In choosing my
classes last spring, I unknowingly signed myself up for an intensive semester
focused on the history of slavery in the South. Both of my history classes this
semester, provide a survey of the institution of slavery and its implications
on our modern world. It did not take me long to realize that what I would be
learning over the next four months would be completely new information, on a
subject I had been learning about since the fourth grade. The complexities of
race and race relations in America were not foreign concepts to me, after
spending the last three years at Rhodes. However, the immensely difficult way
race – and the history of race in America – is discussed in the South, in no
way resembles discussions surrounding race in the North. Growing up in the
North, then coming to Rhodes for college, I had no idea.
I grew up in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
If you’re not familiar, it’s basically a rural island that juts out into the
Atlantic Ocean, filled to the brim with white people. In the summer, the white
people population skyrockets – and so does my town’s average income. The extent
of diversity in my public high school of 1,500 students was four Jamaican brothers
that moved to the Cape my freshman year. When diversity doesn’t exist, when
race doesn’t exist, there is no need to discuss it – we don’t have that problem
here. Cape Cod is known for being an extremely liberal area. Provincetown is
famous for being a gay and lesbian mecca. We love diversity here! The South
represented all that was ignorant and racist in the American. Southerns were
conservative, bigoted, and uneducated. Why are you people still struggling with
racial equality? We got over that a while ago! After moving to Memphis,
suddenly, Cape Cod wasn’t so morally superior.
Throughout my freshman year, I began
to confront a series of uncomfortable realities about my upbringing. The
hardest of which was recognizing my own racial prejudice that came as a result
of my privileged white life growing up on Cape Cod. I was surprised to hear my
friends talk about their parents owning guns or being the founding members of
their high school Republican club. Before Rhodes, I actually thought all Republicans
were white, male adults! The most drastic culture shock was witnessing the immense
poverty in Memphis and how it permeates across a racial divide. The Walgreens
on Union and the parking lot of the mall became places I would avoid, in order
to save myself from the rattling experience of meeting poverty face to face. I began
to realize that black poverty, an issue at the heart of racial inequality, particularly
in Memphis, was much bigger than a few racist Republican dudes. The ‘race
problem’ in America is one of systematic oppression that extends far beyond the
confines of the American South. The North is just as liable for the
implications of slavery – we just
won’t talk about it. To fully comprehend the consequences of white privilege,
there must be context. There must be an understanding of its equal-opposite
reaction for minority populations. On Cape Cod, and elsewhere in New
England, there is no context to check the privilege of white liberals in their
natural habitat. There needs to be a healthy conversation surrounding race in
The North. One that is not, “Oh, no not us.” One that lays bare the realities
of minority people in America and accepts that the cause of that reality is no
longer ignorance.
I am very grateful to be dedicating my
time this semester to re-learning American history, this time without
omissions. This, another step towards undoing all of the biases my hometown has
engrained. While scrolling through Facebook the other night, I saw that a girl
from my high school had shared a news story about a young black boy in New
Hampshire who had been lynched by his classmates, after being pushed off a desk
with a rope around his neck. A horrifying story– the kid had to be Airvac’d to
the hospital – and this girl captions the post: “Things like this shouldn’t
happen here. This isn’t the south! This is practically our backyard!” Instances
like these remind me we still have a lot of work to do.
This post really hit home for me. As someone who also grew up in a mostly white and wealthy suburb in the North, I experienced many of the same things you described. In my experience northern whites loves to champion the fantastical notion that as soon as you are north of the Mason-Dixon line, you magically enter a post-racial utopia devoid of prejudice. This far fetched idea completely neglects the rampant segregation still present in all major Northern cities( Boston, Detroit, and Cleveland are all in the top ten most segregated cities in the country). In blaming the South for all of America's racial problems, northern whites prevent an important dialogue from taking place, and perpetuate a system of institutionalized white supremacy that in many ways makes places like New York and Boston more similar to Memphis and Birmingham than northerners would like to believe.
ReplyDeleteI really like the ideas of this post. Having grown up in a city like Atlanta, it was impossible to escape talk of America's long history of racial prejudice and the fight against it. However, even in my life there was insulation that kept me from truly interacting with the black community in the city. Insulation is a problem that prevents people from interacting and truly understanding each other's existences. In Atlanta, the highway system was constructed so that white people didn't have to drive through black neighborhoods. It is this kind of insulation that props up prejudice, ingrained into the normalcy of the day. So cultural insulation, which I think you're getting at, is one way that racism stays alive.
ReplyDeleteI think it also needs to be noted that the South is no more open to racial dialogue than the North is. For instance, Rhodes is a privileged space; we get to have these conversations because of the fences that surround us, because of the professors that engender these conversations, but once we leave these fences, we're just as silent as the North is. Some of our textbooks still frame the Civil War as a war of Northern aggression. Our conversations are reduced nationally and internationally, and race dynamics are set up this way. It is made to be invisible parts of white, black, and brown consciousnesses; North or South alike refuse to have conversations about race, poor or rich alike refuse to have conversations about race; it is a societal problem - a national problem - and an international issue. Rhodes may be a small space for conversation, but still, change is still limited, and most of those conversation have little to no impact on our surrounding neighborhoods, Memphis, or the South. Rhodes' privilege allows a space of conversation, but at the same time, that liminality eludes change just as well.
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