Wright Racism

So here's a little gem I dug up from nearly two years ago.  I wrote this article for my creative nonfiction class and presented it during a literature reading on campus.  Sure, it's a bit outdated at this point, but the overall message still sadly rings true throughout the states.  Enjoy.

Wright Racism

In the last few weeks, racial accusations surrounding Reverend Jeremiah Wright have been littered throughout the media.  In mid-March, I couldn’t walk past a television set without hearing clips of what the reverend has said in his sermons for the past ten years.  The most commonly heard quotes generally had to do with America and its shaky racial heritage.  Basically, Wright brought up the fact that the African American is still being oppressed today by white America, and that it’s time for a change.  Endless news coverage later, and it is apparent that White America is not ready for said change.

            What Wright said about the American government and its treatment of African Americans is nothing new to me.  Yes, the government has failed the African American in the last two-hundred years.  Sure, slavery was eventually abolished, but it took another, oh, seventy five years or so for African Americans to become humanized in American society.  I can only imagine the things said across the country during the push of the civil rights movement.  “First we lose our free labor, and now they want to be able to eat with us!?  I know I don’t want no blacks eating in the same diner as me and my dog.  Fuck that!”  Et cetera. 

I think the most humorous thing about the whole ordeal is the fact that whites have the nerve to call the reverend a racist.  Sure, what he said about America and its racial stance is not flattering.  Hell, it makes us (Caucasians) look like a bunch of hate mongering racists.  Yet for the most part, he’s right.  Growing up in poverty stricken rural towns all my life (minus a brief stint in Washington D.C. for my first three years on earth, which, sadly to say, I do not remember) has taught me that most people do not view all men as created equal.  Shit, you’re lucky to find someone out in the sticks that even views women as equal.  These areas are (for the most part) so backward that even Wal-Mart wouldn’t build within a twenty mile radius.  We had K-Mart.  Not even a Super K-Mart, just K-Mart.  Yes, it was that bad. 

I was driving to campus earlier this semester and saw a bumper sticker that represented the confederate flag.  After choking down the immediate gag-reflex I felt in my stomach and throat, I began to tailgate in order to see what the sticker said.  “IT’S NOT HATE, IT’S HISTORY,” was plastered over the flag of the confederacy.  If I’ve learned anything over the past 22 years, it’s that if you have to justify something, then it’s probably not right to begin with, and I immediately began thinking of bumper stickers I’d like to put over the confederate one.  “I’M NOT RACIST, I JUST HATE NIGGERS” immediately came to mind.  Same thing, different wording.  I followed the hate-truck nearly to school grounds, praying it would turn onto campus so I could wait gleefully till whoever was in it left, key the shit out of it, and move to a different parking lot.  Sadly, such dreams did not come true[1].

I still remember the first time I ever encountered racism face to face.  I was five, and had just started kindergarten at Washington Elementary in Apollo.  It was bathroom break time, conveniently placed between lunch and naptime so that there was less chance of someone pissing all over the cardboard thin foam that Mrs. Rometo idealistically referred to as sleeping mats.  I simply like to think of them now as something that uncomfortably separated child from dirty floor, but I guess the school really couldn’t be spending much money on something that would more than likely be peed on and thrown away every month.  It was either plushy mats and no juice boxes, or juice boxes and pizza boxes to sleep on.  I’d still take the juice boxes. 

During bathroom break that day, my five-year-old classmate Steve called the only black child in the entire kindergarten-through-six-grade-elementary-school a nigger.  Being that I was only in kindergarten at the time, I had no idea what the word meant, but soon realized it had no positive aspects when Jesse (the accused) punched Steve in the face.  Mrs. Rometo soon arrived, yelling at both boys for their behavior.  Steve was crying because his face was swollen, but I couldn’t figure out why Jesse was crying as well.  She asked for a recounting of the situation, and I, being a firsthand witness, was asked to confirm whether Jesse’s story was true.  I said “yes,” and repeated the word that Steve had called him.  Now that I think back on it, it was kind of fucked up for her to even ask me to repeat “nigger” and not simply take Jesse’s word for it.  Rural PA, ladies and gents.

