The racial healing protocol, proposed in this series of written installments, known as “For Racial Healing”, is consistent with the developing demographics currently exhibited in the nation. An increasing pluralism has been demonstrated by the “darkening” of the American population with non-Hispanic whites anticipated to be a minority race in the United States within two-three decades; indeed, according to a recent Brookings Institution report, as set forth in an article published by The Hill, less than half (47%) of the country’s children had become non-Hispanic white. While the current administration’s immigration policies may have slowed the pace of demographic change, data show that those policies have not stopped or decreased the “darkening” trend, driven by long-term fertility and other patterns.
As previously referenced, also relevant to a decline in the influence of white racism nationally is the continuing growth of Americans living in urban areas, a change that reduces filiopietism, which has historically been more prevalent in rural and agriculturally-dependent areas of the United States. Only through an ever-growing acclimation to pluralism and greater individualistic determination do old myths and the constant effects of filiopietism begin to erode and evaporate. Obviously, a somewhat slow process, but a necessary one has emerged for America to proceed on a realistic path toward racial equality.
The end of racism will not happen everywhere. That’s the lesson to learn: not to overestimate the end of gratuitous hate, which regularly climbs out of seemingly commonplace times to remind us of one more example lest we forget. Those of us who are encouraged and inspired by the nation’s growing pluralism, we, nonetheless, must, for our own preservation and sanity, accept that there are places in this country where homogeneity for all things white is more important than life itself, for homogeneity there means to be a synonym (or maybe even something greater than a synonym) for filiopietism. In such places, white folks will still die for a white cause, absent a second thought, to keep homogeneity without blemish, where racial healing cannot and will not possibly yet abide. We know where they exist.
The end of racism for those of us who desire the end isn’t far from here, near the juncture where hope meets will, where hope meets willingness. What would it look like in that place where the end of racism dwells? Racial healing will be known, embraced and consistent, accepted and practiced. We are not far from the end of racism at these places: one-to-one, Black and white without surprise or impulse, without strained dedication. We are almost there in those places that want to be there. Such locations are where we are more the open and present, Black and white, colorful and colorless; for we are more when we’re more than that mythological past, which can become an indulgent and exclusive present.
What do we need for racism to end everywhere in this country? Do we need for all locales and everyone to stop their tendentious recall against those of color? Of course, that would be ideal, but it is not probable. There are just too many places and too many towns and too many people and too many views and too much hate and too little empathy, as a people, to have unanimity for subjects so controversial and pervasive as epochal Black liberation and racial healing. So, let us enjoy the places and the people where the seeds are planted and the harvest remains eagerly awaited.
Speaking personally, the change I felt moving me toward full Black liberation and Black-white healing occurred as a visceral experience. I understood the change in a largely emotional way. Of course, my views were adjusted, and a preponderance of alternative impressions, opinions, even conjectures accompanied that visceral persuasion. Admittedly, the experience didn’t consist of starting dead center between the option of racism carried forward or the other process that impelled me toward full Black liberation and racial healing. I was, in retrospect, on a continuum, but had already consciously withdrawn from the specter of racism.
Of course, one could argue that racism would have been the easier context, for my background foreshadowed it. I had been conditioned from years of hearing commentary that explained the fundaments for racism being carried into the future. In many ways, there was an implicit proposition at the time that racism constituted the only option, for it had been the one most comfortable for my ancestors, the one history to be imparted to peers, friends, relatives, and me. There comes a time, however, when all the accoutrements of racial privilege are weighed against one’s moral and personal attitude and conduct. Away from the comfort of conformity, what do I, in the core of my being – to live with myself – believe that is constant with my judgment, my consequential judgment?
