Race Relations in America

THURSDAY, JULY 12, 2012
Race Relations in America
As I've read the comments the past two days, I've felt a lot like I was back in one of those 1970s corporate seminars on race relations - with the corporate membership being lectured to and given information by "professional" race relations experts and whoever the corporate Black Human Resources guy was.
We sat and listened politely. But, finally, someone would lose his or her cool and all the venom and anger and despair and disgust came pouring out. The rest would look at their shoes and wonder when the tirade would stop. It stopped, all right, but the feelings it represented never went away. They are as alive today in some Americans as they were in 1975. And, sometimes I wonder if those very well-meaning race relations seminars didn't add to the problem -- because most of us didn't and don't feel animosity toward Black people.
Blacks are people. They are Americans. They are educated or not. They have tried to help themselves or not. They have found a mentor or two along the way or not.
And, perhaps most important, they have come to understand that white Americans do not love or dislike them. They just want them to try to make a real life for themselves, to be good citizens and to succeed as best they can along the Bell curve that we all fit on somewhere.
But, I do know one thing.
Railing at Blacks or anyone else who is having trouble succeeding will just make them more resentful and less likely to try to fit into a society that they don't feel at ease with. That is probably one thing Condaleesa Rice would say.
In 1966, I was a university prof who volunteered to teach returning Black Vietnam vets and other Black high school graduates who had taken advantage of the new "free" university education grants. The vets were battle-hardened. But many, like the high school graduates, couldn't read. So, giving them university level Western Civilization texts was useless.
A dear friend, long dead, and I to on the job. We came in at 7:30 am and tried to teach reading the traditional way.
We failed.
Finally, in despair, I just looked out over the class and asked a simple question. Do you read anything?
Surprisingly, they did. Popular Mechanics. Motor Trends. Playboy. Ebony. Glamour. Good Housekeeping.
I had found my hook. They really didn't read much but they looked at the photos and tried to decipher the words. We became a class of magazine readers. I made 35 separate classes out of them. We talked and read together. The teaching was acceptable to young adults because it wasn't "kiddy" vocabulary cards.
They learned to read. We found the easier texts for them so they could continue to read in their regular classes. Their grades shot up. Their interest levels and politeness improved remarkably. A few of my students actually got scholarships to prestigious universities.
It was tough, slogging work for them and for me. We sweated and laughed and cried together. And, I learned the most important lesson of my adult life.
So, when I defend Black Americans, I do it with my heart.
Just to give the other side. Later on, when one of those students was in one of my English Lit 101 classes, he was in trouble. He couldn't keep up and wouldn't accept my help. He was rude, absent, failed every exam, refused to turn in papers, and generally tried to disrupt the class the few time he showed up.
I failed him - the dean and department head had told me to pass him to get rid of him, but I wouldn't - the issue wasn’t so much him as the rest of the young Black students who were working hard and watching me to see if I’d cave. He came into my office one afternoon, unannounced. His 200 pounds pushed up against my 115. I thought I was going to be killed. He ranted and screamed at me. Threatened me. I would not budge. He stormed out and went to the dean, who told him he couldn't change my grade. He left the university. Later, I heard he was in jail. That was a real failure for me. And for him. And he was not alone in his failure.
Then, there was the young woman who stayed after class one morning to tell me she was leaving the university. I was surprised because she was a good student who worked hard. She started to cry and said that her father was threatening her because she was at school and it was not a place for Blacks and surely not for Black girls. He wanted her to get married and have babies. I spent a lot of hours trying to talk to the man. He was a steelworker who thought he knew both his place and his daughter's in society. I talked so long that Patricia had a chance to finish the semester with brilliant grades. She was later accepted at the University of Pennsylvania.
Perhaps in today's polarized America, I would not have had a chance with my old-fashioned approach and maybe that's the problem today.
But, I do not believe that anyone is beyond saving, except the very few who are just plain evil, for such people exist, too.