David Norwood,
USA.
(Not sure what the rule is on contractions 🙂
I first realized I wasn’t afraid of black people when I was in grad school in Denton TX.
A friend and I had just been out at the clubs and were finishing the evening at
Whataburger, as was typical in that place and time. When we first arrived, the restaurant was
largely empty. As we sat, eating and talking, the place began to fill up with young people in tuxes
and bad ball gowns. Obviously, a high school prom had just ended.
And I noticed that my friend was getting anxious. I asked if she was OK, and if she wanted to leave.
She said “yes, please.”
I dropped her off, and as I drove home, it suddenly occurred to me that all the prom kids were black.
My friend, who would be horrified to be thought a bigot, had grown up in a white suburb of Dallas
and clearly felt uncomfortable when surrounded by black people.
Fast forward, to the late 90’s when I was a tenure-track professor of physics at Southeastern Louisiana
University. My department head passed on a request from the Associate Dean, requesting that faculty members attend
A meeting intended to acquaint faculty with students, and discuss issues of mutual concern.
When you’re on the tenure track and the associate dean asks a favor, you are well advised to say yes.
So we meet and discuss areas of student concern — not getting the classes you want, no parking spaces near your class; “How come faculty have better parking” :). This goes on for maybe an hour, and then, another faculty uses the phrase “you people”. Anyone who’s grown up in the South (like me) knows who “you people” refers to. So I
looked around and suddenly realized that all the students were black (on a campus almost exclusively white). This
was an event intended to connect faculty with black students, but it hadn’t hit me until the other professors
unfortunate comment.
Finally, at an event sponsored by my daughters school, a collection of parents and their kids congregate at a park,
to play and eat pizza. At one point, I’m talking to another parent (whose 2nd grade son is my 2nd grade daughter’s
“boyfriend”). As we talk, some of his friends and colleagues come up to join the conversation. This goes on until
the group begins to break up. Later I”m asked by an acquaintance how it happened that I, a white man, was involved
in a conversation with onlyblack men. What’s interesting is that a white man surrounded by black men is novel.
I could continue with more anecdotes, but the important question is why are most white people afraid of black
people (especially black men). Or, how did it happen that I’m NOT reflexively afraid of black men. I’ve thought
about it a lot. I went to a majority black high school, so maybe I became comfortable surrounded by black people
at a formative time. But many of my white friends WEREN’T comfortable. Or maybe growing up on Army bases (in the
60s), where blacks were fully integrated, and occupied all levels of society (there were black captains as well as
black privates). I.e., we were all green 🙂
Or maybe something else. I don’t know.
