemingly a smaller, but more outspoken segment, chose hate, racism and bigotry in reaction to his presidency. To not have voted for Barack Obama does not make a person a racist, just as having voted for Donald Trump in 2016 doesn't make a person a racist, although there are racists in both groups. Addition 5-13-21: Americans still continue to struggle with race, but when I saw protests in the 1960s about civil rights, most protesters, by far, were black Americans. In more recent times, protests about racial inequality almost always have large numbers of Americans of many races and backgrounds included, but as these Americans seek to bring change to racist and bigoted attitudes of a persistent hardcore of Americans, the ugly head and voice of Donald Trump, "the racist in chief," incited acts against Asian Americans, just as his rhetoric had told extremist groups holding torchlight parades in Charlottesville, Virginia and shouting "Jews will not replace us," that they were morally equivalent to people there protesting racism and hate. There has been a tragic rise in anti-semitic incidents, including killings, over the last few years. Fighting such evil is a full time job and we cannot afford to take a vacation from this struggle.
* Change requires understanding and understanding requires questions to help us understand, and understanding race means we need to answer questions about those who are different in some physical ways from ourselves. Asking questions and wanting to learn about others is not racism. In one of the great scenes in a truly outstanding movie, "Nowhere in Africa," a film that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2002 (it is in German, with English subtitles), when the young main German Jewish character arrives in Africa, the Kenyan cook for the family picks up the girl and she feels his hair as he holds her close. His hair is different from her hair. This is followed not long after by a young Kenyan boy sneaking up behind the girl's mother, just to feel her hair, much to the delight of his young Kenyan friends. Her hair is different from his own. My article about this wonderful film is here: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2013/06/nowhere-in-africa.html
WORD HISTORY:
Learn-This goes back to Indo European "lais/leis," which meant "trail, track." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "liznojan," which meant "to learn, to obtain knowledge;" the notion seemingly being "to acquire knowledge through the track of life." A variant apparently developed which then produced Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "leornian," which meant "to acquire knowledge, to study to obtain knowledge." This then became "lernen," before the modern version. English also once had "laeran" (and derived forms) which meant "to teach," and its close German cousin still has "lehren" which means "to teach," and a "Lehrer," is a male teacher, while a "Lehrerin" is a female teacher. English "teach" comes from a Germanic word the basic meaning of which is "to show," and this eventually prevailed over forms of "laeran." The use of "learn" to also mean "to study" generally began to die out in English when "study" was borrowed from French. Learn is closely related to "lore."^ Forms of "learn" in the other Germanic languages are: German "lernen," Low German Saxon "lehren" (which means both "learn" and "teach"), West Frisian "leare," Dutch "leren," Danish and Norwegian "laere," Icelandic "laera," and Swedish "lära."
^ For the "Word History" for "lore," see my article: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2010/12/german-question-part-sixty-one.html
Labels: 1960s, bigotry, diversity, English, etymology, Germanic languages, learning, Nowhere in Africa, parents, racial issues, racism
posted by Randy at 8:23 PM
3 Comments:
Good article and stories. We must keep moving forward, not backward, like the fanatical right wants.
Hey Seth! Good article, but I hate to think of things I once believed. Im a different person and I will officially become a Democrat by the next election. Nice to read some of your personal history and trying to promote cooperation between people.
I'm sure all of us can look back and regret beliefs we once held. The key is, we saw our flaws and changed.
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