I still had no idea what nigger meant, and Mrs. Rometo was in no hurry to explain its significance (or lack thereof).  I only knew it was a big deal from the fact that both Jesse and Steve’s parents showed up and a shouting argument could be heard in the hallway.  Also, I don’t believe Jesse ever stopped crying until he left.  I pondered what the word might mean all day, since the idea of Jesse being different never really occurred to me.  He was more than likely the first African American I had ever seen in my life (or at least that I can recall), and he seemed just like every other small child in the class.  I guess I have my mother to thank for that, since she apparently brought me up in a house vacant of racial hatred.  I wish I could say the same now, but I can only guess that being old, white, and Republican does something destructive to the mind.

            It wasn’t till I got home that day that I found out what nigger actually meant.  My mother told me it was something extremely cruel that should never be repeated.  EVER.  That was a good enough explanation for me, and I probably forgot about the word till I hit junior high.  While this may seem unbelievable to some, I’ve never had any racial attitudes at all in life, and was therefore somewhat protected from hatred till the big move from sixth to seventh grade.  Whoever came up with the idea of taking children who have been sheltered for seven years in elementary school and suddenly throwing them together with other 12-15 year olds from a 20-mile radius should be fired.  In other words, I learned what sex, drugs, and racism were in my first three days of seventh grade.

            While I could easily wrap my head around hand jobs and roaches, hatred for people with different skin colors or ethnicities still had trouble penetrating the soft tissue of my brain.  Why?  What was the point?  We’re all human, I found myself saying repeatedly.  But common sense and rational thinking have problems trying to work themselves into heavily influenced redneck minds.  The real problem isn’t the kids arguing that “daddy says niggas are nothing but trouble,” it’s daddy himself that’s the problem.  Racism, as far as I know, is not something you’re born with.  If it is, it must be a social/economic disease that only affects the uneducated and poor (I’m only one of those so I apparently escaped).  Jr. didn’t pop out of the womb dripping placenta and words that would make the KKK proud.

            As firm as my stance against racism is, however, I can’t honestly say I’ve taken fool-proof steps to avoid it.  Living in these areas over the years has forced me to begrudgingly accept friendships with those less “open-minded” than myself.  To be quite (and unfortunately) honest, I have several friends who would probably join the KKK if they were bored and had nothing better to do.  Scratch that, I consider the really racist ones “acquaintances,” not friends…it makes me feel a little better about myself when I think of them in that way, at least.

            In fact, a really good, good friend of mine (second best friend, maybe?) was extremely racist until he came to UPG last semester and started spending less time with the rednecks at home and more time with the left-wingers here on campus.  By mid-March, he was considering voting for Obama, even[2].  Yet when word got out about his new mindset at a party in Vandergrift a short time later, said friend was instantly ridiculed.

            At this point in the paper, it’d probably be appropriate to state a few of the things said to my friend in response to his new voting choice, mainly to help provide examples of just how racist some of these people can be.  However, most of the things uttered that night I’ve managed to block out of my memory over the past three weeks, and I honestly don’t want to have to bring them back out again…especially considering these words were coming out of the ignorant minds of my friends, err, “acquaintances.” 

Maybe I’m a bit hypocritical. 

I do catch myself locking the doors to the car when driving through Wilkinsburg.  If I see a large group of black men standing on a street corner, I automatically reach for the button, clicking it two or three times to make sure it’s locked.  Is that racist or just being safe?  Well, I don’t do it when there’s a large group of white people on the corner, so there’s your answer.

I thank the media for this response, mainly because it’s a proven fact that they report more minority crime on the news in spite of the fact that there’s an almost equal mix of white and black crime every day.  Yet even though I know this little piece of information, I still find myself reaching for the button at times.  And when I do, I feel like such a dirty bastard because of it.  It’s like I’m not even thinking when I do it; it’s always after the fact that I realize just how nonsensical I’m being.

