There comes a time in everyone's life when a previously unseen truth smacks you in the face. For me, it was 1963, after I saw the coverage of James Merridith at Ole Miss on the nightly news. Until I saw those scenes, I'd somehow walked through life in utter oblivion. I'd led a privileged life, and like far too many of us, I'd skipped along, completely unconcerned about what had been happening just beyond the tip my nose.
Kentucky was just as segregated as anywhere in the South, but it had no signage to say who could be where in my town. And so, when I was about seven and on a car trip from Kentucky to Florida, we stopped in a service station for gas and a restroom break. I saw a sign directing patrons to the facilities: "Colored."and "White Only." I begged to follow the "Colored" arrow because I thought it would be prettier. Mom yanked me back in the other direction. Spoiled little white girl that I was, I pitched a hiss, asking why I couldn't go to the one with colors. I got no other explanation at the time except for a smart swat on my bottom, but when we got back into the car, Mom said something like, "It's not right, but those are the rules." I accepted that.
After the trip, I returned to a life in a small Kentucky town that had one black couple. I wasn't even aware that they had children at the time. I never saw them. Everyone just went along and got along in our very white world. When I first read J. K. Rowling' s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, I was struck with a parallel between muggles and the magic world and whites and blacks. Hagrid tells Harry Potter that the Muggles don't even know magic when they see it. I didn't know inequality and institutional racism when I saw it. The TV world looked like mine.
Time passed. My freshman year in college, I was thrilled to be asked to an "Old South" themed ball with males dressed in Rebel uniforms or white Southern gentleman attire. We girls wore hoop shirts and carried parasols. I was so unaware then, and now, I'm so ashamed. So, when I finally realized what was happening right in front of me, I've been trying to atone ever since. But I can't undo what has been done. Nor can any of us white people. Nevertheless, we have to do everything we can to deal with a problem that the Founding Fathers gave up on. We will never be what we could be unless we do.
What has been blinked and winked at or even ignored must be faced. Slavery was an institution, and that slave labor helped build a great nation. We cannot pretend that it did not happen. There comes a great reckoning to us all, and if it did not happen with the Civil War, when black men fought for us in every war, with the Civil Rights movement, after Charlottesville this past lweekend, you have to take a side now. The head of every branch of the military had to clarify the military's all-are-equal standard after the President of the United States said there were two sides to a protest of white supremacists and Neo-Nazis and those opposed to them. Being anti-KKK or anti-Nazi is an easy step to take. You cannot ho-hum on this. Pick a side.The children of the future will be watching. And judging.
