September, 2020 archive

I received an email recently from a friend of mine (it was not sent solely to me; I was but one of a number of addressees).

I met him some years ago. shortly after I moved to these parts, when I worked on his sadly unsuccessful campaign for local office; we have stayed in sporadic touch since then.

My most vivid memory of him is of the time we dining with a black woman, a mutual acquaintance and political activist, who had grown up in Connecticut; we were trying to explain to her what is was like to live under Jim Crow, he from his perspective as an African American sailor stationed in these parts in those days and me as a white guy, a native Southerner, who grew up under Jim Crow and went to segregated schools.

I am sharing this with his permission. It’s a powerful letter; because of its length, I’ve placed most of it below the fold.

I Too Am Human!

America’s problem with race has deep roots, with the country’s foundation tied to the near extermination of one race of people [Native American] and the enslavement of another [African American]. Racism is truly our nation’s original sin….with many more sins as follow-up. To make it lasting, they made it systemic. Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist environment.

What I just said sounds a lot like violence to me!

What escapes many people is that the whimsical killing of enslaved Blacks in this country during slavery, and even after, by white folks, without punitive consequence, is based on laws passed by white politicians, who happened to be plantation owners as well. Can that be called violence?

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