Continuing to pry my eyes open to the wide ignorance of growing up a privileged white male: a darkness that perhaps could have been dispelled by the obvious evidence appearing, bright, over the years. The tar-paper huts where the elementary school bus stopped, picking up many of the Black students at our rural Maryland school 35 miles outside of Washington, D.C.—south of the Mason-Dixon Line; at ten y.o., riding past “Resurrection City” on the Mall in D.C. during the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968; completely unaware of the geography of roads not taken in that long-ago rural countryside as they passed through the African-American settlements outside of the “regular” towns; blindness mixed with a slowly maturing wonder at and deep respect for African-American creativity, intelligence, and sensitivity. I surely didn’t understand the full import of the lyrics in Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” from his Innervisions album even after doing a report on it in 11th grade English class; nor the complexities involved in a course I took, “The Economics of Poverty,” while taking a year away from engineering school back in 1979. Maybe it was Lightnin’ Hopkins who really cracked open my soul. So many points where knowledge and feeling would have fired a deeper awareness of the ongoing and severely compromised conditions of social justice in the United States. There was not enough curiosity available within privilege.
Tracing the historical roots of ‘racist thought’ in Amurika up to contemporary times, this is a challenging read. The extraordinary level of detail and huge number of players across 400 years makes it sometimes difficult to hold onto all the facts. But the main ‘plot,’ racism, is the important point to be dissembled.
Thanks, George, for recommending this one, and thanks, Rick for earlier recommending:
and I would also include
and
There are (many) Others whose histories I need yet to understand.
(First African Poetess)
No! Not like the lark, didst thou circle and sing,
High in the heavens on morn’s merry wing,
But hid in the depths of the forest’s dense shade,
There where the homes of the lowly were made,
Thou nested! Though fettered, thou frail child of night,
Thy melody trilled forth with naive delight;
And all through the throes of the night dark and long,
Earth’s favored ones harkened thy ravishing song,
So plaintive and wild, touched with Africa’s lilt;
Of wrong small complaint, sweet forgiveness of guilt-
Oh, a lyric of love and a paean of praise,
Didst thou at thy vespers, Dark Nightingale, raise;
So sweet was the hymn rippling out of the dark,
It rivalled the clear morning song of the lark.
