It’s black history month. Therefore, it’s easy to look at what has changed in Memphis race relations. What’s scary is what hasn’t changed.
I was having a conversation with a person I thought I knew, who will remained unnamed, and in the course of conversation, the person decided to share some opinions with me.
The person said that discrimination claims by black people are usually false.
They went on to point out that black students who want to attend the U of M can have a lower ACT or SAT score than white people can to be admitted, and that that wasn’t fair. The person railed on minority scholarships, and how unjust they were. The person said “since black people are the majority here they shouldn’t have the right to have ‘black clubs’ when ‘white clubs’ aren’t allowed,” and “they” always want “special treatment.”
What is scary is how faintly familiar these comments are to me. What is frightening to me is that political correctness must have lobotomized me to the point that I realized that I don’t even stand up for what I believe anymore. Instead of telling the person what I really thought I found myself ending the conversation and closing the door behind them. It’s somehow been so ingrained in me that everyone has a right to their opinion that I forgot along the way I have a right to mine too.
Why didn’t I tell the person that I thought their opinion was wrong. Why didn’t I argue that confederate-flag glare out of their eyes? I should have reminded the person that when our parents were our age our city wasn’t even treating black people like they were people, let alone citizens. I should have told them that black people have a lot as a unified group to talk about. I could have asked what an exclusively white group would have talked about- suntanning?
I could have asked why everyone can see and point out the difference in the ACT minimum scores, but pretends not to see the difference in the schools with and without funding.
But what I really should have asked is how they would feel if people assumed they got where they were in life, or at the U of M, just because of their color, and not what they’d earned or who they are.
For whatever reason I didn’t say all of that. I have wondered after that if racism will just evolve into a different set of unfair and untrue assumptions, if resentment will no longer be the ignorant fear of the sixties but the quieter ignorant fear of the new millennium.
Somehow with all of the great leaders of the past who were and seem greater than life, the concept of changing institutional racism gets lost, I think. Somewhere in elementary school you start thinking that a black superman will come down, invent uses for the peanut, and save you from an unjust world. But that’s not how it goes.
I’ve been doing reading for a class project, and I read something that a black U of M student named Eddie Jenkins said in 1968 about racism: that white people would have to fix the problem of white on black racism. And if you think about it, it’s too easy for racist people to discount people they are prejudiced against, and too easy for white people like me to say something when another person makes a racist comment.
Starting now I’m going to make a stand, because we all have so much to lose if we don’t start saying something.
