Raising Cain...: White Privilege

24 September 2016

Coloring my first experiences in the South

I had mixed feelings about my family’s move to North Carolina. It appealed to my love for exploration and discovery, but meant I would be farther away from extended family and home places. In balance, it was a pretty significant rupture. My anticipatory narratives about the move drew upon military metaphors and American Civil War history that was still, in 1957, less than 100 years old. I was a Yankee. What would happen when people in my new neighborhood found out?

I find a couple of things about this recall quite revealing. What's implied (and confirmed in more recent meditations on these recollections) is that I already had a view of the South and a way to think about living there, all in the absence of any actual experience of such. The narrative suggests I had internalized the North-South conflict -- there's "them" (Rebels) and "us" (Yankees) -- and understood that the Civil War was not really over.

Silent Sam, a controversial statue of a Confederate soldier on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As with many other confederate monuments in the South, some see the statue as a symbol of historical remembrance while others see it as a symbol of racial oppression. The monument has been a site of protests since the 1960s. Photo credit: Wikipedia

Equally interesting to me is a sense that people of color had, in my own psyche, either been rendered invisible or otherwise objectified in the worldview I held by age 9.

Over the next few years I would also preserve -- in conscious memory -- experiences that would later make alternative narratives to this colorblindness, this invisibilty, possible:

In Chapel Hill, a gas station near our house had a "No Coloreds" sign on the door. A neighbor who managed a Howard Johnson's gloated about chasing n*****s away from his restaurant with a shotgun. Housing was still segregated, as were public schools, more than 3 years after the decision in Brown v Board of Education (yes, of Topeka, Kansas, an hour-and-a-half from where I grew up).

Under legal pressure, the university had admitted three African Americans to its law school in 1951, and the first undergraduates entered UNC in 1955, two years before we moved there. While UNC laid claim to a progressive attitude toward integration, testimony by Black students who enrolled says otherwise. I vaguely recalled that my parents got involved with a boycott of the Carolina Theater. I decided to do an Internet search to see if I could learn more about civil rights activity in Chapel Hill while we were there, and about this protest in particular.

Protests outside the Carolina Theater, Roland Giduz Photograph, North Carolina Photographic Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

I found a photo and a little about the protest fairly quickly. When I dug deeper to learn about Chapel Hill's demographics in the 1950s and 60s, or who organized the Carolina Theater protest, or who led civil rights work in the community, my initial searches bombed out. However, I eventually found a link to the doctoral dissertation of civil rights historian Yonni Chapman: Black freedom and the University of North Carolina, 1793-1960. Chapman shed some light, in his preface, on my difficulty finding alternative narratives to the white supremacy view that pervaded my experience in North Carolina:

As I surveyed the secondary sources about black lives in Chapel Hill, it turned out that while a great deal had been written about the town and the university, very little had been written about African Americans. Published works generally ignored or distorted black contributions to local history, particularly the black freedom struggle. References in these sources to African Americans were scarce and often patronizing. (xiv)

I also found a reference to organizing by students at UNC that likely related to my parents' engagement in the protests. "In November 1958," writes Chapman, "the Campus Y Human Relations Committee launched an initiative to reduce discrimination in Chapel Hill restaurants and theaters directed against black UNC students." Their fact-finding efforts revealed that the Carolina and Varsity theaters, as well as most of the restaurants in town, had strict segregation policies. After a survey showed that 67% of the students supported equal privileges for all UNC students, four of the group's leaders met with white business owners to negotiate their request for equitable access. According to Chapman, the owners showed signs they were moving toward this goal when negotiations fell apart in February of 1960. Two days later, Black students from Lincoln High School staged a sit-in at the Colonial Drug Store farther west on Franklin Street in the black community.

