Good Saturday morning, Clifford and All those who consider Saturday
mornings to be good.
First, Clifford, I respect your perceptions. They are as real to you
as mine are to me. Our worlds and our upbringing cause us to see some
things differently. So I thank you for sharing both your perceptions
and your disagreement with mine.
I have lived for the past 22 years in a predominantly White, rural
county. While I am sure there are Black people here in Jefferson
county, I do not personally know them. Nor do I have any idea where
the Chinese or Mexican or Japanese families live. They must live
somewhere close by, since they show up each morning to operate their
various restaurants. I do know several Indian families in the area.
Our rehab program has brought us into contact with a number of Indians
losing their vision. Macular Degeneration is more wide spread among
the Indians, than among the White population.
Anyway, my neighbors all have told me at one time or another that they
have no prejudices. And they tell me that they do not understand why
so much attention is being given to a noisy few ingrates. Are my
neighbors right? Why would I argue with their perceptions?
Prior to living here on the Olympic Peninsula, we lived in Renton,
tucked into the southern end of Seattle(home of the Boeing Airplane
Company).
Renton had been settled early on by Italian coal miners and truck
farmers. Over the years their children left the area and moved North
to the suburbs. Black families began overflowing from Seattle's
Central District into Renton. Interestingly, the last time I was in
Renton, the population had shifted to predominantly Asians.
Anyway, when we lived in Renton, for 13 years, we lived on Renton
hill, overlooking the Cedar River and Lake Washington, as well as
across to much of Seattle. While the lowlands were being populated by
Black families, our hill remained White. No one thought about this,
and all our neighbors shopped in the same shops and grocery stores as
the Black families, and never seemed to consider themselves to be
prejudiced. Until the day a young Black man began jogging up our
steep hill. That hill was seven long blocks almost too steep to drive
on. This fellow, I learned by talking to him, was training for a
marathon, and saw this hill as a great training ground. One morning
my neighbor from across the street, a Boeing engineer, called across
from his front yard, "Better keep your doors locked. We have a N****
casing our neighborhood".
Several days the Black runner pounded up the hill. Then one morning
my neighbor stepped out in front of him and shouted for him to go back
where he came from and stay out of places he was not wanted. Okay, so
I'd suspected that my neighbor was a bit of a Racist, just from
earlier comments he'd made, but what really startled me were the
neighbors up and down that street who agreed with him. "I know he's
not hurting anything by running up and down the hill, but I wish he'd
find some other place to do it." People felt uneasy with a Black man
running past their homes.
In Portland, Oregon at the Commission for the Blind, a young Black man
was hired as an O&M instructor. He would take blind students out into
various neighborhoods and drop them off with instructions as to their
destination. He would then park and shadow them to make certain they
stayed safe without knowing he was there. He dropped a young White
woman off and began walking about 100 feet behind her. Suddenly a
police car pulled to the curb and he was told to come over. Both
officers stepped out of the car and confronted him. They had been
notified that a young woman was being stalked by a suspicious Black
man. He told me later on that what really made him nervous was that
the one cop kept his hand on his gun the entire time they talked.
Prejudice is strange. It can just hang around, unseen, and suddenly
leap up and shout, "gotcha!" From time to time I would take one of my
students to the Welfare Office about a mile up the road from the
Agency. This particular office was in an old building, a very large
central room with long counters behind which were seated the clerks.
This particular day I was accompanying a young Black woman. We took a
number and found seats, knowing it would be a while until they came to
us. But somehow they skipped our number. We waited a couple of
numbers to be certain, and then I went to the counter and to the woman
who should have called our number, and asked if they had forgotten us.
The woman behind the counter blasted me with anger. "You are not
allowed to crowd ahead of others", she snapped.
I began to explain that we'd been passed over. She was having none of
that! As our interaction...if that's what it was, went forward I came
to realize that this woman thought that I was one of the Welfare
recipients. I suspect that my White Cane and casual dress misled her.
Since the majority of those in the waiting room were Black, I was
pretty sure she was not discriminating against my student, but it took
me a long time to realize it was me she was avoiding.
While discrimination is very real, it can also be a matter of
individual perception. As a blind man, I insist upon paying my full
share, and taking my share of responsibility in all things. When we
first moved to Quilcene I had occasion to participate in a meeting in
Port Angeles. My wife dropped me in Sequim where I waited for the bus
to take me the rest of the way. This was the first time I'd ridden
the Clallam county Transit. I clambered aboard and reached out to
drop my money in the fare box. The driver had placed his hand over
the box. I drew back and then tried again. Again his hand blocked
me. "I can afford to pay", I told him. "I'm blind, not poor".
Without moving his hand he said, "Seniors ride free!" My white hair
had given me away. I laughed about that for years...even as I'm
writing it. My perception had told me that this driver thought that
blind people needed to ride free. But it was the county policy at the
time, that Seniors needed the help. You would think that I would have
protested that many Seniors could well afford to pay...but I didn't.
Frankly, I don't need too many such examples to remind me that I am
prejudiced. There are subliminal threads of prejudice woven
throughout my brain. On a lonely street, late at night, back in my
sighted days, I could walk past a White man without a thought, but a
Black man sent a tingle up my spine. In my work, I notice that I
interact differently on the same issue, depending upon whether the
person is male of female. That just scratches the surface, but you
get the idea. A friend told me some years back that she never
complained publicly because she didn't want to be called "an uppity
Black girl".
Since she was a very good friend I would never say, "Uppity? No!
Snippy? Yes!" I guess what I'm trying to say in all of this, is that
I accept peoples perception of themselves. I certainly have enough of
my own issues to deal with.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/9/17, Clifford via acb-chat <acb-chat@acblists.org> wrote:
> Dear Carl and List Members:
>
> When I was in boy scouts in the fifties, the confederate
> flag was on parts of the uniform that we wore. It was not done to anger
> black folks at all, but was simply a reflection of the fact that
> historically many folks from the South fought for the confederacy. The
> scout troop was located in Nashville, where the confederacy was clearly in
> the majority. Here in East Tennessee, the majority of the population was
> union, and in fact there was a push at one time to make East Tennessee a
> separate state due to the split in loyalties.
>
> The confederate flag was not displayed in a mean-spirited
> way, and only in the last few years have black folks taken to
>
> voicing their displeasure with that symbol.
>
> I do believe the picture you paint is not at all
> representative of the life in the South in general, and I know it was not
> the way we in East Tennessee got along with our black neighbors. True,
> there were isolated incidents during the fifties and sixties, but the
> number
> of folks who would turn the clock back to the days of segregation are few
> and far between. In fact, I have heard black folks who have traveled to
> both
> the North and South, claim that they are treated as good or better in the
> South than in the North. I truly hope that statement was true, as we still
> pride ourselves on being hospitable.
>
>
>
> Yours Truly,
>
>
>
> Clifford Wilson
>
>
>
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