An American Dream

Waylon Jennings

In 1979 Waylon Jennings released a song entitled "It's the World's Gone Crazy (Cotillion)."  I doubt that even he would have believed how prophetic he actually was.

On August 8, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial entitled "I Have a Dream."  If you have never read it, I encourage you to do so.  It is one of the best speeches in American history.

There are many memorable lines which are now iconic in American culture.  My personal favorite is this:

Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Where is the dream today?

It's an interesting fact that we are all, in some way, captives of our racial and geographic heritage.  I am now part of the most maligned segment of American society: White, Southern, Straight.  I am now part of the group who is blamed for every failure that America has produced.  To the extent that those with my skin color have made mistakes, I understand the backlash.

Within my lifetime, the advances in civilization fostered by our founding "dead white guys," once celebrated in America, are now forgotten.  They have been replaced by a bitterness fueled by the exaggeration of their shortcomings.  It's as though they are maligned for not fixing the whole world in one fell swoop.  It's an unrealistic expectation to place on any human.

Lincoln Memorial

Most days, I find myself clinging to the words of Dr. King.

Is it possible for me to be judged by the content of my character rather than my ethnic history?

I would like to tell you about my history as a Son of the South as it relates to race relations.

One side of my family once owned a plantation in the heart of Mississippi in the 1800's.  As such, there is no doubt in my mind that they owned slaves as a part of the cotton farming operation they ran on that plantation.  That was one hundred-fifty years ago.

I know little about that side of my family other than what I just said.  There are no family stories about them that I know.

So, I am, very likely, descended from slave owners.  I can't change that fact and I won't run from it.  It is a part of the legacy that led to me sitting here typing in 2016.  Judge me for it if you will, but, perhaps, you can see it from my point of view: I didn't choose my heritage any more than you did yours.

I make no attempt here to defend nor persecute those who have gone before me.  I merely say that there is a history, a present, and a future.  I cannot change my history.  I can only affect my present in the hopes that the future will be influenced by the legacy that I leave.

My grandfather was often quite racist in this thinking about the black and white question. 

Oddly enough, one of his best friends was black.  His name was Charlie Hines.  I loved Charlie.  He and my grandfather loved to go fishing together, and, when my grandfather died, Charlie was a pall-bearer.

Race relations in the south can be pretty complicated.

My grandfather was a man with many qualities.  Some good, some questionable, some bad.  He was like most other humans in that regard, for who is perfect?  I learned quite a lot from him and I'm proud to be his grandson.  Early in my life, I decided to take the solid lessons he taught to heart and discard the others.

His daughter (my mother) was and is not a racist.  She, a Daughter of the South, grew up in a world in which Jim Crow laws were deeply rooted and in effect, yet she rejected the racism of her culture.  She taught me the same.  She believed that Lincoln had it right when he said that "all men are created equal."

Fast forward to my children's experience with race relations.

A few years back, when my oldest son was about ten years old, he and I were watching a John Wayne movie called "The Cowboys."  It remains my favorite John Wayne movie.  It's a wonderful coming-of-age story in which a handful of kids go on a cattle drive.

The cook in the movie is played by Roscoe Lee Browne.  He did an amazing job in that role.  The movie was released in 1972 long before political correctness was in vogue.  They, therefore, used historically accurate terms.  Again, think of it what you may, but several times Browne's character was referred to as a "nigger."

If you find offense in me writing that word, please read on.  I have a point to make.

My son has an enormous vocabulary.  He has always been interested in words and their meaning.  Yet, this verbose boy, raised in the deep south by a straight, white, southern male, turned to me and asked, "Daddy, what do they keep calling that man?"

Roscoe Lee Browne

He had never even heard the word.

I have to tell you that I was astonished.  Had we really come that far?  By the time I was ten years old, I had heard that word countless times.  I felt an enormous pride that I had raised a son in a household where the word was never even spoken.

Yes, race relations have come quite a long way in my family tree.  A fact of which I am very proud.

To read the headlines of today, however, one would think that it's 1850.  I simply cannot understand the mindset of those who malign me for being white in the same breath that they complain about being judged by their color.

I'm not saying that racism does not exist, for that would be foolish.  Of course it exists.  It always will.  It is as old as humankind itself.  It exists all over our planet.  Show me an ethnic group and I'll show you another group with which there has been racial tension.  It matters not if that group is from Asia, Europe, Africa, Latin America, or North America.  Of course, the fact that it exists doesn't make it right.  It just makes it a fact.  Murder and rape also exist.  It would do us no service to deny their existence.

Desegregation was the buzz word of my youth.  I went to school in fifth grade with armed National Guardsmen on my school bus in Louisville,  KY.  My mother was afraid for my safety, but, I have to admit, I thought it was pretty cool.  His machine gun was intoxicating to a ten year-old boy, but it was a dangerous time.  I didn't realize the danger because I was just a stupid kid.

The intent of desegregation was to mix the racially divided American stew pot.

Now, however, the goal seems to be quite the reverse.  Exclusion is the game du jour.  Safe spaces at the university level are all the rage.

Columbia University has a retreat to which everyone is invited to discuss issues of race.  Well, there is one exception to the invitation list: whites.

If you are white, you may not drink from the fountain.

There are also university forums in which all are invited to discuss gay and lesbian issues.  Oh wait, there is one exclusion: heterosexuals.

If you think I'm just grousing to be belligerent, I'm not.  I'm simply pointing out a hypocrisy.  How can one champion racial equality and harmony by excluding certain races?  It's a bizarre situation.

So, it turns out that Waylon was right.  The world has gone crazy and we've all had a front row seat.

I'm sorry Dr. King.  We've not heeded your call to judge on character alone.

Perhaps, though, there will come a day when I can be judged on my actions and character rather than the actions of my fore bearers.

Now, there's a dream.

TheCurmudgeon