In Chapman's analysis of this series of events, I not only connected the dots to personal memory, but gained insight into a significant piece of my own story. The shift from a white, rural, conservative culture into a white, urban liberal one happened when my mom remarried and we moved to the university setting of Chapel Hill. I definitely understand my step-dad -- a white liberal sociologist -- as a primary influence on my evolution in this lineage. Chapman caught my attention with these observations:

The evidence seems to suggest that this support was extensive and that some students were ready to put a great deal of work into challenging Jim Crow….At the same time, some of the weaknesses of white student support for black freedom are illustrated by the fact that the Campus Y students were seeking an end to segregation for UNC students only, rather than for all African Americans….As would turn out to be the case time and again, good intentions and liberal methods would prove to be ineffective in the confrontation with power....However, many of the students had their hearts attuned to freedom, and they learned from their failed efforts. In particular, the bold actions of the black high school students seemed to stir many of them to thoughts of more aggressive action. (pp.320-322)

[Commemoration of Chapel Hill’s Peace and Justice Plaza, August 28, 2009.] "Civil-rights historian Yonni Chapman, Rev. J.R. Manley, Freedom Rider George Houser and NAACP chapter president Eugene Farrar were among those who celebrated the unveiling of the new historical marker." (Archives of the Carrboro Citizen)

Chapman's work clearly reveals a dynamic presence of Black citizens in Chapel Hill as a key force for racial justice and social change. Yet, in the five years we lived there, I recall seeing only a few Black people, and meeting even fewer. One occasion, in particular, had a profound impact similar in significance to that with the "colored man in Bogue".

At that time we had moved farther from the center of town and the junior high. I usually walked or rode my bike to school. My route took me past the home of a classmate whose family had a friendly cocker spaniel. One morning as I passed by their house, their dog came racing down the hill into the street. At the same moment, a car had made a left turn from Franklin Street, and hit the dog.

I went to the dog immediately to see if I could help. The driver of the car stopped and got out. He was a Black man, probably in his 40's or 50's, dressed in a dark suit and wearing a hat, very similar to the kind my Grandpa Fred and many other men wore back then. I pointed to the house where the dog lived and said I could go up and get someone. I remember that this man was very gentle with the dog, and said he would take care of it. I told him that Dr. Vine's¹ office was down the street and that he could take the dog there. He nodded and said several times that he'd take care of it. I helped him pick up the dog and put it into his car. Intuitively, I sensed that he didn't want anyone else involved. I trusted that he intended to help the dog.

The short story is that neither the man nor the dog ever showed up at Dr. Vine's hospital. My classmate and her family never saw their dog again. Beyond that, I don't know what happened. I felt very sorry that a family lost a beloved pet. Because I assumed that a promise to "take care of it" would include taking the animal to Dr. Vine and re-uniting the dog with his owners, I also felt betrayed.

Another interesting piece of this recollection is that, when I did tell others what had happened, I intentionally avoided saying that the man was Black. Did I do this because I understood how dangerous it was for Black people in this environment? Was it the implicit message I had intuited based on how this man responded? Or some other reason yet undiscovered? I don't know for sure.

I do know that both systemic oppression and the fear-based violence against Black bodies back then continues today in the United States. I don't judge that man for his choices that day. I carry this memory as a reminder that white supremacy hurts everybody.

We left North Carolina in the summer of 1961. That fall, integration of Chapel Hill schools began on a small scale. In researching this post, I listened to many interviews of students who went through this. I can't help but wonder how my life might have unfolded had we stayed longer.

In my next post I'll look at my high school years in a small, mostly white college town in Ohio, and an integrated community in Cleveland suburbs.

^{_____________________________}

¹My dream job back then was to be a veterinarian. I had found a mentor in Dr. Louis Vine, whose veterinary hospital was on Franklin Street close to where we lived. I often went over there a few hours on Saturdays, and Dr. Vine would let me watch him treat his furry patients. After each one, I would toss any used materials into the trash and wipe down the exam table with disinfectant. I also helped calm the animals during this process which built the confidence I drew on that day to help that injured dog.