            Even my best friend who goes to Slippery Rock University manages to spit out a few stereotypical phrases about African Americans every once in awhile.  This comes as somewhat of a shock to me considering I’ve known the kid for over ten years now and never knew him to be racist.  When I occasionally travel up north to visit him, he always seems to end up saying something negative about the black community in front of his roommates.  I mean, he owns the first season of “The Boondocks” on DVD (so do I, Aaron McGruder = genius) so I always question him about why he says some of the things he does.  His response, un-shockingly, went something like this: “All my roommates hate niggers, so I have to say something every once in awhile to make them think I do too.”

            This shouldn’t have surprised me, and it didn’t.  Group mentality has always been a bitch of a monster, and I lay most of the blame on this cluster-fuck of a human response mechanism for racism in the first place.  If someone hadn’t come up with the idea of hating others because of their skin color in the first place, no one would have ever followed.

            I almost hate myself for saying that racism is nothing more than group mentality at the lowest level, but I truly think it is.  Sure, I’m metaphorically comparing hate speech to fashion trends but how else can you explain racism?  As I stated before, some ignorant fuck probably thought “hey, why should I like a human being with darker skin than my own?” and then spread the word.  Unbelievable when you think about it.  I almost feel dumber just typing that sentence out.  I mean, really, has there been a less sensible reason for hating someone other than skin color?  I doubt it, but religion would come in at a close second.

            Yet this is America.  Land of the free…and obviously the easily gullible.  Or at the very least, naïve.  Perhaps growing up in rural areas has helped me see the hatred that’s out there and that’s much more prevalent than most people would like to believe.  For all the Americans in denial, I think Reverend Wright shattered their perfect little world of racial segregation that still exists, and that’s why there’s such uproar.  Could he have talked about these topics in a more subtle or subdued way?  Absolutely.  Would it have been as effective?  Absolutely not.  This is the twenty-first century, almost a hundred and fifty years have passed since the emancipation of slaves in America, and yet there is still hatred in this country.  At this point, it’s going to take someone with enough balls to stand up and start saying things that the majority of Americans don’t want to hear or face in order to affect some sort of change.  It’s just absolutely mind-blowing that Wright has been ostracized and pinned as some sort of white-hating racist.  Does anyone remember Senator Trent Lott?  The man who continually voted against upholding the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and opposed Martin Luther King Day?  Probably not.  A story that should have been huge was continually hidden on page 12 of the local newspapers until Lott quietly resigned his post as Senate Republican Leader.  He still served as Senator, however, until 2007.  While some might defend Lott stating that his views simply come from his Republican and Mississippi background, I find it hard to believe that a man who is openly racist can keep his job as senator, while a man with a simple message of truth is continually ostracized.

            If anything, the sermons of Reverend Jeremiah Wright have opened the eyes of at least a few people in America.  While it is apparently okay to put down African Americans and other minorities, attacking Caucasians (the group that, might I add, has run this country since the day it was formed and is also the most economically sound and educated) is another story.  I can only hope that this “reverse racism” proves that there is still a deep and long running hatred between the races, one that has been buried over the years and needs to be dug up and addressed before even it is lost to the back pages of the Post Gazette or Tribune Review, behind the breaking news that Britney’s back in rehab or that Paris has a new sex tape; forgotten, and once more leaving the African American community in continual inequitable limbo.

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[1] If anyone owns or knows someone who owns a hate-truck that has been recently keyed, I am legally obligated to state that I did not vandalize any vehicles on the Greensburg campus.  Yet.

[2] I’d like to point out that I don’t support the idea that white people are only voting for Obama to prove that they’re not racist.  I was just trying to infer that for my friend to even consider voting for a black man for President was a huge step in a non-racist direction.  Said friend agrees with many of Obama’s promised policies for change in America, and is not considering his vote to simply be an “I love black people” statement.