I caught part of the movie "The Help" the other day on TNT. I didn't see enough of it to give it a proper review but, I think it makes for an excellent segue into today's discussion of race.
The movie is set in a time when this young Ferrerman (as pictured) barely new that black people existed. They were never featured on any of the three channels of my parents black and white television and there were none in the biggest part of my world, school and the neighborhood. I lived in a suburb of Cincinnati back then. My Wonder Years, where a kid could roam around without winding up on a milk carton. Mom would relate later that blacks- like the maids of the film- were to be out of town before sundown each day. No one we knew had a maid. In those days, all the moms stayed home raising children and/or watching soap operas. I had seen my first black person- as I recall it- on the train to visit grandma in Chicago. Mom says I was referring to the black conductor on the train but I distinctly recall a very dark, Aunt Jemima-looking woman seated nearby I remarked, "Mama, there's a chocolate lady!" Conductor or woman, mama was very embarrassed. But, I was about three years old when this happened. I think all the grown ups understood. Black people were a new discovery for me. They had not yet been given "their special rights" as some republicans and Supreme Court justices might call them.
But enough about me. How did the rest of the country feel about Negroes at the time?
Well, it depended upon where you lived. Cincinnati borders Kentucky so, given that proximity, racial guidelines were a bit less official than they were in Jackson, Mississippi. There were Jim Crow laws in the south as well as verbal laws passed on amongst the whites and the blacks. Young black children were undoubtedly versed very early on in how to interact with white people so they could live to tell about it. Could you imagine telling your children not to look an entire race of people in the eye? How to address that race properly? Where to sit on the bus and not to sit at the lunch counter at Woolworths?
People, this happened in my lifetime! I'm not that old!
Fast-forward here to 2014. No less a conservative *leader* like Sarah Palin uses the anniversary of Martin Luther King's birthday to exhort our half-black (but black) president to stop using "the race card" because, doncha know, we're in a post-racial society. The race card? There are like two black people in the entire GOP and a white lady, former half-term governor of a state that wasn't even a state when I was born, is telling the black president of the United States, on the birthday of a murdered black civil rights leader, that he makes too big of a deal of race??!!
Bitch, please! If there's no racial issues in this post-racial society, why are you asking the president to tone down his (non-existent) race card playing on a Federal holiday for a great American? Or, were you merely playing the "lack of fucking decorum card" you play so well?
You don't solve racial issues in fifty years, especially in a country where one party has declared The War On Poverty to be a lost cause. Retreat. Pull out all the "troops". The GOP has never met a war they didn't like except the one on poverty. These stupid assholes want to go back to Iraq! But, somehow fighting poverty is too expensive and futile. Iraqis can't decide their own fate but, poor American's can...as long as they have no help from the government in the form of money or, special rights... Go and figure that.
I believe the deck is still stacked against black folks. If you have to take one card out of the deck, how can the game be fair to all? Every other card can be played- by the dealers- but, you can't play that one. The one they say you don't need. That's a heavy hand. One that smacks all of us. We the people just haven't figured out yet that we are all in this together.
Why Miss Palin, would you care for some pie? I made it jus' fo' you....
4 comments:
byline: Deer Whisperer/Luke
Damn! You've nailed this, Ferrerman.
I've read/heard good stuff about this movie. And I think there is relevance to that movie called "Lee Daniels The Butler" (there was a titling kerfluffle about just "The Butler) with Forest Whitaker, Oprah, and others. Whitaker portrays that White House butler over the time he served several presidents.
And the rest: you've got my wheelhouse so distinctly. Ima getting back to this after some thought organization. I grew up smack-dab in the middle between the place of your youth and your grandma. But this is "right here":
In THAT smallville where I grew up, there was one black family that lived just outside the town limits. Well, when I was old enough to pay attention to my environment, I think just "the folks" lived there. Their kid(s) had made it through school and moved out. I only remember seeing Mr. ______ doing his yardwork, but not in town shopping and certainly not hanging around the gas stations hobnobbing with the white farmers, factory workers, business men, and such. I don't remember what I was told about his occupation (or the missus if she had one -- probably, home-maker).
In the county seat, there were city buses. When staying with my grandparents, my vague memory has us we riding uptown in them. There was no rule posted up here in Indiana THEN, but blacks were sitting at the back of the bus.
I wrote THEN because there may have been written rules, at least in small burgs, in years before that time. During the 1920s into the 30s, Indiana was a significant factor in resurgence of the Klan beyond southern states.
The Klan was organized and strong enough to be political in a major way. Even State government was chiefly Klan members for a portion of that time and that included the Governor. You'd expect that would be the case for governance of many county and city jurisdictions too.
In the early 30s, the last documented lynching in the U.S. occurred at Marion, IN. Two teen-age blacks were accused of raping a white girl/woman. Mob justice prevailed, and a partying good time was had by all present, aside from the two lynchees.
--- to be continued.
I used to work with a guy from Marion, Arkansas who claimed their 'hanging tree' was used through the 50's but, not just for blacks. It was supposed to be southern justice for them but also for pedophiles, rapists and the like. It was situated by the railroad tracks to let out of towners know that Marion takes care of things in the old-fashioned way. Eh- I'm more a fan of jurisprudence. Lynching sounds more to me like "round up the usual suspects". It never seemed to matter if a crime had occurred or if a particular black man had committed that crime, just that one or two paid and that the blacks in general were properly put in place. I've seen the old photos of lynchings with the family-like atmosphere, including smiling children frolicking beneath the body, still suspended with the rope.
It wasn't our lifetime but, painfully close.It's stomach turning.
byline: Deer Whisperer/Luke
In the previous episode of "Darkness At The Edge Of Town":
" In THAT smallville where I grew up, there was one [the ONLY one in the township:DW] black family that lived just outside the town limits......I only remember seeing Mr. ______ doing his yardwork, but not in town shopping and certainly not hanging around the gas stations hobnobbing with the white farmers, factory workers, business men, and such."
Was Mr./Mrs. B______ practicing racism by isolating themselves from the community? I highly doubt it. Likely it was from "knowing their place". I cannot know if they had any cordial relationships with their nearest neighbors also just outside of town limits. To my chagrin, I do not know what became of them; if they died there, moved away on their own accord or from old age/ill health.
The most insidious stage of slavery in the U.S. was stage 2 -- the 100 years or so after the end of the Civil War. This was by institutional legalities of Jim Crow in the south and otherwise institutional policies of growth and financial practices in northern states' communities that were based on color-lines.
Violence upon people that were just trying to be [see: Native Americans].
The American Experience program "1964" taught us that freedom meant different things to different people --- continuation of the Civil Rights and genesis of Women's Rights, Free Speech, and other movements.
It also was the time of spring-boarding Goldwater and Reagan for freedoms of being "real Americans".
These insipid deflections, excuses, defenses, and projections of lingering biases of processes by which this country was built and maintained can be laughingly sad, or sadly laughable.
Race cards. Slave trade supply by the African tribes, etc.
My lily white ass.
byline: Deer Whisperer/Luke
Oops! Among the "etcs" I meant to extract was this most insipid rejoinder:
"M.L.K. was a Republican."
Well, duh!
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