Race Relations: Getting To Know Each Other Better

I was born in New York in the late 1950's and the town that I grew up in was mostly white.  I was four years old the first time I saw a black man.  This man was digging in our front lawn and installing the first sewer system in our neighborhood. I stood at the front door amazed by the color of his skin.  I remember opening the door a little to have a better look and then announcing, in a very loud voice, "There's a chocolate man!"  My mother, who was in the kitchen, shushed me and and told me to close the door.  At the time, I had no preconceived notions of race, I simply thought he was made of chocolate.

It wasn't until I attended junior high that I met any other black people.  There were a handful of black students in the school.  I can't speak about how they felt, but my perception at the time was that they were accepted well and not treated any different than any other student.  It was now the early 1970's and civil rights was still a new idea.  But being children, I think we were probably more open to it than our parents were.

In 1980, before I was married to my husband, I met an older black couple who were friends of his parents.  Their names were Jimmy and Julia.  They had previously moved to New York from North Carolina.  They were probably the first black people who felt like family to me.  I remember them telling me a story about their daughter, Caroline.  When Caroline was a little girl in the early 1960's, segregation was a way of life in North Carolina.  There was a park in their neighborhood that was only for white children.  They told me that one day, Caroline asked Julia if she would paint her white so that she could go to the "whites' only" park.  Hearing this, broke my heart for the little girl who had had to live through that experience.  

Jimmy and Julia moved back to North Carolina, and in 1984, my husband and I went south to visit them and stayed at their house.  Although I had been to Disney World once in Florida, I will say that this was my first time in the "true" south.  We had a lovely time with them.  I remember Jimmy's pride as he showed us his garden.  They also took us for an over-night trip to see the reservation in Cherokee, which opened my eyes to the plight of the Native American people through the story of "The Trail of Tears."  These things weren't taught in history classes back then.  The history that was taught was a "white" history, and we were only taught what our white society wanted to teach us.  I learned more about race relations in that one trip than I had in my whole previous life.

One afternoon, we were sitting in the shade on chairs in Jimmy and Julia's driveway, when a car broke down in front of their house.  In the car was a white woman and her two small children.  Jimmy walked over to see if he could help them.  She looked utterly terrified to be approached by him.  He offered her a chair to sit in the shade while he took a look at her car.  She backed away from him as if he were infected with some disease she might catch if she got too close.  I was stunned!  I knew Jimmy was one of the sweetest and kindest men that I had ever met.  I could tell that he was hurt by her reaction, but he still went ahead and helped her anyway.  That experience still haunts me.  It was just a small taste of what others have had to endure for generations.  But it was enough to open my eyes to see how fear is a product of ignorance.  Ignorance is not stupidity, it is not knowing.  If this woman knew Jimmy, she wouldn't have been afraid.

I hope we have made progress over the last thirty years and that we have had a chance to get to know each other better.  I think that instead of this being seen as a national or global issue, it needs to be seen as an individual issue.  We just need to get to know each other better and then the rest will follow.