12 August 2016

Coloring my life

I liked to color when I was little, though it wasn’t necessarily my favorite thing to do. I did not like the white or black crayons. Especially if it was a box of just eight crayons, leaving only six "real" colors. White pretty much disappeared on the white paper of most coloring books. Of the two, I found black a little more useful, for hair (if there were people in the picture) or for pets and farm animals. Unless the box was big enough to have a flesh crayon, I preferred not to do pictures with people in them. I don’t remember experimenting with other colors for skin. I did not consciously think of human beings in terms of color until I was six or seven.

I remember that day, though – where I was, what I was doing -- like I remember when President Kennedy was shot and the Challenger blew up. My grandpa said he had to go see a colored man about some lumber in a little town not too far away from where they lived in western Kansas. My curiosity exploded. I asked if I could go along.

As we neared the town my excitement grew. What color would the man be? Purple? Green? Orange?

Nicodemus, Kansas. Frank Thompson/Flickr

A man – not really dark black but more black than brown as I recall – came out to greet my grandpa. I recall some disappointment that this “colored” man was just black. When I attune to the memory of that experience, I sense that I was also confused, not really understanding what the “colored” designation meant or why it was used in relation to this man. No other human being I had ever met had been categorized like this.

Listening to myself tell this story during an anti-racism training more than fifty years later, I understood this experience in terms of a download of sorts, my initiation into a culture of white supremacy. More recently I have also understood it as an upload. As children we absorb beliefs and expectations of our family and society that remain unconscious until some life experience like my encounter with a “colored man” in Bogue brings some of its meaning into conscious awareness.

When I wasn't visiting my maternal grandparents, I lived on a farm near Wakefield in the Flint Hills of Kansas, then briefly in Manhattan until the summer after 4th grade. That man was the first and last person of color that I remember seeing until my family moved to North Carolina around 1957. I place my meeting with him as the day I began to color my life.

Enduring questions about this experience centered on how this man happened to be there at that time and, later, what streams of life brought us together, and why. I discovered some possible answers as I began writing this post. Mostly by intuition, I found my way to the history of Nicodemus (est. 1877), a small town east of Bogue that, today, is celebrated as the only remaining western town established by African Americans during the Reconstruction Period after the Civil War.

Nicodemus, Kansas National Park Service photo

I remember hearing a little about Kansas history in grade school. It was mostly about settlers, and a little about Native Americans who were there first. What I heard about African-Americans was only implied through the white lens history of Quantrill’s Raiders, the sack of Lawrence, and the anti-slavery opposition by the abolitionist John Brown and his followers. To a third grader’s heart and mind, these accounts of “bleeding Kansas” generated a fair amount anxiety. What I got from my teacher, Miss Frances, though, consciously or unconsciously placed the Kansas anti-slavery movement and Kansas entry into the Union (1861) as a free state on the right side of history. And that part of Kansas history made it attractive to the Black folks who founded Nicodemus.

As a citizen journalist, psychoanalyst and social justice activist, I’ve spoken of this process of socialization into a white supremacy culture in many pieces, in both private and public spaces. My intention now is to tell a whole story and to bring it more completely into a public sphere. More posts to come.

07 March 2015

Collective shadows and the culture of violence in the United States

This weekend in Selma, Alabama, people have gathered to remember the 50^th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday”. On March 7, 1965 -- in an extreme act of state violence -- Alabama state troopers brutally attacked civil rights marchers as they attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in an expression of solidarity to secure equal voting rights.

It’s significant to me in light of this collective remembering that by far the strongest connection I made in my reading of An Indigenous People's History of the United States (Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz) and The Cross and the Lynching Tree (James H. Cone) was to violence. From the beginning, violence pervaded colonizers' relationships not only to the land, but with Native Americans, Black people uprooted and brought here as slaves, and, later, any others perceived as a threatening in some way. This behavior – in one form or another – has been carried on against other “enemies” by colonialist descendants.

