Racism Is A Lie

I was born just before WWII and grew up in a small Mid-West town. Segregation was in full swing. The town posted a sign at either end, “N…. don’t let the sun set on you in this town.”

We had one police officer. A black family was driving through town when their car broke down. The one garage in town could not get the parts to fix the car until the next morning. The police officer explained the law to the black family and apologized for having to take them to jail. He went to the restaurant across the street from the jail and brought dinner to the family. He refused to lock the cell door on them and did all he could to make them comfortable next to the cell containing our town drunk who slept in jail more than he did at home. His door was never locked either.

Their car was fixed the next morning and they drove off. The story ran like wildfire around town that day and for a long time afterwards. Our town had never had blacks remain overnight before and most of us had never seen one. The two jail cells had never both been occupied in anyone’s memory and were never again as long as we lived there.

Due to circumstances in my parent’s lives, my mother had to go to work. I spent two years boarding with friends in another, slightly larger town during the week and came home on weekends when they weren’t working. I started school during that time and sat in class with children of several cultures, including blacks. No one called attention to the differences in color or culture and all the children studied and played as if we were not different from one another.

When the two years ended and my mother once again became a full-time housewife and mother, I transferred to the school in our town. The town still did not have any blacks and the signs were still at either end of town. I don’t remember thinking about the difference in races or cultures and I know our teachers did not teach us to be racist. We had a few “slow learners” in our classes and we were taught to respect their difference. Teachers, principals, parents and neighbors would not allow us to look down on or make fun of anyone different from us. We were taught the Golden Rule and “there but for the grace of God”. That Golden Rule was on the ruler the teacher used on our hands if we misbehaved so we learned that one very well.

Over Christmas break in my sixth grade year, my parents moved to Cincinnati to be closer to my dad’s work. I had several shocks on returning to school. When my parents registered me, the principal and teacher expressed great surprise I could read, do math and spell. I had almost all A’s on my report card except for handwriting. My reaction was, “Can’t everyone?” There were 42 students in my classroom and another sixth grade classroom of about the same size. I was the only one who carried such high grades. I now understand I was seeing the beginning of the dumbing down of our children.

The next small shock was seeing a few black faces in the classrooms. It had been several years since I last shared a classroom with anyone of darker skin. I soon learned the two in my classroom were really no different than I was. One was pretty, quiet and studied hard. The other was a little brasher and athletic. But the class did not always look at individuals. Some accepted the blacks and some did not. We still lived in culture-divided neighborhoods back then.

Soon after we moved to the neighborhood, rumors began to fly that a family of blacks was buying a house close to the school. Remember, this was before forced integration. I remember the anger and fear all up and down our street even though the house in question was a mile or so away. It was going to ruin property values and the whole area would turn into a slum! Soon the rumor became fact and more houses sold to blacks though property values remained the same and an Interstate highway ruined the neighborhood long before it became a slum.

Toward the end of that school year we were given a long, difficult test. We were not told what it was for just that we had to take it. After forgetting about the test, some of us received letters offering transfer to a college preparatory school in the city. It had been an IQ test and only those above a certain IQ were invited. I was privileged to receive the invitation and my parents accepted it.

The next three years were the hardest years of schooling I ever had. We took Latin in 7th through 9th grades including translating Caesar’s Gaullc Wars from Latin to English. Algebra was mandatory in the 9th grade. We carried six subjects and one elective each year. Study Hall did not exist. In the 9th grade, teachers assigned 3 hours of homework every night for each subject. No one had time or energy to care about race or culture. It was the make or break year.

When I failed Latin and Algebra, my parents broke. They transferred me to the regular high school for our district. Here I learned about racism for the first time. In that school there was no culture crossover, period. You stayed with your “own kind” meaning whites with whites, blacks with blacks, Asians with Asians, etc. Though our neighborhood had become integrated, no mixing of color occurred walking to and from school. I watched as blacks screamed taunts at whites trying to start trouble between the races. Whites did not return the taunts and kept quietly talking among themselves. I learned of the violence in blacks when two black girls argued on the way home from school and had a knife fight in the empty swimming pool at the public park. Decent girls just did not do that sort of thing so blacks lowered themselves in my estimation. I had no idea the seeds of liberalism were planted deep in the blacks and I was witnessing the harvest.

I married my high school sweetheart between our junior and senior years and quit school. He was in the Navy and asked me to join him in Key West, Florida. For the years I had lived in the city, there was no segregation on buses or in public buildings. That bus trip to Key West began teaching me about segregation. We left Cincinnati and everyone sat where they chose in empty seats. The bus stopped at one point along the road and the driver told all the blacks they had to move to the back of the bus because we had just crossed the Mason-Dixon line. I had heard of this happening in the past but surely not now!

We stopped at a bus stop/restaurant somewhere in Tennessee for dinner. The driver walked back to the only black lady still on the bus and told her she could not go into the restaurant because it was whites only and did not have a “colored section”. He offered to buy her dinner and bring it to her but she refused. How could any restaurant refuse food to a traveler?

Every other stop we made south of the Mason-Dixon line in that 36-hour ride had “whites only” and “coloreds only” signs for food service, restrooms and water fountains. Even the dinky station in Key West was segregated.

