Racism 101 (7/15/2019)

I was born in the darkest of Africa. No, not South Africa as many always want to guess since I am white, so South Africa is a good guess. However, I was born in what was called the Belgium Congo, in those days. In my young years, my family moved to the Caribbean. I will not bore you with my life’s story, but never in my early life did I encounter obvious racism in real life. Yes, my parents would make fun how folks on the island would exhibit status, by putting a TV antenna on their roof while obviously not having electricity at a time that battery powered TVs were not yet invented, or having a refrigerator on the front porch and not having electricity. Sadly, these disadvantaged people were mostly black folks, but again, to me that was more making light of the need to exhibit some form status and trying to keep up with the Joneses, than a form implicit racism. We had black families over and I was partially raised by Rosa our black housekeeper. 

This photograph of a mask was taken at an exhibition of Congo masks at the museum in Richmond, this past January.   It supposedly comes from the region I was born in.   Boy I would not feel comfortable going back there if our xenophobic leader would tell me to go back there.  Moreover, read the book: How dare the sun rise, by Sandra Uwiringiyimana which is partially set in that area as well and in the US, and you will also understand what the result can be of tribalism and racism 

The first time that I consciously encountered racism was during my first visit to the U.S. The passenger ship that we had taken from the island (Curacao) where we lived, to travel to Europe (Lisbon) had docked in Miami and we were allowed to take excursions. It was 1959, I was almost six years old and all I remember from that outing was taking a “train” ride through an Indian reservation and watching Indians do their thing. Half-naked Indians sitting in front of teepees, cooking above fires, etc. I have no idea whether these Indians were actually living there, or if they were actors and went home after the park or reservation closed for the night. However, I can clearly remember that it hit me as sad and exploitative. Closing my eyes, I am still on that open choo-choo train looking at those indians some 60 years ago. On the other hand, seeing alligators for the first time was kind of exciting, another thing I remember from that day.

Whether it was racism or tourism or a combination of it all, I will never know; however, the next time I noticed real racism was driving through the inner city of Baltimore with friends who we visited during our second visit to the U.S. four years later (1963). Our friends, who were Dutch, had recently emigrated from the island to the U.S. They were somewhat down and negative about the African American folks who moved into and lived in their neighborhood. They told us that when the blacks moved into a neighborhood, it was downhill from there. They were exploring to move out to the suburbs, away from it all. When we came back two years later in 1965, they had done just that and moved out. 

I think it was during my visits to Baltimore that I learned about the divide between black and white. At that time, in 1965, we had just left the Island of Aruba where we had lived for about 9 months. I remember so well that almost every afternoon after school, I would walk with a black classmate (friend) of mine to the harbor in Oranjestad to go fishing, and we would fish for part of the afternoon. If we would not go fishing, we would play soccer (football) or climb in either the mango trees or the tamarind tree in our backyard and eat the fruit. Fruit that was not ripe we would lay on top of the roof for a few days to ripen. We were completely colorblind although I had no idea what that word meant or that that word even existed. My father had a dark room where we printed photographs and that was where I learned the words black and white.

I think the sad part is that the common thread here is that the place I was exposed to racism was in the U.S., the country in which I now live; the country I have become a citizen of. I am sure that there was racism on the islands, in the Netherlands where we went on vacation, but it must have been hidden or more below the surface. Maybe my parents did not associate themselves with those people. Yes, we had the riots in 1969 in Curacao where half the town burned down, but my understanding was that these were more labor related than race; although some tried to relate them to what happened here in the US after the assassination of Martin Luther King around that time. However, I was young and naive and I am sure race played into it. After hearing what happened in the Congo, my parents were scared and we moved to the Netherlands fairly soon after those riots.

Where am I going with this blog post? I am a member of a religious community (the UU) that is mostly white and which has a “Black Lives Matter” banner hanging in front of the church. At home, we have a yard sign that says the same thing. I have written about this issue before <here>, where I wrote about my experience in New Mexico being stopped at immigration checkpoints in a vehicle with Mexican Americans, who were US citizens. I was the only non-citizen and experienced first hand that racial profiling in this country is real, but then in a ridiculous way. 

We have elections coming up where the leader of one party has been called a racist, actually acts like it or at least panders to them. This week he called out four female representatives of color with non white last names and two with non-christian religions and told them to go back to their country. Three of the four were born in the US and one is a naturalized US citizen. He has called neo-nazis good people.

It amazes me that in the 60 years since my first visit to this country there is still so much hate, fear and distrust to go around between the various races in this country. While it seems we made progress, I also see that in the past years we slid back. Maybe people filled with hatred and fear are coming out of the woodwork and dare to express themselves more? Whatever it is, it is going to take time to reverse this trend, but we are going to have to do it. We have to fight it and the people who refuse to call it out like many of the Republicans in congress and the senate who just shrug their shoulders and ignore what the guy at the top is saying.