with some thoughts on systemic racism
I have three true stories to tell here, although “confessions” might be a better term for them. At least one great teacher has told me that it is a mistake for a writer to be too self-conscious, as if to say, “Look at me! I’m writing!” In this case, however, I should clarify that I have been searching now for quite some time for the correct way to present these events, and I have finally realized that for these particular episodes, there will never be an easy method or time, for they are too personal. And yet, they clamor within me to be told.
I should start by saying that I was born and grew up in Jacksonville, Florida. Often, on hearing this, people I have met in other parts of the U.S. will say something like: “Oh, Florida? That’s not really like part of the south, is it?” They think of Miami, retirement communities, transplanted northerners, those people we have always called “snowbirds” because, if they have enough money, they flee their home states at the first sign of seriously cold weather and make their way to the land of palm trees and Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth. However, I wish to assure you that the town in which I was raised is unquestionably southern in both culture (if that’s the correct word) and temperament. And like many who are from there, I am “bona fide,” in that my grandparents came down from the tobacco farms of rural Georgia and settled in the first big city they happened upon in the hopes of escaping poverty (they didn’t).
Racial segregation and the inequalities and tensions that have resulted from it have long existed in Jacksonville just as they do in many other southern towns - as hidden bruises (at least to me and my cohorts) that have, on occasion, become too painful to ignore completely. It has taken me a very long time to begin to come to grips with the ugliness and insidiousness of the sort of hatred I grew up around, largely because it was impossible for me for so long even to recognize it. It remains an ongoing effort, and I am sure it will be so for the rest of my life.
So, imagine this: a boy of no more than four years goes to the local Winn-Dixie grocery store with his mother on a typically steamy Saturday morning in July. He loves going, in part because unlike his own home, it is air-conditioned there, and because he enjoys the sensations of seeing, smelling, and touching (if he can get away with it) all of the various-colored fruits and vegetables and cans and baked goods and so on. Besides this, he is with his mother, and he knows that if he is good and does not actually ask, she will likely buy him something special: an oversized cookie, or even better, a freshly made chocolate eclair, his favorite.
But on this particular Saturday, the boy does a very bad thing. He does it unwittingly, but it is bad nonetheless, and he must learn his lesson from it. He spies a water fountain by the back wall of the store, and even though he is not really thirsty, he cannot resist racing to it and hopping up on the little step placed there especially for people just his size, so that he can take a nice long drink. Gulp, gulp, gulp…what a fine thing it is to know the wonders of the Winn-Dixie on a Saturday morning. Then, suddenly, something or someone has him by the ear. It is rather as if some awful bird of prey has dug its talons into him, and he finds himself being yanked abruptly off of the little step and away from the fountain. He reels about and is mortified to see that it is his own mother who has him, who is wrenching his tender ear as though it were a rotten lemon rind to be stripped away.
In shock, he looks up at her pitifully, as if to say, What have I done? and pointing to a larger fountain a few feet away from the one he has used, she hisses, “That’s our fountain there! You were using the colored one!”
He does not understand her. The fountain from which he has just drunk is a plain white basin; it does have a thin crack in it, but the water seems as wet and cold as any water. The other fountain is a tall, grayish column with a glistening steel top. The boy knows about colors, and neither of the fountains is actually colored at all. And then, he turns and sees a black girl about his own age, who had apparently been waiting to have a drink as well. But now, for some reason, she is smiling at him.
“See?” Mother says. “She knows the difference.”
It is painful for me to recount this incident because I sincerely have never thought of my mother as a hateful person. She has been Mom, my nurturer and great supporter, my strength, and the source of whatever creativity I possess, for my entire life - for which she is also responsible, of course. By no means could I ever have asked for a more loving parent. Therefore, my only possible conclusion about her actions and words on that day? It was a behavior she had learned long ago, and no one had ever shown her otherwise, no one had ever offered a different vision of the world and the people in it. In fact, she was diligently following the rules that had been set down for her through a warped vision. Does that make it tolerable in the greater picture? Not at all. Nevertheless, in general, we are all at the mercy of the life and the ideology that are handed to us from a young age.
