Who is really surprised about Rick Perry's sign problem?
Seriously, raise your hand if you honestly can't believe that he grew up hunting in a sundown town in Texas, where black folks were greeted with "Morning nigger" and knew better than to be caught across the tracks after dark?
Come on, now that's like being surprised that the moon comes up at night.
What was really interesting about this Washington Post story wasn't the revelations about Perry's sordid racial past, and current penchant for lying because those are to be expected. No, what's interesting is the glimpse it gives certain folks into just how dehumanizing life was for black folks in the South. Not just that, but the glimpse it gives us into how so many white people can be deluded about that past.
Seriously, if you read the story, older white people actually appear to believe there was no need for a Civil Rights movements in their neighborhood. They say their black folks were perfectly happy. And, that's in the deep, harsh Jim Crow South. So you know older white folks up North saw no need for Civil Rights in Maine, or New Hampshire. And they passed those feelings on to their children and grandchildren, and we ended up with the racial morass we have today.
Racism is always somebody else's problem, and is stirred up by outside agitators. It's never personal, never something folks need to address in their own lives.
And that's what I learned from the story of Niggerhead.
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1 comment:
Heh. You know, every so often I'll see statistics on how recent some of the changes have been, and it shocks me. How quickly one generation can change things, but people need to realize how some members of the older generation still look at these things we take for granted.
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