I read a really well written article by Josie Duffy this morning on GAWKER, and I couldn’t help but notice that underneath the pain a thread of hostility bubbled, just barely detectable.
I am not unfamiliar with racism. A child of the south, I grew up in a time and place where the last vestiges of Jim Crow were still a matter of fact and practice. In the world where I grew up, there were separate schools for black and white, separate toilets, separate water fountains and even separate areas of town. Black men were never seen alone with white women or children, never looked you in the eye, and always called you sir or ma’am.
I didn’t invent those rules, they existed when I was born, and in the community where I was raised, it was just the way things were. My parents taught me to be nice to everyone, to say yes sir and no ma’am to my elders, to eat what was on my plate, but they never really said anything to me about why black people were different than white people.
They didn’t have too. As I grew from a squalling baby who needed everything done for him, into a toddler who knew how to pee in a toilet, and then into a young schoolboy, I learned from the actions of everyone and everything around me that being black was worse than being white. It’s just the way things were, like the sun coming up every morning, or the fact that it would likely be hot in August.
Today, I am a thinking adult, who knows that society as a whole can make bad choices, that awful things can happen that need to be changed, and that can in fact be changed over a course of time.
I had no voice in the enslavement of black people. It was happening in biblical times, and it continues to happen in isolated parts of the world.
In the United States, slavery was abolished in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation. Unfortunately, a hundred years later, we still struggle with how minorities are treated in this land, but we are better. Much better.
My point though is that as much as I understand and sympathize with Ms. Duffy on her plight in life, she seems to fail to understand that we are all victims of circumstance. We don’t get to pick our lives in advance. Whether we are born rich or poor, black or white, healthy or sickly, in a prosperous first world country or a poor third-world country – these are all simply circumstance over which no one has any control at all.
What matters is what we do with our lives once we reach the point where we can exercise some level of control. As a child, I knew no better than how I was taught. I learned from the examples set by my community what was normal and expected behavior. I can not be held responsible for behaving as a member of my community because I had no ability to behave otherwise.
In different cultures all over the world, customs are practiced that seem perfectly acceptable and normal to those communities, but seem horrific to those of us living in the America of today. From the strange free sex practice of the Deer Horn Muria, to the Lu tribe of Vietnam where the women dye their teeth black to look attractive, to the practices of the Jivaro Indians of South America – there are cultures around the world that practice habits that may even be reason for arrest and imprisonment here – but are normal and expected behavior in those communities.
As a young man, developing independent thought, I learned to question my community. It was a time of great social upheaval, and also one of self-discovery.
I cannot say that I have shed those early years entirely, I don’t think it really possible for one to completely abandon what we may have learned or been taught during those very early years when we really aren’t even conscious of ourselves as a unique individual. What I can say though is that I can control irrational impulses that stem from those early years – and that I truly embrace the fact that all humans are equal, no matter their color, race, sexuality, religion or ethnicity.
It is hard, especially when some of my family, who still live in the same area of the South, have not really changed all that much in their core beliefs – beliefs and practices that they too inherited as mere babies from their parents. But, we are all victims of our circumstances and I think the fact that we can exert effort to overcome these circumstances and make our lives better, and the lives around us better is what makes us human.
Ms. Duffy has earned the right to be angry at her past. She can regret the history that has affected her ancestors, but she can’t change it. None of us had any say in what happened hundreds of years ago, we can only live the lives we have today and make the best of our present circumstance. Holding anyone responsible for the actions of their ancestors several generations removed is simply absurd.