According to military historian John Grenier, American settlers created a fighting tradition that featured destruction of noncombatants, villages, and agricultural resources. For successive generations of Americans soldiers and civilians, the killing of Indian men, women, and children became a defining element of their first military tradition and thus part of a shared American identity.^{^[i]}

Though this first way of war lost its centrality after 1814, Grenier stresses that Americans must not forget that it has remained part of US military heritage. In similar ways, the Civil War, strategic bombing of Nazi Germany and Japan in World War II, and the Vietnam War, represent other military campaigns in which the United States “blurred or even erased the boundaries between combatants and noncombatants”.^{^[ii]}

There is another point made by Grenier that I find especially interesting in light of the pervasive shadow (and not-so-shadow) culture of violence that exists in the United States today.

It’s significant, says Grenier, that in the 1790s, settlers tired of what they saw as governmental and Army incompetence to secure the frontier, and so focused on destroying Indian villages and food supplies themselves:

They were unabashed in declaring that their intentions were to drive the Indians from lands on the western side of the Appalachian range and claim those lands as their own, whether the nation-state of the United States wanted them to do so or not.^{^[iii]}

Reading this, I thought about how this vigilante mentality evolved later into lynching of Black people and, to some extent, other minorities. I believe the same shadow of violence found expression through Jim Crow laws, segregation, attacks on voting rights, and, more recently, mass incarceration. Violence (and genocide) against Native Americans continued through the system of reservations, boarding schools, corporate land grabs and broken treaties.

I think it’s likely that many other kinds of both subtle and overt bullying and violence trace back to the same foundations. I think it’s all present anytime institutions or individuals try to make objects out of subjects. In my own profession, for example, I came to understand that diagnosing so-called mental illness by imposing a label based on a DSM checklist is an act of violence. It has nothing to do with life as any person actually lives and experiences it. It is attempted soul murder.

This culture of violence will continue to fragment people, communities and social institutions until we – the collective of US citizenry -- acknowledge the violence that operated beneath the ideals of freedom and brotherhood that we continue to tell ourselves is what America is all about. As a nation, we need to bring our history of violence into the light. Until we can do this, we need to remember all of our bloody Sundays.

[i] John Grenier. The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607–1814 (Kindle Edition Locations 185-186, 203-205).

[ii] Grenier, Kindle Edition Locations 251-254).

[iii] Grenier, Kindle Edition Locations 240-245).

25 January 2015

Truth and reconciliation, honor and healing, and another leap into the deep end of the pool

The history of the United States is a history of settler colonialism —the founding of a state based on the ideology of white supremacy, the widespread practice of African slavery, and a policy of genocide and land theft. -- Roxanne Dubar-Ortiz in An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (Revisioning American History) (p. 2, Kindle edition).

I wrestle with questions about black dignity in a world of white supremacy because I believe that the cultural and religious resources in the black experience could help all Americans cope with the legacy of white supremacy and also deal more effectively with what is called “the war on terror.” If white Americans could look at the terror they inflicted on their own black population—slavery, segregation, and lynching—then they might be able to understand what is coming at them from others. Black people know something about terror because we have been dealing with legal and extralegal white terror for several centuries. Nothing was more terrifying than the lynching tree. -- James H. Cone in The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Kindle edition).

Slave trader's business in Atlanta, Georgia, 1864. Photo by George N. Barnard [Wikipedia]

Earth has a long and troubling history of oppression and exploitation -- humans against one another, the land, air, water and other species. Fortunately, humanity has many ways to bring love and justice to bear on the consequences. As a justice activist, I’ve engaged in a lot of them, but the focus that has inspired me most and longest is that of healing and transformation, both personal and planetary.

Events that have unfolded or intensified in the past few months -- police brutality and resistance to it emerging with the #BlackLivesMatter movement, Native American and First Nations resistance to the KXL Pipeline, corporate land grabs and other challenges to sovereignty and protection of sacred lands -- lead me to believe it’s time for another leap into the deep end of the pool. I’m thinking that this will take the form of a personal truth and reconciliation (honor and healing) process.