Please note that I use the phrase “in general.” This is because, once in a great while, even as we are being indoctrinated into a destructive and unjust system, an odd moment of light shines through. Such a moment came for me a few years later, when I was twelve, and I am still not sure how or why I reacted as I did, but I look back on it now as one of the few times I have done something right purely by instinct. There was no good reason for it, otherwise; it was simply a moment of grace granted to a kid who was still ignorant and undeserving, for the most part.
Growing up, I always heard that the world’s first Burger King fast-food joint was established in Jacksonville. I think there remains some dispute about that, but for my purposes here, it doesn’t matter. What was important was that every day during the summertime, with utter sovereignty and the unmerited trust of our parents, my best friend and neighbor John Sharp and I would walk the three blocks or so from Ligustrum Road to the Burger King on Merrill Road - sometimes with less than a dollar in hand between us - place an order at the walk-up window (there was no drive-thru or dine-in service in those days), order something, anything we could get, and then, fancying ourselves social elites, sit and eat our goodies at one of the picnic tables on the adjacent patio.
One day, we arrived just in time for the lunch rush and found ourselves at the end of a long line of customers. As we stood there on the sidewalk, the soles of our bare feet too thickened by summertime to feel the scorching heat emanating from the cement, a city bus pulled up to the stop a few yards away, and an elderly African-American man walked briskly over and got in line behind us. He was well-dressed, in a checked blazer and a white fedora, as I recall, but no tie. He had a thin, well-trimmed mustache. Then, very soon afterward, a young white girl of about ten, I’d say, with short-cropped dark hair and dark-rimmed glasses, walked up. John and I were astonished to watch her walk straight past the older man and wedge herself in front of him, right behind us.
In high school, I had to read Ralph Ellison’s literary masterpiece called Invisible Man (definitely not the sci-fi story by the same name). In it, the narrator describes the distinct feeling that he is actually invisible on the streets of New York’s white neighborhoods. It is not so much that he is disdained by others, but rather, that he is not even seen. I remember reading that passage and vividly recalling the manner in which that little white girl stepped past the older black man as though he was not even standing there. I think the phenomenon Ellison is getting at is exactly what I witnessed that day in the Burger King line.
Even though John and I were well familiar with the social conventions of the time period, we were still young enough to be appalled. Then I looked at the man in his checked blazer and fedora, and he shrugged his shoulders and gave me a look of sad understanding that seemed to say, “Do you see how it is? Do you see?” Maybe that - his expression, his simple resignation in the face of inhumanity and his awareness that we young boys had now seen it up close - maybe that is why I did what I did, said what I said. Or maybe, even at twelve, some anger deep within me sparked upon the moral flint that is buried in us all. I do not really know.
In any case, I addressed the girl: “Hey, you. Girl. That’s not the end of the line.” I gestured to the empty air behind the man. “That’s the end of the line. Now get your butt back there.”
Her mouth opened slightly, and for just a moment, I could see she was weighing some sort of retort. Then, silently, she moved.
Retelling it, I realize it may seem a trivial episode. But bear in mind that I was still twelve and had explored very little of the world, if any, and had read hardly anything except for sports novels and Hardy Boys books. It was a small thing in the vast sea of terrible things that happened (and continue happening) with every day’s tidal surges. And maybe the African-American gentleman remembered it for a long time, too, and had at least the passing thought that there might be hope someplace, someday, for us white folks. Still, I also realize it is pathetic that in my sixty-two years, I mark that as one of the very few times I acted morally and correctly through sheer instinct, for I have made a great mess of most such opportunities.
And that brings me to my last related anecdote. Again, it will no doubt seem a trifling occurrence to some readers, but for me, it was another of those fleeting moments in which something about myself was made clear to me. And I take no pride in what I saw.
