eeny, meeny,\nminey, moe, catch a nigger by his toe …”<\/a> from the same children, no\ndoubt because it was the version their parents had taught them).<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat was most disorienting to my mother and father\nwere the vast number of unwritten rules regarding how the two races were\nsupposed to relate to one another, and the assumption that everyone, black and\nwhite, implicitly understood these rules, rules of which my parents were\nignorant. For example, thanks to the poverty of so many “colored”\nfolks, even my parents could afford to hire a maid to help clean our house\ntwice a week after we moved to Cary, NC when I was three. Our maid,\nAnnie, was about as light skinned as one could get and still be recognized as\nnot white enough to pass. My mother had trouble from the get go with her,\nbecause while Annie knew the boundaries of what constituted acceptable behavior\nbetween a black maid and her white employer, my mother did not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
My mom was constantly wrong-footing herself with\nAnnie, trying to do things like eat lunch with her or help Annie do her work,\nthings Annie understood would be taken the wrong way had they been observed by\nother whites. She did her best to explain to Mom that such things just\nweren’t done, but my mother was stubborn, and didn’t see why she should treat\nAnnie any differently than she would treat anyone else. To Annie, my\nmother was her white boss, a somewhat clueless if well-meaning one, but her\nboss nonetheless. To my mother, Annie was her friend, one to whom she\nfelt closer to than many of the native white Carolinian housewives that lived\nall around us. Yet, even my mother had to face the reality of Annie’s situation\nat times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Usually, after Annie finished her work for us, my\nmother would drive her to the closest bus stop where she could catch a ride\nhome. Occasionally, Mom even drove Annie home, though my mother only\nlearned to drive a car after she came to North Carolina (her father didn’t\nbelieve in women learning how to drive) and always felt a little anxious when\nshe did so. What I remember most vividly from those visits was the difference\nbetween Annie’s home and mine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I lived in a nice three bedroom one story brick\nhome with a carport located in a new subdivision surrounded by similar homes\nwhere none of the mothers worked. Annie and her family lived in a hovel,\na shack really, where every adult that could work did work, man or woman.\n We had a nice big yard with lots of grass, a pond out back and a gorgeous\npine forest that backed up against the homes across the street from us.\n The yard Annie’s kids played in was bare dirt with a few weeds and a\nsmall flower garden near the front stoop. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Annie didn’t like having us stay very long when we\ndropped her off, but my mother usually insisted, believing it the courteous and\nfriendly thing to do, and so I would play with Annie’s kids out in the dirt\nwhile my mother talked to Annie about her garden (they both had a passion for\nflowers) or sit on Annie’s stoop and drink a glass of water or iced tea,\nchatting away, oblivious to Annie’s own anxieties about our presence there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One day, Annie missed her bus and she walked the\ntwo miles or so back to our home and asked if my mother could drive her\ninstead. By this time the sun had set, and my mother, always fearful of\ndriving in the dark – “It’s so easy to get lost out here,” she would\nsay – suggested that Annie call her husband when he got off work to pick her\nup, as my father was working late at one of his part-time research jobs, and\ntherefore unavailable. Annie did her best to explain why that wasn’t such\na good idea, but my mother insisted she call him anyway. When she did, Annie’s\nhusband asked to speak to my mother. He finally got the message through\nto Mom that a black man driving in a white neighborhood after dark was, shall\nwe say, verboten<\/em>. It was simply too dangerous. He was very nice\nabout it, because by this time I’m sure Annie had explained my mother was a Yankee<\/em>\nlady who didn’t know any better, but he made it clear that he would be risking\narrest or worse if he came to pick up his wife from her job. So, my\nmother called my father, and he came and drove Annie home, instead. That day my\nmother learned a lesson about the life of her friend and other\nAfrican-Americans in North Carolina – that segregation and racism were not\nmerely minor annoyances for black people, that they could literally be matters\nof life or death.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOne year, before our family moved away from North Carolina forever, the\nNAACP and other civil rights groups circulated a petition in our neighborhood.