But that is not the end of travel on the continuum toward full Black liberation and racial healing. At what point does a demonstration of the transformative experience become manifest? In other words, how does one show that racism is not acceptable, not consistent with an individual’s conscience? It does little good for one to believe a certain way and then keep it a secret, lodged in the consciousness of one’s own private dominion. Even revealing the illumination to one’s white family or white friends does not suffice without a step forward, without establishment of a stable and public act that reflects a determination made. In other words, it is no longer a private matter where the conscience is concerned. We seek a broader and richer life by taking a clear and incontrovertible engagement along that continuum and, without manifestation, then one does not enjoy the effect of persuasion made in self-fulfillment.
In my case, teaching in the all-Black public school in Monticello, Arkansas before mandatory integration of the local education system took effect illustrated my desire for a richer life that stood as compensation for the alternative decision, which separated me sharply from racism in an undeniable and irretrievable way. For those of us who are inheritors of damaged heritage and filiopietism, we do not adjust ourselves along that continuum sufficiently until we represent and recognize separation from where we were, as legatees of the past, and where we should be as ourselves, established and functionally ordained with another selfhood. During the time I taught at the Black public school in Monticello, an event occurred that hurled me headlong into a non-revision, non-return, and corrective universe. I was physically attacked for teaching in the local Black school by a group of white racists.
Up close, it’s pertinent to realize the distinction between rednecks and peckerwoods. Most importantly, those intimidators, who are known to carry the imprimatur of prominent, local, white authority figures for enforcing white rule, are especially dangerous. They are peckerwoods, as opposed to the run-of-the-mill rednecks, who tend to be self-appointed enforcers and intimidators for a variety of purposes that can include white dominance over Blacks, but who, unlike peckerwoods, do not enjoy the tacit authority of local officialdom.
When the attack against me started, I wasn’t necessarily thinking much about the clear and orderly distinctions between rednecks and peckerwoods, but then later, I decided that there had been representatives of both sets present at the corral that night as the short-lived assault began, which had been immediately interrupted when a white, former professional football player, who miraculously appeared out of nowhere at that deserted spot several miles from town, jumped into the middle of it all and said those salvific and reverential group of words – at least to me at the time, they sounded like holy and profound instructions from a burning bush, “this is not going to happen”. And it didn’t.
The combined collection of redneck and peckerwood white racists succumbed to the physicality of this football icon, but even more importantly, to the town’s worship of that athletic hero. It didn’t matter why the group backed away: I just wanted my immediately preceding life back. Even though I was safe afterwards, the experience somehow altered my internal compulsion toward Black liberation and Black-white racial healing thereafter. I was more articulately certain about my views and the location of my position on the subjects. I could more emphatically support Black liberation and Black-white racial healing. Lingering trepidations in discourse on the subjects disappeared, and in various ways, this moment of personal history would affect me thereafter in a myriad of expressive ways.
It somehow seemed I had been marked a different person. I was physically the same except for a bruise or two, but the incipient attack by a few of the town’s rednecks and peckerwoods had anointed my passage toward something more relevant than I previously recognized or even imagined. This new appreciation would reenforce a non-arbitrary line that I knew existed and that I had now crossed. In an awkward and odd manner, this group of assaulters unwittingly and unexpectedly served and aided me to see more clearly a part of my future I had not foreseen. There were also a series of conclusions and perspectives I would not have to doubt ever again. I was now clearly on the other side from my past, away from my own filiopietism and damaged heritage.
If one does not commit to an act of manifestation, such as a public and authentic step to a tangible demonstration of the adopted revelation, then one has not taken a redemptive step, but rather has conveyed, in the conceptual framework of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a cheap formulation of individual redemption. Bonhoeffer, the German martyr and theologian who fought against Hitler and the Nazis in his native country during the 1930s and early 1940s, defined cheap grace as grace without cost, as “grace we bestow on ourselves”. Without an outward expression where the personal persuasion can be measured and acknowledged by Blacks and white racists alike, a person has merely committed the moral equivalency of bestowing exoneration on one’s self, as an analogue to the Bonhoeffer characterization of those who gather for themselves cheap grace, as grace without cost.
