Racists by Consent

Just as I turned on the television a beautiful young woman stood at the podium dressed in a gorgeous yellow coat, her hair perfectly formed and her inner beauty glowing even brighter than her smile. Then she began to read her poem. What a brilliant mind. What a wondrous way with words. What a master of communications. I think I am in love, but I am also sad.

Every time I hear someone like Amanda Gorman or Barack Obama, or Dr. Martin Luther King, I have deep feelings of ambivalence. On the one hand they thrill me to my very soul. On the other hand, I wonder how many other Black talents and brilliant minds have we sacrificed to keep a people in subjection and buried in poverty? How many poets had to become angry rappers in order to be heard? How many artists had to use the sides of buildings for their canvases? How many great minds ended up singing and living Old Man River?

The normal next paragraph to this blog would be a rant against racism in America but I am tired of confessing other people’s sins. I want and need to write about racism in me. My role in this tragedy and waste.

I was raised in a small town in Southwest Oklahoma that, as far as I have been able to determine, was different from other Oklahoma towns. A man named Woodall, who happens to have a connection to my family tree, imported a train load of freed slaves after the Civil war to work the cotton fields.

That meant a very large number of Black families for such a small town. As a result, it was more like a town in the deep south than in Oklahoma. Many of the homes, including mine, had “servant quarters” in the back yard. A wonderful lady named Easter Pipkins helped raise me. She lived in one room built on the end of our detached garage. She did light housework and looked after my brothers and me until I was eight or nine years of age. I loved Easter and spent a great deal of time in her room. I remember helping her make lye soap a couple of times.

My parents were not racist by the usual definition. I never heard my parents say anything derogatory or see them put down Easter in any way. They kept up with her long after she no longer lived in our back yard. They were not racist by action, but they were by consent…by not noticing, by not speaking out, by believing in the horrible word “Place”.

As an adult, I look back on what I too failed to notice and question.

We had a wash house in the back yard. It was maybe eight feet between the wash house and Easter’s door. The wash house had electricity, gas heat, and running water. None of those were in Easter’s house. How hard would it have been to get electricity there? An extension cord would have worked. I watched Easter iron our clothes with an electric iron in our house and then use a contraption that burned coal oil in hers. Her toilet was an outhouse built on the alley near the sewer lines so she could have a flushing stool at minimal cost. Easter was a large woman too large to bathe in a wash tub but did any of us wonder how she bathed? Or that she never knew the joy of soaking in a real bathtub?

Couple all of that with the things I accepted and ignored all around me such as two waiting rooms in the train depot and bus station, white and colored drinking fountains, black people served out the back door of restaurants and having to eat in the alleys. No blacks even near the swimming pool built by the WPA which was a government agency. Once I accepted “Place” the rest just seemed right and stirred no questions or empathy in me.

As a result, even as I became an adult and a pastor and thought I had grown past racism and hatred, I have had to struggle with systemic racism buried deep in my brain that just seems to pop up and flash briefly in my mind. I am too surprised when I see black men and women excel and show brilliance. That should be the expected thing not a shock.

The surprise means somewhere deep inside me there lurks the idea that black people are not as mentally equipped as white people. It means I am not as free of racism as I long to be. It means I must study black history and culture so I can understand what the black community is saying to us now and what we need to say and do to fulfill the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. of a nation where we are judged, not by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character.

His dream must become my dream. Then perhaps I will be able to conquer the last dregs of the racism burned into me not by angry racist parents but by the world around me that committed racism by consent.

One thing I know. If I do get to Heaven, I am going to go find Easter Pipkins and beg her for forgiveness. Maybe this time I will be living in her servant quarters.