I had transferred to the University of Richmond in the fall of 1977. Richmond is a private institution, and at that time, it was predominantly white; I’m sure that it cost more money than my parents could really afford, but they had taken out loans to assure that I would complete my college education. I had only one true reason for enrolling there - I had a girlfriend there. Whatever other rationale I came up with was utter garbage, and as it turns out, I would only be there for one semester (can you imagine why?). But on move-in day in September of that year, I experienced one of those moments that is so embarrassing that it still makes my face go red remembering it, and I despise myself all over again even some forty-odd years later.
I was in one of those large, gray-stone dormitories intended to bring to mind the grand structures of Oxford and Cambridge. I didn’t have much to move, really - my typewriter was my most cumbersome possession, and I had managed to fit that and everything else into my little olive-green Datsun truck. Within a few minutes, I had hung up and put away my clothes, stacked a few books on the shelf above my appointed desk, put a couple of family photos my mother had framed for me on top of the dresser, and slid my guitar under the bed. There were many parents strolling about the hallways and looking curiously into the various rooms, but since I was a sophomore and therefore far more worldly than I had been only a year ago, I had told my own folks that they need not make the trip this time. Next, I took a few minutes for some friendly chat with my new roommate (he was a good fellow from the Shenandoah Valley, but I knew I wouldn’t see him much), and then I left to find my girlfriend.
First, though, on my way down the corridor, I stopped into the men’s room for a quick leak, but when I flushed the urinal, it instantaneously overflowed, sending a small flash flood across my new sneakers and wetting my socks and the cuffs of my pants, and I stepped backward in annoyance. “Damn,” I barked.
I walked quickly to the sink, washed my hands, and then grabbed handfuls of paper towels and attempted to dry my shoes. At that moment, a heavyset black man in what I took to be a maintenance worker’s khaki shirt came in and began to wash his hands.
“Oh, hi,” I sad. “Good thing you came in. I just want to let you know, that urinal over there is not working properly.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I definitely won’t use it, in that case.”
“No,” I replied. “I mean to say that it needs to be fixed…” My voice trailed off as he stared at me oddly, as though I had suddenly begun talking in a different language.
Now a much younger black man, about eighteen years old and dressed in an Izod shirt and jeans, appeared in the bathroom doorway. “Come on, Dad,” he said. “The dean wants to meet with all the freshmen and their parents.”
The look on the older man’s face changed: his furrowed-up brow now fell into a narrow, knowing gaze. Now I know who you are, the gaze seemed to say to me. I realized that it had dawned on both of us at once what my awful mistake had been, of course. I had assumed that he was a maintenance man for the college, and worse yet, it had not even occurred to me in any way that he might be a student’s father. The cold and unmitigated reality was that I had made this assumption based on one thing only: his color.
____________
Now that I see these three anecdotes lined up in their proper sequence, one thing is clear to me: there is no sequence. I see a back-and-forth internal struggle, with fits and starts, noble ambition and sputtering failure. There was no turning point at which I threw off my own mental bonds, the ones placed upon me long ago by those people who came before me. Oh, as a college sophomore, I would have argued that I had done so, that I had cleansed myself of all racist views, but a few words exchanged in a college dormitory showed me that I really hadn’t even begun to do so, even then.
The boy that I was in the Winn-Dixie merely wanted a drink of water, so I am not sure he can be faulted in any way. He did not make the signs that said “COLORED” and “WHITE.” He could not even read them, but he was speedily, gruffly, and expeditiously indoctrinated into the world that did make them.
That kid of twelve, though, the middle one, standing in line at the Burger King, who was compelled by his boy’s heart to speak and to act in order to perhaps correct at least one moment of indignity on a sidewalk in Jacksonville… He is the one I hope is really mostly me. Maybe it can be as simple as trusting and acting upon our instincts. By doing just that, children show us our potential goodness all the time.
Often people wish to talk about the complexities and nuances of race relations in the south. There can be no doubt that the south still has the greatest share of the work still to be done, because of the long scourge of slavery. However, from what I observe right now - not just in the news but in day-to-day real life - there is no region in this country, no neighborhood or block or household, for that matter, wherein citizens ought not to be examining their own consciences concerning the worth and dignity of black lives.