\n It contained a simple statement asking the state to dismantle the\nnumerous legal barriers that prevented most blacks in the state from exercising\ntheir right to vote. My parents signed the petition. What my\nparents failed anticipate was that their neighbors would see my parents’ names\non that list when the volunteers seeking signatures for the petition knocked on\ntheir doors, and what our neighbors’ reaction would be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Within a day, my parents were shunned by all their\nso-called friends in our little development in Cary, and their children were\nprohibited from coming to our home to play with my siblings and I, and we were\nnot allowed to visit our friends in the neighborhood at their homes.\n Eventually this “shunning” subsided so that once again we could\nplay with the other kids, but the my parents’ relationships with our neighbors\nnever really recovered from the incident. My folks had broken the single\nmost important rule in southern society back in then – never, ever do anything\nto show support for the rights of colored people<\/em>. In other words,\nnever do anything to oppose the doctrine of white supremacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSince that time, over the course of my life I\nwatched as the Civil Rights movement worked hard to end discrimination and\nenshrine equal treatment under the law for all races in voting, employment,\nhousing and so forth, but that came only after years of arrests and brutal\nmistreatment of non-violent protestors and a major arm twisting effort on\nCongress by LBJ (one that he was not all that keen about). And despite court\norders and the myriad laws on the books, and the acceptance by most whites that\nblack people have the right to eat at the same restaurants and work at the same\njobs as whites, de facto<\/em> discrimination against African-Americans\nstill exists. It’s in our schools, which are more segregated than ever,\nin our neighborhoods, in lending and banking practices, in employment, and most\ncruelly in the way the criminal justice system disproportionately treats black\ndefendants vs. white defendants. So, while some things have\n“changed” for the better that improvement does not run very deep.\n Certainly, it\u2019s been far less significant or ground-breaking than many\npeople like to think. <\/p>\n\n\n\nWe see the same situation played out in the other\nmajor civil rights struggles of our times, such as those for women and for LGBT\npeople. A great deal of change in societal attitudes and in the law, but\nnot as much real change as we like to believe in how people are treated.\n In fact, if anything, I have consistently seen a backlash year in and\nyear out, over the course of my lifetime, regarding each advance in human\nrights for any group regardless of what color their skin is, what religion they\npractice or who they chose to love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many of you have grown up in an era where equal\nrights is assumed to be the norm, but let me assure you that for most of the\nhistory of our country, and I would argue, this includes the present time, that\nhas not been the case. Feminism as a movement did not exist until the\nlate 60s and early 70s. The movement for “Gay Rights”\noriginated in the seventies, but really only began to see significant progress\nover the last 15 years or so. And the right to vote for all intents and\npurposes did not exist for black people when I was born, and schools all over\nthe South were still legally segregated despite the Supreme Court’s landmark\ndecision in Brown v. Board of Education<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSo, when I hear someone say that they want to take their<\/em>\ncountry back, I cannot help but look at the person making that statement and\nwonder, which country do they want? The one where corporations used\npolice to bust up unions? The one where a lynching was a celebratory\nouting? The one that preached a woman should be happy staying home, raising the\nkids and catering to her husband’s every whim? The one where homosexuals\nhid their sexual orientation from all but their closest confidantes out of fear\ntheir careers and lives would be destroyed, and that they would be disowned by\ntheir families? The one where black people could not eat in the same\nrestaurants at which white people ate, or drink from the same water fountains,\nor attend the same schools or live in the same neighborhoods or ….<\/p>\n\n\n\nI don’t want my country back. I want a better\ncountry. One that truly provides liberty and justice for all people.\n And I certainly don’t want a country where anyone can discriminate\nagainst anyone else of whom they do disapprove and escape liability for that\nimmoral and otherwise unlawful act under any pretext, be it freedom of\nreligion<\/em>, racial superiority<\/em> or traditional values<\/em>.\n <\/p>\n\n\n\nI never want to go back to the country that existed\nwhen I was born. The one that exists now needs far too much improvement as it\nis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(An earlier version of this post was published at Daily Kos on March 29, 2015) How often have I heard or seen this phrase, “I want my country back,” used…<\/p>\n
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