Specific ideas about this came in moments of introspection, but they clearly were infused with voices calling from the frontlines of the resistance. I thought about my connections to these struggles, connections beyond those that have come as a result of involvement in social and environmental justice work.

Photograph from the mid-1870s of a pile of American bison skulls waiting to be ground for fertilizer. [Wikipedia]

Among my ancestors were settlers who arrived here on the Mayflower. And some who were slave holders. I am a descendant of colonists, people who anchored ideas and values of white supremacy into this land and built a nation upon them. Sometimes it's difficult, in light of ongoing oppression and exploitation in the United States and elsewhere, to integrate the realities of my lineage. But for reasons that I’ll explore in a future post, distancing from ancestors delays transformation and healing -- for everyone.

I’ll also detail in a future post how I determined where to jump in. For now, the short story: on November 27^th last year, while others came together to celebrate Thanksgiving, I curled up alone with An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. Just before Christmas of 2014, I found the portal into the past of my slave-holder ancestors through The Cross and the Lynching Tree, by James H. Cone.

The ideas in these books don’t support the version of American history or the “American Dream” I grew up with. As I write this post, I have finished both books. The places they took me were intense and, some of them, unexpected.

Posted by Cathie Bird on 25 January 2015 at 04:31 PM in Civil and Human Rights, History, Indigenous rights, Large-group Trauma, Migrant Rights, Personal Transformation, Planetary Transformation, Political Psychology, Racial justice, Social Healing, Systemic Oppression, Truth & Reconciliation Series, White Privilege | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: #BlackLivesMatter, broken treaties, colonization, Indigenous rights, Indigenous sovereignty, protecting sacred lands, slavery, US history, white supremacy

02 September 2014

Tenn. Lawmakers Join GOP Attack On 'Revisionist' AP US History Exam

I took some time today to read some of the course and exam description of this "new framework" -- it is fairly explicit about some ideas that have been left out of history classes far too long, for example, development of a "rigid racial hierarchy" in the United States, and exploitation of people who were already here when European colonists showed up.

If you follow links in the article you can get to a number of articles/documents that reveal both sides of the question to explore some of this material for yourself. I hope people will not stop at the surface arguments being raised in TN and elsewhere. We need a fresh analysis that uses new ways of thinking, not the old belief systems that perpetuate mindless, heartless oppression. It's time to dig deep for the buried treasures of history and bring them into the light.

The Republican National Committee in August voted to condemn the new framework and the College Board's "radically revisionist view of American history that emphasizes negative aspects of our nation's history while omitting or minimizing positive aspects."

via talkingpointsmemo.com

22 August 2014

Links on justice issues at Raising Cain @ wordpress

I am now posting links to articles on justice issues primarily at my Raising Cain @ wordpress blog. I hope to post more of my own writing on these subjects here at Raising Cain on Typepad. Lots going on. Much to write about. Much to heal in this country and on this planet.

Posted by Cathie Bird on 22 August 2014 at 04:51 PM in Civil and Human Rights, Hate Crime/Groups, Immigrant Rights, Indigenous rights, inJustice System, Institutional Oppression, Large-group Trauma, Racial justice, Social Healing, Systemic Oppression, White Privilege | Permalink | Comments (0)

05 October 2013

The Shutdown, slavery, Jim Crow, the 'New Confederacy', and the Tea Party

I don't much love the shutdown, but I'm loving some of the discussion that's emerging. Here are some OpEd's that I've found very interesting and useful as I think about what's really going on:

Robert Parry (Truthout): The Whiteman's Last Tantrum?

American pundits are missing the bigger point about the Republican shutdown of the U.S. government and the GOP’s threatened default on America’s credit. The real question is not what policy concessions the Tea Partiers may extract, but rather can a determined right-wing white minority ensure continuation of white supremacy in the United States?

