THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 31, 1995 TAG: 9601030607
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Long : 207 lines
It's been 130 years since the end of slavery, 40 years since segregated schools were outlawed, 30 years since the Civil Rights Act was passed. Yet the United States remains a nation torn by race.
The O.J. Simpson verdict, for instance, produced vastly different reactions that seemed to fall along racial lines. At Fort Bragg, N.C., two white soldiers recently were charged with murdering a black couple at random on a downtown street.
Sometimes the racial divide seems impossibly deep and wide. Yet in Hampton Roads and around the country, small groups of people are making efforts to bridge it.
In this month's Hampton Roads Roundtable, The Virginian-Pilot and public radio station WHRV gathered some of them to talk about those efforts.
They agreed that the problem is, indeed, immense; that it is a matter not just of skin color but of economic empowerment; and that the only hope of solving it lies in getting together and grappling with it face to face, with caring hearts and open minds.
The discussion was moderated by staff writer Bill Sizemore.
WHY IS IT SO HARD?
Why is race still such an explosive and divisive issue in America?
Mary Redd Nelson: Well, I think people do not understand that the color of your skin does not make the person. It comes from your background.
In our communities we've had several efforts toward racial healing, reconciliation and understanding. We have some representatives here who have been involved with some of those efforts. Dr. Barry Einhorn, you've been involved with the African-American/Jewish Coalition. Based on your experiences, how successful do you think we are at this?
Dr. Barry Einhorn: While we can bridge the gap by face-to-face kinds of relationships, in general, people in this country have prejudices.
It's easy to be prejudiced against somebody whose color is different. You can easily see that. So it makes it more simple. Thank God for our forefathers who had the wisdom to write our Constitution the way it is so that prejudice is not a governmental attitude. It's just a human trait, I guess.
So how do we have success? Simply by sitting down and talking to each other and getting to know each other. It's amazing how when you get to talk to people you find that you have so much in common that it makes it easy to talk about things.
Helen Fooshe, you have been involved with a program of study circles in Portsmouth called ``Face To Face With Race.'' How successful has this been in addressing the racial problem?
Helen Fooshe: For those who participated, it's been successful. To enlist people to come into the groups has been less than successful.
Why do you think that the numbers of participants have been so disappointingly small?
Fooshe: Probably the reason is because they don't know these people. ``I wonder what they'll say to me, what will they think of me?''
Is it that the topic is so forbidding? Is there a fear of talking about this?
Pamela Riddick: I think what we're going to see is that you cannot legislate humanity and morality.
Just because you change words on a piece of paper does not necessarily change automatically the way humans relate or do not relate with one another.
There has to be some sort of conversation, if you will, an opportunity to truly gain understanding for one another.
I deal with poor children. People assume because a person is impoverished, a poverty of the pocketbook also means poverty of the mind. One has nothing to do with the other. . . . It's now beyond skin color or gender. We're going down to just basic haves and have-nots.
It's through the assumption that if you're poor you're going to be ignorant or if you're female you cannot do a job that has tended to be male or if you're black it automatically follows that your drug-addict mother was in jail, prostitution, etc., that you have no desire for an understanding.
They're just stereotypes. If I just look at the African-American community and the children that I deal with, both black and white, to be educated and to know what it is to speak, to walk, to talk, to behave appropriately is deemed ``being white.'' And that's sad to me, because then what does it mean to be black? Or what does it mean to be Hispanic? If those things which should be basic to all human beings that are educated are solely associated with being Anglo-Saxon, then what is it for those who are not? What are we? And I think until those barriers are broken down, we will be forever in this problem.
Nelson: But that problem is not associated with race to me as much as it is associated with a value system. . . .
I see white kids today and I just laugh. I think it's kind of funny. I see a lot of white boys with these little braids on. It's not even as much today about blackness. . . .
I'm seeing youngsters picking up a different kind of a value system. They see that it's not popular to learn anymore.
And back to the question of what causes us to be that way: It is our backgrounds. It goes back again to backgrounds. I had a little niece that was beautiful, a gorgeous, dark-skinned girl, with gorgeous long hair. And we called her ``Chocolate.'' I did not realize that in calling her ``Chocolate,'' what was I doing? I was stereotyping her because we were all lighter. So what had I been taught? I had been taught that any lighter kids were better off than the darker kids. Families tend to do that. I picked that up somehow. Now I'm smart enough not to do that anymore, but I'm just saying, in your environment you pick up these things. You don't realize it. When you go out, you're carrying this out in your behavior.
