Somebody has done shined a big old flashlight onto racism in the South and guess who was in the middle of that big old beam of light – Paula Deen takin’ a big old bite of Southern-fried crow. But I don’t have any hatred for Ms. Deen because she’s no different from a large majority of people who live in the South. If you find a Southern person aged 60 or over who says they never used the N-word, they are telling you a lie. Many will never ask for forgiveness. I don’t excuse racist behavior at all, but I understand why there are still remnants around, especially among older Southerners. Hopefully, it will fade away soon enough. And meanwhile ya’ll can correct gently. Many old Southerners grew up in a time of incredible change in the social structure of the South; I imagine when change happens you can get left behind somewhat. Some are still making that journey of change. I don’t consider myself old, but even I have seen the long slow journey. The changes mandated by laws concerning public institutions never really made it forcefully into more personal institutions – like churches, rural areas, families etc. But it wasn’t just whites who maintained their own separate culture of church, family, and social interaction, blacks themselves maintained their own distinct culture apart from most whites. The only areas of life I ever saw blacks and whites interacting during my childhood were school, the workplace (somewhat), politics/government (somewhat) and shopping; and even these areas depended on your location. When I was in high school (the late 1980s), there wasn’t much racial interaction at school and after school hours there was none. Clubs and other social organizations were racially divided. Churches were also extremely divided racially –to the point of same beliefs but different denominations based on race (for example, the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the United Methodist Church). The further you got into the rural areas the starker the contrast. The point is that neither black nor white had seriously advocated ending all their customs and traditions that had a racial component. It’s hard to change behavior when the system is against, or at best neutral, about changing that behavior. Yet, as we as a people mature, cultures do interact and traditions slowly change. As we get to know each other then that joke isn’t so funny and that old custom seems silly. Friendships grow and mindsets change, then racism really dies. People not of the South believe Southerners remain bigoted and racist. They think of Southerners as unforgivable prejudicial and ignorant people. There are those that still want to punish every word that doesn’t fit into a cozy politically correct box with anger and fury. They don’t want to show understanding and restraint, they’d rather grind offenses into the ground. They act as if they are dealing with a monster, when it is really more like a child. You’d never call a child that uses profanity “stupid” or ‘hate-filled” or further berate them; you’d correct the child and tell them that isn’t a nice thing to say. The culture of the South is very full of traditions and history, but of course there are things that can be changed; however, we should correct it with love and understanding (and when needed through the legal system). But we also need to be mindful that some will go grudgingly, and those are the ones we should take by the hand with a smile on our face saying, “I’ll help you along if you let me.”
Posted on: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 20:34:21 +0000
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