So Naive (Part 3)

I never felt like I was racist, but other than my neighbor Michael I had zero experience with anyone who wasn't white. At that age, I didn't hate anything or anybody (except vegetables and having to go to bed before dark).

Coincidentally, my first year in school was also the first year schools were desegregated. I remember very little of that first year, but I started making friends quickly. One of the first was Eric, an African American kid in my class. We got along well but I had the bad habit of calling Eric the N-word. As I said, I heard it a lot at home and I was too naive to realize that it wasn't a good thing to toss around. But Eric set me straight--he raised his hand in class and said he didn't like me calling him N-word and our teacher Mrs. Green explained why. I was a little less naive.

For the most part after that, it was out of my vocabulary. But, and this is a big smelly but, in fourth or fifth grade we were in music class, and our teacher Mrs. Taylor was leading us in song. Mrs. Taylor was African American, which didn't bother me at all. What bothered me was that, while we used to sing grade-school hits like "Senor Don Gato," "Have You Seen the Ghost of John," and songs from Disney's Mary Poppins, after a couple of years Mrs. Taylor almost always had us singing what the music books at that time called "Negro Spirituals;" songs like "Pick a Bale of Cotton," "Low Bridge," and "Kumbaya, My Lord." I assume this was because the school district had gotten new textbooks that included a wider range of music to choose from. I liked the new songs, but I also liked the old songs, and I couldn't understand why we weren't singing all of them. Kind of like waking up one morning and finding out your favorite radio station switched formats from Alternative Rock to New Country overnight (except I have NEVER appreciated New Country). I was still too naive.

Instead of just going with it, or raising my hand to ask if we could sing something different, or just keeping my mouth shut, I said (under my breath, but not under enough), "I'm tired of singing these N-word work songs." Immediately, a nearby classmate raised his hand and repeated what I had said to Mrs. Taylor. Of course, she was pissed. So pissed that she walked me out of the classroom and lead me to the principal's office, stopping at nearly every classroom along the way to tell the teacher what I had said. I don't remember if I was paddled (they were allowed to do that back then), but I do remember that my Mom was at school that day for a home-room mothers meeting so she got called to the office and I got a major talking to from the principal, Mrs. Taylor, and Mom. And I was a little less naive.

Looking back, I understand why Mrs. Taylor wanted us to sing those songs. I can't begin to unravel all of the emotions she, as an African American, had trying to give just a little of her own culture to all her students. And the anger she rightfully felt when some little white pipsqueak used such a hateful term in her classroom about her music, about her people. But I'm still so, so naive.

You see, I thought that race relations had actually improved in the U.S.A. after the 1970s. Schools were desegregated. I had a few African American friends through the years (not a lot, but a few). I worked with African Americans (not a lot, but a few).

But then Donald J Trump showed up to remind us all that most of that racism was still there, just in the background. African Americans still lived it every day, even if some had made small strides here and there. White people mostly kept mum about it, ignored it as none of their business, didn't care one way or the other if it didn't affect them directly. Trump didn't single-handedly make America hate again--the hate had never gone away--but he did encourage a lot of racist white folks to come out of the closet. By playing on the fears, ignorance, and paranoia of quietly racist people and outright lying to them, he demonized every nonwhite race, every non-straight person, every non-Christian, and everyone who might in any way be "other than."

And he gave and continues to give people who had always blamed the "other" for whatever bad thing was going on in the world or their life a target for their every grievance.

I'm less naive than I was, and I'll be working at it for the rest of my life.

Mahalo.