The end of racism means a deep and greater presence of authentic passion. But we also live in an age that will be remembered for its racial and ethnic insensitivity, shown in many white Americans, energized by a presumption of continued white domination. With this characterization as a most critical background, why would I suggest in these essays that we are nearing the end of racism in this country?
Because I believe we are – not everywhere, to be sure, but certainly in many places throughout the nation. No doubt demographics have a role in driving the nation to the end of racism, but we have, at the same time, an increased reliance on authentic passion by many in America, where people of different races are coming together with ease and comfort, illustrating an inevitability, a pleasant and often delightful inevitability, for pluralism among Blacks and whites and other races. Evidence of authentic passion permeates the multi-cultural relationships that increasingly now define us.
Therefore, the end of racism is among us. Everywhere in this country? Of course not. Homogeneity and separation rule without compromise too often in many locales and regions, but that should not detract us from the pleasure and opportunities where trends toward adherence to authentic passion are ever closer to full emergence.
This current state of affairs means we are capable of being optimistic that good things have happened to bring us closer to a desired condition. Along with the advancement comes the acknowledgment that pressures cannot subside for us to make the right decisions to guarantee a continuity of steps that will have brought us from more unequal and unjust times; it may be our reality that we will always be near the end of racism, for only by its near quality will we, as human beings, feel the need to maintain constant vigilance and assurance to take the necessary actions of ensuring that the pulse of racial equity and fair treatment will remain a correct, principal priority of community life. While authentic passion is a function of individual goodwill, we must labor so that laws, regulations, voting rights, incarceration policies, judicial decisions, etc., facilitate those results that establish us as a community whose racial judgments are consistent with equitable treatment, conducive to authentic passion.
No doubt, for the foreseeable future, whiteness will remain suspect. With individual, one-to-one, Black and white allyships, trust becomes more evident, dependent upon the many decisions that allyship between Black and white may face from time to time. However, we whites can expect to be scrutinized for our residual and lesser past where goodwill would hardly be a fully accurate portrayal of our ancestors’ response to Blacks and other races.
For those persons who have achieved access to allyship, they constitute the vanguard for moving further toward the end of racism as allyships can and do flourish. Indeed, it is fair to say that, in those locations, authentic passion could not have largely occurred without damaged heritage and filiopietism being sufficiently neutralized. How did that happen? It was likely a function of both goodwill and demographics. No doubt, there has been an influx of emigres from locales that had fostered damaged heritage and filiopietistic racism, and these persons sought places where they would be free of the brutal and unjust racial environment that they left behind.
These emigres were Black, white, brown, yellow, or other. Many, of course, followed the tracks of a great migration, and while this type of relocation does not receive a lot of attention, it is a central factor in turning a metropolis into a fertile field for authentic passion gaining a substantial harvest. At the core of the multitude, an escape from damaged heritage and filiopietism has been a meaningful determinant – from a major cause to a lesser motivation, but it has been there as a source.
One may quibble with the way I have depicted “the end of racism”, but I have no doubt that America, in so many, generative places, is now on a collective, grand journey toward equity for all the races. It is surely not a single incident that has caused me to arrive at this conclusion. Rather, I measure my optimism from the streets. Sure, the boardrooms and political bodies need more racially diverse faces; and sure, we should have more racially diverse congregations in our houses of worship; and sure, we must expect more racially diverse residents in the more expensive parts of our American cities and towns. But we have reached more than an inflection point at those places where the end of racism has risen as a tide on the horizon, and the sweep of that view is not even denied, for one of our major American political parties is doing everything in its power, including voter suppression and the overthrow of governments (federal, state, and local) to prohibit the impact of this reality.
I left avenues of homes and fields on the cusp of the Mississippi River Delta many years ago, hearing numbered voices at that time calling for a more equitable and freer country. I have since heard ever-increasing and ever-expanding voices resonate to the same call, and now, at the beginning of my ninth decade, the ears tingle with a roar of millions of human voices, never being more definite, more persuasive, and uncompromising for an end to racism.
Next Time: Between Racial Healing and Reconciliation