THE NEXT POTUS: Systemic/Institutional Racism; An Anecdote

On June 17, 2015 a home-grown, white, racist terrorist entered the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina and killed nine black Bible-study attenders.  He did so with the express motive of setting off a race war, hurling ugly comments and epithets at the nine even as he was massacring them, according to witnesses.

Much has been said and written in the days since that act of racial terrorism.  Discussions have been held regarding gun control, white privilege, systemic and institutionalized racism, the continued display and use of the Confederate flag, and on and on.

It is readily apparent that we are a nation in deep and serious trouble - with racial problems that we choose to ignore and rationalize away.  Racists are entrenched and angry at being found out and called out for what they are.  White social justice activists are angry and indignant, as if they’ve just realized that we haven’t moved that far beyond Jim Crow.  Blacks, of course, know that we haven’t moved that far beyond Jim Crow.

One of the big issues that has garnered much discussion is the reality of systemic, institutionalized racism.

Many white folks have a difficulty wrapping their heads around that concept.  How, they wonder, if I’m unbiased and decent and don’t discriminate can I be accused of any kind of racism or of benefiting from any kind of racism?  It doesn’t make sense to lots of whites to suggest that the collective society’s bigotry is so ingrained and inculcated that they are unknowingly benefiting from that societal/cultural collective and that blacks are being systemically hurt by that same societal/cultural collective mindset and the resulting actions.

Systemic/institutionalized racism is a silent, sneaky evil… one that I believe many whites would abhor - if they recognized it.  Because it’s difficult to define with precision, many, both white and black, have a difficult time recognizing it and certainly a tough time considering how to counter and to eliminate it.

It is unfortunate that frequently we have to fall back on anecdotes to define, describe, and demonstrate the reality of institutionalized/systemic racism.  That is the purpose of this essay.

First, let me offer a caveat.  This example and all of the attendant implications is dated.  It comes from my childhood, when I was about seven or eight years old, so we’re talking about 56 or 57 years ago.  One of the apologists for racism might say that things have changed dramatically over the past fifty years.  I posit that the changes in race relations in this country have been cosmetic, superficial, and insignificant.  I know that we have elected a black president, but consider what the political and cultural realities have been.  Never in our entire nation’s history has the OFFICE of the president been afforded such widespread disrespect.  The polemic, partisan politics of our country, as they relate to the presidency, have been beyond anything ever demonstrated or experienced in our nation’s history.

In an unprecedented action a member of the United States House of Representatives shouted out during a speech the President was making to Congress and called the President a liar.

There is little doubt in our society today that the hatred goes beyond political stances and actions and that the President is often vilified because of his race.  He is the most threatened President ever, with more than 30 death threats daily.  Death threats toward the President have increased 400% since he took office.  There have been countless attacks on his name and citizenship, in ways more extreme than anything the office of President has ever experienced.

All of this is by way of saying that any changes over the years since Jim Crow have been changes that haven’t really affected the deep nature or fabric of our society and that many of the biases and much of the discrimination that blacks face today is as horrific and as damaging – if less overt – than the discrimination and hurt faced fifty years ago.

I have never told this true story to anyone and anyone besides myself who might recall it is likely dead.

I come from a very poor family, a third generation welfare family.  No one on either side of my family before I was born had ever gone any further in school than the fourth grade.  And neither of my parents had gotten that far.

There was a large age difference, about twenty years, between my mother and my father.  My father had been raised in rural poverty, as had my mother.  My father, at the time of the incident I’m sharing, was working as a day laborer, and my family was on ‘welfare.’

Now the welfare of the day was not food stamps.  Fifty years ago, our nation’s efforts to feed the poor consisted of giving them actual foodstuffs, referred to as ‘surplus food.’  Each week, representatives of welfare income level families in my town would line up at the back door of Eighth Ward School, in Washington, Pennsylvania.  They would bring boxes and bags if they had enough kids to carry the food that was handed out.  Frequently the family would have the kids’ little wagon that got pressed into service for transporting the food home.

The food was as generic as can be imagined, and had no relationship to the food pyramid and the healthy selection teachings that the government recommends today.  Most of the food was canned, in plain silver or gold colored cans and the labeling actually included the words, “Surplus Food.”  The foods handed out included flour, yellow corn meal, rice, powdered milk, cheese (in big blocks), butter, canned peanut butter, canned beef and gravy in two pound cans, and cans of Donald Duck orange juice (why the brand name orange juice with all the other generic foods I can’t begin to imagine).  It was food of a questionable value on any nutritional scale and certainly not luxurious eats by any stretch of the imagination, but it kept you alive.

