Reply #139: FREE AT LAST!

[jamesatemple]

As a Texas "white" boy back in the '40's, growin' up in the cotton producing area of North Texas, I would ask mom why "colored" folks had to ride on the back of the bus, have their own restrooms in the courthouse, couldn't drink from the public water fountains in the park, have their own schools. The answer was, "That's just the way it is, honey". Any kid might accept such an answer but a reasoning kid will continue wonderin' about it.

I realized that skin color tones varied among "colored" folks as they did among "white" folks. Yet, any shade of brown was likely to be classified as "colored"; that the slightest bit of negroid blood was sufficient to relegate a person to a certain "class" of people. I wondered why the Cherokee blood that my mom's folks were so proud of didn't classify us as "red" folks. And, I wondered why I was told that you can't question religion.

It has taken a lot of livin', a lot of changes, a lot of courage to finally state that the old folks were wrong; that they were good folks shackled by their "raising" from another time. At the time, to announce that conclusion in an environment wherein every one of your peers still held a non-reasoned allegiance to the "old ways" was tantamount to inviting mob furor, isolation, and condemnation.

Dr. King's message about "Free at Last" encouraged me and a handful of others with whom I grew up to "come out of the closet"; to state that we didn't appreciate "negro" jokes; that we didn't countenance bias and prejudice as a norm; that we didn't believe that people of different skin color were different in their ambitions for the American dream. "Free at Last", indeed!

I'm certain that Homo sapiens of all skin tones have a natural, inherited survival instinct of distrusting strangers, of prejudice and bias. But, at least in this old man's mind, what make us more than "just an animal" is our ability to act in opposition to our inherited traits; to act according to reason rather than indoctrination.

Things are so much better now. Perhaps, when my generation with its inculcation of bias and prejudice are gone, positive social changes can accrue more quickly. Mayhap, a man or who is half black and half white won't be referred to as a "black" man...or a "white" man. I hope to live to see the time when he will be referred to as a "man".