There comes a time in everyone's life when a previously unseen truth smacks you in the face. For me, it was after I'd been to Ole Miss for a college visit and saw shortly thereafter news coverage about James Merideth's experiences there. Ours were not the same experience. Until I saw what was happening to James Merridith on the nightly news, I'd walked through life in utter oblivion. I'd led a privileged white life, and like far too many of us, I'd skipped along, completely unconcerned about what had been happening just beyond the tip of my nose.
Kentucky was just as segregated as the rest of the South, but there was no signage in my hometown saying who could and could not go where. And so, at age seven, when the family car trip saw us at a Georgia service lesson for a rest stop, there was a scene. Caused by me. As Mom herded my sister and me to the restroom, I saw two signs: Colored. Whites Only. Spoiled, ignorant little white girl that I was, I pitched a hissy fit to go to the one marked Colored. I thought it would be prettier. Mom jerked me into the Whites Only, and gave me a quick swat on the bottom. After we returned to the car with me still complaining, Mom said something like, "Karen, the other one is an outhouse." The reason given. "Those are the rules." I never ever heard my mother say a racist thing, nor did I ever see her treat anyone badly. But, the rules were the rules. We didn't question them.
After that trip, I returned to life in a small Kentucky town that had one black couple of which I was aware. I didn't know that they had children as I'd never seen them. (They did, I learned as an adult, have children who went to the neighboring county's black schools.) Everyone just went along and got along in our very white world. I was reminded of this while reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
Harry is surprised that none of the Muggles notice as he and Hagrid slide through barriers or enter shops that only the Magic see. Hagrid explains that Muggles don't even know magic when they see it. For too long, I didn't notice institutional racism when I saw it. The TV and movie world verified my world.
Time passed. My freshman year in college, I was thrilled to be asked to the Ole South Ball where males wore Confederate uniforms and we women wore gowns and carried parasols. I sat proudly on the back of a convertible with other faux belles, waving our white-gloved hands to crowds as we paraded down Lexington's Main Street. The police watched the crowd and kept the street open. I was so blind. Shortly thereafter, James Merridith tried to enter University of Mississippi and it took the National Guard. I've tried to atone ever since. But I cannot change what I did and didn't do then. Nor can any other man nor woman. But we can change what we do after we become less ignorant. We have to do everything we can to address a great problem that the Founding Fathers had to give up on. What the Reformation couldn't do after the Hayes-Tilden compromise. What the Civil and Voting Rights Act attempted and has been losing ground on lately. This country will never ever be what it is meant to be until we look at the evils of slavery and racism straight in the eye.
What has been winked and blinked at or even ignored must be faced. Slavery was a legal institution. Slaves helped build this great nation. We cannot pretty that up or gloss over it. We cannot pretend that it did not happen. There comes a great reckoning for us all, as people and a as nation. If it did not happen with a Civil War, after people of color fought for this country in every single war, after the Civil Rights movement, and after events and words in and after Charlottesville, you have to take a stand now. There are not two sides on some issues. You are either for or against white supremacy in this country. You are either for neo-Nazism and fascism or you're not. Being anti-KKK or anti- neo-Nazi is easy. But our President saw two sides, after which the heads of every single branch of the military responded that there were not two sides. You cannot be ho-him on this. Pick a side. The children of the future will be watching. And judging.
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