Now I was a smart kid.  Even at that age, I had some idea of the process involved in the distribution of food on a scale that large.  AND - I also had some perception of the social stigma attached to receiving that food.  Each week, Saturday morning as I recall, I would accompany my mother and my younger siblings with our little wagon to the back door of the Eighth Ward School where a paid USDA government employee and volunteers would hand out the food to the certified needy families, according to established need based on income and size of family.  There was no mistaking the folks in that line, folks at the destitute end of the scale, living on the literal wrong side of the tracks on the wrong side of town…  There was no mistaking that these folks were the poor and the very lowest class, subject to the vagaries of our nation’s mercurial economy in harsh and demeaning ways.

And you would think that life at that station would be a big unifier; that all the folks in the line, beaten down by the reality of poverty and the reality of hunger and the ignominy of standing in line for survival, would bond.  You’d think that we would be somewhat homogeneous, with each of us bearing the burden of dependence on government largesse.  You’d think that such dire straits would make us one; brothers-in-arms as it were (not sisters; remember this was the 1950s; they could vote, but outside the house women weren’t taken terribly seriously).

That particular Saturday morning, I found myself in the line with my family directly in front of a black family.  There was a boy in that family about my age whom I’d never seen before.  Apparently we went to different schools and came from different neighborhoods in the West End of Washington, Pennsylvania.  But we had in common that we’d come to this place for the express purpose of being fed for another week via the benevolence of the government.  He and I talked and got to know one another briefly as our two families waited in line.  Wagons, boxes, and bags were filled in front of us, and we slowly made our way toward the door where our wagons, boxes, and bags would receive the food that would carry our family through another week.

I don’t remember his name.  I never saw him again.  But I can’t forget how the world treated him just then.

He and I were standing side by side as my family got to the front of the line.  The USDA guy and volunteers looked at a typed page that Mom had and at a list that they had.  They started handing cans of meat and sacks of rice to her and she began to put them in our little wagon.

The kid from family behind us and I were standing there, looking kind of loopy - as seven year old kids are particularly adept at doing - when one of the helpers who was handing out food, saw the two of us standing there and stepped up to us.  He turned specifically away from the black kid, and looked very pointedly at me, ignoring the other kid and said, “Yeah, this is a bad time, and things are pretty lousy, but look at the bright side.  You live in a land of promise.  Someday you could grow up to be President of the United States and all this will just be a bad, long gone memory.”

Yeah, it was his way of trying to lift spirits, to remind me that, although I was poor now, it didn’t always need to be like that and I had the potential to rise above this particular day and this particular place.  In a way, I suppose, it was meant to be kind of sweet.

There was only one problem with it.  There were two boys standing there, same age, same apparent station in life, same purpose at that moment, and differing in only one significant external characteristic.  Yet his encouragement and words of support had been directed singularly and uniquely toward me.  His kindness and brief word of hope was for me and not for the kid next to me.

And I have no doubt that had someone confronted him and tried to explain the concept of systemic or institutionalized racism that he’d be thoroughly confused and resentful.  After all, he was handing out food competently and efficiently and civilly to black and white families alike.  He had merely said some random nicety to some kid who happened to catch his eye.

Oh, were there two kids standing there?

And the reason for the slight was that in some deep recess of his mind was the awareness of the reality that the deck is stacked.  Even for these poor kids, even for the families who are the lowest dregs of our economic structure, even for the people who have to stand in line to get food from the government to stay alive, the white kid had the greater likelihood of achievement and accomplishment.  He certainly wouldn’t have acknowledged feeling that way, wouldn’t have known that was the reason for his turning away from or excluding the black kid from his comment.

That awareness and pragmatic reality – that the deck is stacked – is part of our cultural fabric.  And we’re not generally aware of the individual threads that comprise that fabric and the resultant tapestry.  We are what we are taught and that which has been inculcated into us.

There were two kids standing there.  And the white casual observer assumed that one had potential and that the other had less potential.  Why?  Because that’s what our societal indoctrination for the past four hundred years has told us it’s ok to believe.

There’s a truism that acknowledgement of a problem is the first step to solving that problem.  What happens when the problem is SO close that it’s part and parcel of who we are?

How sad that a mass murder is necessary to remind us that the playing field is not level, no matter how decent white America may feel or how decent  we believe ourselves to be.  How sad that a mass murder is necessary to tell us that it’s time for action and change.  How sad that we may not listen, even now.