Colbert I. King (The Washington Post): The tea party resurrects the spirit of the Old Confederacy

Today there is a New Confederacy, an insurgent political force that has captured the Republican Party and is taking up where the Old Confederacy left off in its efforts to bring down the federal government.

Steven Rosenfeld (Alternet): Congressional Radical Right-Wingers Relive Confederacy Fantasies

The most apt historical precedent for today's marauder Republicans is the old Confederacy, where the provocateurs are not merely intent on stopping federal governance, but withdrawing from it or sabotaging it if they can't get their way. Today's Tea Party darlings like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and the House right-wingers driving the federal shutdown are cut from the same disunionist cloth as the old Southerners who fomented secession and the Civil War.

Stephen Richter (The Globalist): The U.S. Civil War Continues

The reason why the Civil War was declared finished, according to the history books, is the military defeat of the South and its secessionist forces. But can anyone seriously doubt that the same anti-Union spirit is still to be heard loud and clear in the halls of the U.S. Congress today?

Sarah Kendzior (Al Jazeera): A government shutdown, a social breakdown

The government shutdown only formalises the dysfunction that has been hurting ordinary Americans for decades. It is not a political shutdown but a social breakdown. Fixing it requires a reassessment of value – and values.

Posted by Cathie Bird on 05 October 2013 at 04:54 PM in Civil and Human Rights, Racial justice, Social Justice, Systemic Oppression, White Privilege | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Civil War, GOP, government shutdown, Jim Crow, slavery, succession, Tea Party

25 January 2013

Fruitvale: Ryan Coogler’s Debut Film on Bay Area Police Slaying of Oscar Grant the Buzz of Sundance

Here's my pop culture pick of the week...an interview by Amy Goodman (Democracy NOW) of Ryan Coogler about his film "Fruitvale"...I think I want to see this. Grant was murdered early New Year's Day in 2009...4 years ago this month.

Transcript was not up when I visited the interview page at Democracy NOW, but you can check back for it here.

Posted by Cathie Bird on 25 January 2013 at 02:28 PM in Civil and Human Rights, Film, inJustice System, White Privilege | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: Fruitvale, Oscar Grant, Ryan Coogler, Sundance Film Festival

16 January 2013

The South's Shocking Hidden History: Thousands of Blacks Forced Into Slavery Until WW2 | Alternet

Seems like the hidden history of slavery and white privilege in the United States is gradually coming into the light. Here's the latest flash of it from Douglas Blackmon at the Washington Monthly (via Alternet):

As dumbfounding as the story told by the Carrie Kinsey letter is, far more remarkable is what surrounds that letter at the National Archives. In the same box that holds her grief-stricken missive are at least half a dozen other pieces of correspondence recounting other stories of kidnapping, perversion of the courts, or human trafficking—as horrifying as, or worse than, Carrie Kinsey’s tale. It is the same in the next box on the shelf. And the one before. And the ones on either side of those. And the next and the next. And on and on. Thousands and thousands of plaintive letters and grimly bureaucratic responses—altogether at least 30,000 pages of original material—chronicle cases of forced labor and involuntary servitude in the South decades after the end of the Civil War.

via www.alternet.org

Posted by Cathie Bird on 16 January 2013 at 04:40 PM in Civil and Human Rights, Institutional Oppression, White Privilege | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: human trafficking, slavery, United States

15 January 2013

Tom Hartmann: The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery

Excellent article (IMO) by Thom Hartman today

The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says "State" instead of "Country" (the Framers knew the difference - see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states, which was necessary to get Virginia's vote. Founders Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Madison were totally clear on that . . . and we all should be too.

via truth-out.org

Also check out this commentary on what we need to do today on Martin Luther King's birthday by Russell Simmons at Huffington Post. I found it touching and inspiring:

The Anti-violence Approach to Violence