ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 27, 1997 TAG: 9703270011
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-13 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARCIA WEIS
BLACK HISTORY Month is over. Racism is not. In February, however, I took a long, hard look at some experiences and things I've learned since joining People Uniting Against Racism a few years ago.
With one exception, until then I had had no black friends. My only contacts with blacks had been in academia, as student, professor or colleague. The director of my master's thesis in 20th century French literature was a black professor named Louise Jefferson at Wayne State University. I had no black friends there.
Then I took a summer job at the Detroit Free Press where I met Vera, another low-level employee and my first black friend. We had lunch together often, but I never met her family, and the friendship faded when I left for East Lansing to complete my doctoral degree.
I had traced the man that I sought as director of my dissertation to Michigan State. He was white, but as a French native, he had no racial bias. (The French have their own prejudices, but they're not based on skin color.) Part of my preparation for the Ph.D. was a semester on French literature by black writers in former French colonies. I still had no black friends.
It was the same when I moved to Roanoke. I simply did not meet blacks socially. Isn't that true for most of us honkies, whether it's intentional or not? Then I had a surprise, a long letter from Vera. Our only contact for years had been Christmas greetings, but great changes had occurred in her life.
She had barely escaped being shot to death while attending a church service in downtown Detroit. Police, pursuing radical Black Panthers from an adjoining building, fired indiscriminately into the church and then rounded up everyone at the service and took them to jail. Vera was not allowed to call her family until the next day, and in the interval she was subjected to the grossest racial insults. The aftermath was several weeks in the hospital recovering from a nervous breakdown.
But there were further repercussions. She decided to return to college, where she earned a master's in political science and then went on to build a lucrative career with Ford Motor Co. as a liaison promoting car dealerships with black owners across the United States.
I still had only one black friend in Roanoke. But that was going to change. I heard about Diversity, as our group was called then, and I went to my first meeting thinking about Vera. In the years since joining, I've finally had the chance to really know some black Americans on a personal basis, and also many whites who, like myself, wanted not just to meet blacks, but to explore their own feelings about racial differences. And what a rewarding experience it's been.
There's a downside, however. Occasionally when I overhear a white person make a derogatory remark about black people, I become so angry that I want to shout, "But you're talking about my friends - Joe, Alfred, Rachelle, Vern, Claudia, Kate, Marcus, Sharon, Charles, Stan. They're good people. They're intelligent people. How dare you!" But I don't, because castigating doesn't solve problems. If racism is ever to end, it will happen only when we make an effort, however small, to change our own perceptions.
The first step is getting to know each other.
Marcia Weis of Roanoke is a retired professor.
LENGTH: Medium: 64 linesby CNB