Is Racism Really a Thing of the Past?

"Racism may have been a problem in the past, but things are different now. We don't really need things like affirmative action' and diversity awareness training' because everything is ok now, right?"

As an African-American I am dismayed when I hear statements such as these. I was born during the Civil Rights era and as a result have lived my entire life under the protection of Civil Rights laws. And while I do acknowledge that there have been vast improvements in equality and opportunity for African-Americans and other people of color during my lifetime I am still astonished whenever I hear someone assert that "everything is ok now, right?"

Why is it that society can easily accept that children who experience some sort of traumatic event such as the divorce or death of parents early in life may have behavioral problems or difficulty in school but cannot accept that African-Americans and other people of color are not equally traumatized by the numerous acts of discrimination that many of us have faced throughout our lifetimes?

Why is it that society reasonably agrees that if a person has suffered from neglect or abuse as a child then he is at much higher risk for abusing or neglecting his own children when he becomes a parent but cannot agree that parents of color who were born before the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 may have also suffered a form of racially motivated abuse or neglect that might adversely affect their ability to parent their children?

I think that part of the problem is a lack of understanding and communication between Caucasians and people of color. Despite efforts to achieve integration and equality over the last 40 years there are still areas of the United States where whites can live their entire lives and never know a person of color personally. And because of the often painful nature of our own experiences with racism and discrimination we, as African-Americans are reluctant to share our personal stories even with whites who would consider us to be among their closest friends.

And while it is not impossible for a white person to become the victim of random acts of racial prejudice my experience with white colleagues and friends is that they fail to grasp the pervasive and ongoing nature of the discrimination that will always remain a part of the personal history of African-Americans even though things may indeed be "better" now.

I was five years old in 1968 and remember clearly the news of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the ugly television images of riots and looting that occurred in the aftermath of his shooting. I remember strongly identifying with the image of young Bernice King cradled on her mother's lap during her father's funeral. Bernice and I were about the same age and while I didn't completely understand at that point in my life who Dr. King was and why someone had wanted to kill him I remember feeling a profound sadness for that little girl and the fact that something awful had happened to her daddy.

I also remember watching scenes from the aftermath of Robert Kennedy's assassination just two months later and again feeling that queasy stomach feeling when I realized that Senator Kennedy's large brood of young children would be forced to live the rest of their lives without him. Some of them seemed so little; a few even younger than I was. My five year old heart was heavier than I am sure my parents ever suspected.

In addition to these national tragedies I also heard my parents talk about the slights and mistreatment that they suffered as African-Americans on an almost daily basis and I saw how it affected every aspect of how they lived their lives. I remember my mother dressing in her Sunday best, usually wearing a suit, stockings, high heels and meticulously styling her hair before going to the grocery store. When asked why she did this her response was that "As colored people we always have to look our best when we go out. It's the only way that we can hope to get any sort of respect, and even then it's not a guarantee."

I remember my dad, who had been appointed as a city firefighter in 1964 always having these spirited discussions with his friends regarding "integration". At 5 I didn't know what the word "integration" meant but it sounded awfully important and he and his friends always seemed to become very agitated when discussing it. I found out some years later that it was actually integration of the fire department that they were discussing because in 1968, 4 years after President Johnson had signed Civil Rights legislation into law, the city fire department in our town was still segregated with all of the African-American firefighters assigned to a single firehouse (and no Hispanic or Asian individuals appointed to the department at all). Incredibly, the "integration debates" of my father and his friends would rage on for another 10 years before the city discontinued the "Black Only Firehouse" in 1978.

I was also not blind to small, everyday acts of discrimination even at my very young age. I remember my dad taking my sisters and me to buy shoes. The salesman had just begun helping us when an elderly white lady came in. The salesman immediately left us and went to help her. After watching him bringing her box after box of various shoes to try on for about 20 minutes without his ever coming back to finish helping us (even though we had arrived first) my dad exploded in frustration and angrily left the store.

There were also subtle differences that nevertheless did not escape my attention even at age 5. Why were all the kids in the audience for "Cartoons with Janie", a local afternoon show all white? Why were all the people in TV commercials and most of the shows all white? I can remember watching the "Ed Sullivan Show" on Sunday nights and if a black performer was going to be on, my parents and all their friends would telephone each other to alert them that Harry Belafonte or Della Reese or the Temptations or the Supremes were going to be on because no one wanted to miss the chance to see "colored people on TV."

I remember overhearing my mother and grandmother talking one afternoon. My mother was commenting that the price of Ebony magazine had gone up and my grandmother was asking my mother why she didn't just cancel the subscription if it was becoming too expensive. My mother replied, "I want the girls to have the chance to see and read positive things about people who look like them." Even at five I somehow knew that it was a sad commentary on our society if only a single magazine could provide that opportunity for my sisters and me.

Finally, something in my 5 year old brain seemed to "snap" and I remember quite vividly marching up to my mother and demanding to know "how come we have to be Black!" I was livid and my mother seemed stunned by the outburst and stammered something about my being Black because she was Black and so were her mother and father. Fortunately, this self-hatred didn't last and as I matured I began to develop a strong sense of ethnic pride.

In middle school I always chose works either by or about African-Americans for my book reports and scouted out any club or academic endeavor at school that had no people of color and made it my mission in life to qualify so that African-Americans would be represented.

Years later I learned about a study done by Kenneth and Mamie Clark in the 1940s and 1950s in which young black children were asked to choose between white dolls and black dolls. The children overwhelmingly identified the white doll as the "nice doll" or the "good doll" and the black doll as "ugly" or "bad". Sadly the experiment was repeated in 2005 with similar results.

Make no mistake, I am grateful for the strides we have made in this country toward greater equality for all people and I have enjoyed many benefits as a result of the work that Dr. King and others have done. My sisters and I all have college degrees and well paying jobs and we all three own our own homes. The Black middle class is growing by leaps and bounds and African-American young people are attending college in greater numbers than ever before.

But, when my 5 year old self felt compelled to demand an explanation for what I perceived as the great travesty of having been born black and 40 years later we are still seeing evidence of Black children not valuing themselves and their heritage, can anyone really believe that racism is a thing of the past?

Referenceswww.loc.gov/exh ibits/brown/brown-brown.html