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I no longer know what is politically or socially correct when it comes to the subject of racial reference. When I was a youngster growing up in Giles County, it was correct to use the term “colored” when making reference to people with skin of a dark color. Later, colored was no longer acceptable and it was replaced with “black”.
“People of color” is another name that was used by both blacks and whites at some point in our history. At another point, either earlier or later I don’t know which, “Negro“ was acceptable. “African-American” replaced colored, black, people of color, and Negro at some point during the last approximately 30-40 years.
Although the colored, blacks, people of color, Negroes, and African-Americans often call each other “nigger”, it is considered an extremely unacceptable name for “whites” to call them. I have no intention to insult people who have a skin color different than mine, whether American-Indians, Eastern-Indians, Hispanics, Orientals, Asians, Africans, African-Americans, and so forth. I and many people in my age bracket have spent more of our lifetime using the term “blacks” and therefore that is what I will use in the remainder of this article.
Blacks have terms of their own, such as “Uncle Tom”, which describes a black who tries to act like a white. Blacks sometimes call whites “crackers”, “whitey” “honkey”, “Frosty“, “Marshmallow”, “Pusbags”, “Creamy Cheeks”, “Milky Spores”, “White Niggas”, “Frosted Flakes”, “Yakoo”, and last but not least “MotherF…ers”.
All of this name calling suggests a rather equal amount of disrespect and downright hate between some who are members of these two races. I will venture a guess that by the time some of you have read my article you will refer to me as a racist. Will that make you a racist because you call me a racist? When such references are thrown about I don’t know whether to feel accused, abused, or amused. One of the definitions found in the dictionary for racist is: “hatred or intolerance of another race or other races”.
People in this day and time seem to harbor strong feelings in all directions when it comes to racial issues. All of this is occurring at a time in the history of our country when there exists more equality, admittedly not total, between the races than at any prior point in the 230 plus year history of our country. Apparently this progress in racial equality hasn’t made much of a dent in hatred or intolerance between the black and white races.
We now have a black President, numerous black Cabinet Members, black senators and congress-people, black coaches, black CEO’s, black mayors, black state governors, black astronauts, black military officers, and the list goes on. Would any of this have been believable, or even imaginable, in 1960 or 1970? Those in this category who made it to the position of an elected office did so with much support of non-blacks. The racial makeup in this country is approximately 15% Black, 18% Hispanic, and about 65% Caucasian. This tells us that Obama didn’t get elected as President of the United States without more votes from Whites than Blacks and Hispanics combined. Isn’t this considered to be at least a modicum of factual and actual progression of blacks in America?
I graduated from Giles High School in 1962. I never attended school with blacks until I attended college. Is this a fact that I’m proud of? Absolutely not! The white and black boys in Pearisburg, where I lived, played neighborhood ballgames, rode our bicycles, and just generally hung-out together as long as our parents didn’t find out. Don’t miss this important point, “As long as our parents didn’t find out”!!!
You see, our parents grew up during an era when racial discrimination was much worse than youngsters of any color today could begin to imagine. One day my dad came home from work and because I was playing with a young black boy (we both were about 8 or 9) on our front porch, he called me into our home and ordered me to tell the little boy to leave and never come back. That day was one of the worst of my life. To this day I feel the pain of that young boy and can only begin to imagine how that one experience shaped his life.
Racial discrimination in our county schools was totally unacceptable. The county provided a lesser amount of financial support for the education of blacks within Giles County. They didn’t provide a single high school for county blacks and if blacks wanted to attend high school they had to travel, or live, in Christiansburg to do so. I don’t know for certain but I strongly suspect that black parents had to pay the same rate of taxes as did whites in Giles County. Even as a young person, I knew all of this was wrong but what do you do, divorce your parents?
I’m not a radical of any kind but I do know the difference between wrong and right. What was done years ago was definitely wrong near its worst. What is being done today is right headed in the correct direction. It is a right that has made considerable progress with much less distance to go than was the case even 30 years ago. Should we all jump up and down and proclaim “We Have Overcome”? Some issues have been overcome but certainly not all and each of us must do our part to champion total racial equality.