The other problem is, look at politics today. Newt Gingrich, for example - is he a racist? Does he pick on the downtrodden? Yes, he does. Because he's using the downtrodden as an opportunity to advance himself. There's got to be somebody to blame for the situation we find ourselves in today. We find ourselves in the area where we've got all kinds of problems. So what do we do? We paint the picture that it's those welfare folk who caused this problem or it's those Medicaid folks who caused this problem. . . .
In integration it was the black male. White corporations told their employees, ``The reason I can't give you a promotion is because I have to hire these black folks.''
Riddick: The real issue is that there's only one race and that race is human. The fact that there are different ways that that humanness is expressed is the beauty of what it is to be human. . . .
You talked about the little white boys with their hair done. To me those kids are reflecting the language of poverty. Their unifying force is poverty. It's an economic issue. . . .
The lack of parenting has forced our children to be raising themselves so that they're not even concerned about a value that centers on humanity and what it is to be responsible, to have integrity or respect. It's how quick can I make it, how soon can I get it and I need it now. And we're back to what again? Materialism. And money.
IT'S ABOUT ECONOMICS
The statistics are discouraging, aren't they? The writer Benjamin DeMott, who has written about race and class in America, has made the same point that you were just making - that the root problem is economic more than it is racial. He has quoted such statistics as these: Nearly four times as many black families are below the poverty line as white families, including one out of every two black children. More than 50 percent of African-American families have incomes below $25,000. The net worth of a typical white household is 10 times that of the typical black household.
How do we deal with such huge disparities as that?
Einhorn: One of the things that I hear from my African-American friends who are businessmen is that even when they follow all the rules that are set up by the economic community, they still don't get the same even-handed deal that their white counterparts do, and they're frustrated by that.
Riddick: Economic empowerment is still the cornerstone. Education is the vehicle, but economic empowerment for the African-American community and all communities that are disenfranchised is going to be the only way, if you will, that we will gain leverage and escape the statistics you quoted. . . .
I think a lot of it centers around the fact that we substituted values or a sense of humanness or spirituality for material satisfaction, because that didn't hurt. You couldn't take that away from me. That was non-confrontational. I earned it. So our children now define themselves in terms of being successful as humans not by what they stand for and what they do but what they get and how they get it.
Fooshe: How do we get away from that?
Riddick: Well, some people don't want to get away from it because it makes money. It's an exploitation business. . . .
The O.J. Simpson trial - I know you had mentioned it in terms of race, but it was basically, to me, about money. When you have enough money, no matter what you do, innocent or not, or perceived innocent or not, in this country you'll get off.
Nelson: I thought this was a great lesson for the majority community. And they missed it. They missed it completely. I thought, ``Oh, yeah! This case will finally get folks to understand that when you've got money, you can get anything.'' The problem in the African-American community is that we don't have money. However, the media made it about race. It wasn't about race. It was about O.J. having the money to get off.
Fooshe: We keep going back to economic power. Is that the only way we're going to get along?
Nelson: Well, that's what people understand.
Fooshe: Can't we understand each other as human beings?
ELUSIVE INTEGRATION
You've all said things like, ``When we come together and meet face to face, we see that there really are no differences between us. We really are one race.'' Isn't this the point of integration?
Einhorn: That was the perception that that was what was going to happen, wasn't it? When people integrated the schools -
But it didn't. It happened in law but not in fact. Whites fled to the suburbs.
Nelson: Once that occurred, it left blacks in bankrupt systems, and that leads us back to economics again.
There was no tax base so we couldn't have the kind of school systems that we need because the businesses and so forth had gone out of the community.
Riddick: And now, because their children have to be seated next to other children who may not have the same values, we're looking at a conversation about charters and vouchers, which is nothing more than another vehicle to be segregated. . . .
You asked, ``When is it going to happen?'' It's going to happen when it's borderline too late, in my opinion. . . . It won't happen until it becomes catastrophic enough to make it happen.
Fooshe: Would you feel that this kind of a conversation among the children in your school would be a place to start, while they're very young?
Riddick: Out of the mouths of babes! My kids talk about it all the time. They're shrewd. They can see the forest through the trees. They know better about how the world operates than we give them credit for. That's part of the reason why many of them don't deal with it, because we talk out of both sides of our mouths. We say one thing and do another.
Fooshe: Is there some way you can help them to know that they are respected and honored for the person that they are?
Riddick: Yes. I go to work every day and tell them. . . .
I was thinking about my 2-year-old and my 8-year-old. In particular my 8-year-old, when she was 2 or 3. She went to day care and her day care was multiracial. It didn't matter to them. They were just kids - throwing food, diapers. They were kids, it didn't matter. Somewhere along the line they are taught the difference, and I don't know how subtle or purposeful those differences are taught, but perhaps the answer lies with the children.
KEYWORDS: HAMPTON ROADS ROUNDTABLE RACE RELATIONS by CNB