Ugly past, brighter future

• We must pass on racial understanding to next generation.

"I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother — a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

"These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love."

Barack Obama, March 18, 2008

The message from Barack Obama's speech in Philadelphia recently was simple: We must oppose hate, but we won't rise above it if we waste time pointing fingers at each other, making connections that while true do not represent who we are. Many people stained by the sin of racism still have the capacity to improve America. These are the people who are suited for the job.

So, now that Sen. Obama mentions it, I guess I should reveal a little bit about my grandfather. He was a notorious anti-Semite and a racist. He died about a month and a half before Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech in August 1963. Given my grandfather's track record, I suspect he would have rejected the message.

And yet, even though he died before I was born, he is also a part of me. I owe my existence to him as much as I do to any of my ancestors. I reject his ideas. But what I have learned, recently, is that it is not enough to ignore such ideas, but to also understand them.

Even though I never knew my grandfather, I have felt the ripples of his influence in my life. They have left me with an attic in my soul, a musty and dark place where prejudice and bias hides. I'm not proud that I have such a place. It was filled during my childhood with old joke books and racial stereotypes. As a child, I never heard the "n" word, but I did sometimes hear another archaic term that began with "j."

Also in that attic is a large cardboard box labeled with the words: "Irrational fear of the different."

When Obama mentioned his grandmother's fear, that struck a chord with me. Because although my parents did not teach me to hate, I've realized recently that they may have unwittingly taught me to fear.

My parents did not talk about my grandfather while I was growing up during the 1970s in our insular region of suburban New Jersey. They didn't talk much about the civil rights movement either, but when pressed, my parents at least told me that every individual should be judged on merit.

And yet there was a silence on the overall issue of race. That silence created a void that was then filled with unspoken fears of the different, and those fears are what moved into my attic.

What's a paradox here is that the silence achieved one small good. It blocked me off from the overt racism and hatred of previous generations. My parents were my buffer, and I'm grateful for that.

But I think this is why America still has work to do, why we still have not fully realized King's dream. So many of us are two generations — or less — from a legacy of hate. Many of us have people in our lives who in the full light of day would be an embarrassment to a thinking person.

And then we get trapped, in a way. We have become so unwilling to admit our biases, so afraid others will discover the skeletons in our closets, the boxes in our attics, the bigoted relatives and the childhood jokes, that we don't engage in a full discussion on race. That's why it was refreshing when instead of trying to deny any connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama turned it around and used the controversy as a way of launching a discussion. It was a political gamble, to be sure, and it may not win over voters. But the speech in Philadelphia does open a door to possibilities.

We can't deny the anger that quietly exists in black community or the fear that exists in the white community. But one way of dealing with both is to realize that blacks may have more to be legitimately angry about than whites have to fear. Either way, we need to let go of both anger and fear if we are to make further progress.

From the white perspective, I believe fear is a key emotion. Why did the Southern whites react to the emancipation of the slaves with laws designed to keep black people subservient? Fear of losing power over blacks. Why did they fight so hard against the dismantling of segregation? Fear of change. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the different. Again, fear of the loss of control. Fear of retribution.

Why is it that when a black person walks into a store that an employee would follow him, or her, around or keep an wary eye on that person? Fear. Then, this sparks the very understandable reaction from the black person to this racist fear: anger. Leave these two emotions alone to work against each other and the result is hate.

What is needed is for us to climb up into our attics and find those old cardboard boxes of irrational fears. Now, we can't toss those boxes out. They are unfortunately part of ourselves, but we can add reason, perspective and empathy. Then we can hope that those boxes might become something else, something better.

There's something else we can do. Let's not be silent. Let's talk to our kids about what we think. Let's tell the next generation they need not fear or hate. Then, maybe we can leave them with a wonderful gift — nothing in their attics.

Ed Bond is a copy editor at the Star-Gazette and an adjunct faculty member of the journalism department at Ithaca College.

Section: Opinion

Page: 14

From: Staff

Source: Staff

Publication: Star-Gazette