As I sat waiting for my husband, two Cuban women began talking to me. One spoke English and the other didn’t. I had never heard Spanish in my life and had no idea what the older woman was saying. The younger one (the daughter) translated for us and we spent the time getting acquainted. For the rest of my stay on the island, every time the older one and I passed each other she would cradle her arms and ask, “Bambino?” I had not yet learned to be racist against Cubans.

In those days in Key West, whites and blacks had their own neighborhoods. What was different from today is the blacks had not learned to be hate-filled and violent. I was as safe walking alone through their “town” as I was anywhere else on the island even after dark. Today I would not want to walk alone anywhere in Key West even in daylight.

On New Year’s Eve 1958, we were at a party with some of his shipmates. The phone rang and everyone got real quiet. The men were called back to the ship immediately. We knew something was wrong just not what or where. The next day we learned all ships had sailed for Havana Harbor. I had a radio capable of picking up broadcasts from distant stations so the wives gathered at my apartment. We heard newscasts that Castro was taking over Cuba but no details. One of the wives was Hispanic. (Never asked whether she was Mexican, Cuban, from Spain or from Mars because it did not matter. She was a Navy wife.) I found a Cuban station broadcasting from Havana and she translated for the rest of us. A woman was reading off the names of those who were still alive and wanted their relatives in the US to know it. Maybe the broadcast contained code and maybe it didn’t. Suddenly we needed no translator. We heard a door being broken and angry voices. We heard the woman’s voice obviously pleading and we heard her crying. Then we heard shots. I understood the shouts of, “Viva Castro.” The woman screamed and all went silent. Static. We knew nothing more until the ships returned. Castro had shut down all radio broadcasts so the world could not know he was a murderer and dictator. I learned hatred of Communist Cubans on New Year’s Day 1969 at the age of 17. It is still burning 55 years later.

After his discharge from the Navy, we went back to Cincinnati. Now the city was in turmoil. Race riots were beginning all over the city. I did not understand why. Blacks in Cincinnati had lived with the same freedoms as whites for years. Yes, blacks in the south had every right to be angry. They were still segregated and denied privileges reserved for whites. George Wallace and others were wrong to stand up against integration. Blacks were just as human as whites and should not be segregated but Cincinnati blacks had no basis for their riots. At least they only destroyed their own neighborhoods though we were afraid ours would be next. I learned a big lesson in racism during that period.

We left Cincinnati in 1969 and returned to Florida. Race riots were a thing of the past. Life was laid back and lazy. Get up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch some TV and go to bed. There was no difference in races or cultures. Our neighbor on one side was Mexican and the other side was Cuban. Both spoke Spanish but had difficulty in understanding each other. I learned Spanish had different dialects and Mexicans and Cubans were not fond of each other. Another Mexican taught me how to make enchiladas while we also enjoyed Cuban Sandwiches that were popular in our area. The Cuban invasion had accelerated since we left Florida and not all were as nice as those two women in Key West or our one neighbor.

The new invasion contained too many who were rude and decided the United States owed them everything. Maybe it was because of the Bay of Pigs fiasco but I doubt it. These were the ones who hated living under communist rule but wanted all their necessities and luxuries met by the government. They were tainted with the liberalism handed out by a dictator and communist ideals. Those who work for a living owe those who don’t. My racism was increasing.

Over the years we moved to Arizona, Texas and back to Florida. In Arizona, whites looked down on Mexicans and Mexicans intensely disliked whites. We would go to Mexico to shop on weekends and be called, “gringo”. I wasn’t sure what it meant but it did not sound like a compliment. They taught me more racism.

In Texas we were exposed to the Latino culture even more. Illegal immigration was still not much of a problem but the attitude of liberalism was. At that time, we referred to them as “lazy Mexicans”. Now I realize it was not laziness, it was the liberal poison being fed to any race except the whites. Suddenly everything had to be printed in English and Spanish then French was added. In some areas even Creole was added. The press one for English really grated on the nerves of Americans and fomented more division between the races.

We constantly teeter on the brink of more race wars. It is not fed by other races but by those within their own races. This is fed by those who use their own hatred and greed to gain more power and more wealth. Racism is a lie.

Looking back over the years I realize I was not taught racism. I never was and never will be racist. I accept people for who they are not what they are. If they are decent and honest, treat me with respect and earn their daily bread I will be happy to call them friend. If they are down on their luck, as so many in our country are today, I will do all I can to help them up but f they embrace the lies and slavery of liberalism then we can never see eye-to-eye.

Illegal immigration has been used as a weapon to further divide our country. America is hurting like never before – politically, economically and racially. At a time when our country is so deep in debt it can never repay what it has borrowed, the government spends more to keep people enslaved in the welfare system. Yet they want to endow millions of people who have broken the law by coming into our country illegally with citizenship. No, not out-and-out citizenship but even worse, a form of citizenship that will enslave the immigrants as well and fuel the boiling pot of racism.

Unemployment is the worst our country has ever seen and those millions added to the line of those already legally seeking jobs cannot be tolerated. American citizens are being treated as outsiders while outsiders are treated better than citizens. Again, Americans are not racist because they are against amnesty. They are against liberalism not race.

Think about it. Can you look at your life and see friends of many races and cultures as I have? Would you welcome those friends back in your life now? If so, you are not racist. You are anti-liberalism as I am.

Source:  http://scarletscribe.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/racism-is-a-lie/