Desultory Diary, Episode 27: Juneteenth

Regarding the “No Justice, No Peace,” movement, Makia Green of Black Lives Matter DC, as reported in the June 13-19^th, 2020, edition of The Economist, said, “The political weather has shifted; we now have widespread multiracial, multi-generation support.”

Can it be true? I’m beginning to believe it.

I’m an old man. I’ve written that the political crisis, the political and cultural division in this country, has never been worse in my lifetime than it is now. Now I write that I’ve never been more hopeful about ending racism—or, at the very least, significantly diminishing it—than I am now.

I might be old, but  I am not nostalgic for the ‘good old days.’ I was raised in the era of segregation. Black people, (Indian, Chinese, Hispanics as well), didn’t exist for us as neighbors. I saw a few blacks on TV when I was a kid, in such shows as Amos ‘n’ Andy and The Beulah Show, in which the great Ethel Waters played a maid, (she quit the show in 1951, whereupon Hattie McDaniel took over the role). Not much progress since Butterfly McQueen’s Prissy in Gone with the Wind in 1939!

While I attended Dickinson High School in Jersey City from 1960-1963, the school was, technically, desegregated. But every black kid, without exception,  was in the “Vocational Arts” program. We in the college prep section had no contact with them.

My parents were surprisingly liberal regarding race. My father had long since passed away when I married my wife, a recent immigrant from India, in 1974. My mother welcomed her into the family without reservation, just as her family welcomed us.

Both my wife and I are pediatricians. We eventually settled down in the Roland Park area of Baltimore, a white neighborhood. No problems, right? Wrong.

In 1980 we adopted a black child, who is still the joy of our lives.

Roland Park is an upper-class neighborhood; rejection is more subtle here. (Did we ever learn that the the ‘n’ word was directed at our son? We did).

In a bitter mood, I wrote the following poem, hinting at the racism we encountered:

http://ghll.truman.edu/ghll30/Dorsett%20Forty%20Years%20in%20Roland%20Park.html

I am not going through a list of slights we received on Wickford Road. I must say that we didn’t always receive hostile reactions. Would the majority have been pleased if we had moved way, though? No doubt.

I will recount one incident, and only one. When my son was a teenager, he worked one evening on a friend’s car, parked across the street. A neighbor—Philip said he knew who she was and she knew him, but I never pressed him--called the police. According to her complaint, a black man was stealing a car on her block. The police—two white police officers—came. My son calmly identified himself. The officers were effusively apologetic. But they had guns. What if one had been a racist or in a bad mood? Remember Tamar Rice. Remember Philandro Castile. Remember George Floyd. 

There are many to remember, there are many we must not forget.

I recall this incident only, with a little bitterness. yes, but also with a sense of relief. Twenty or so years earlier, I thought at the time, they just might have killed him. And if this confrontation took place in, say, Ferguson, now—who knows what could have happened?

“This time it’s different,” said Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, in a moving, recent speech. I’m beginning to believe it! Our neighborhood has changed.

A welcome sign: neighbors have organized a celebration of Juneteenth, commemorating June 19, 1965 when General Granger form the U.S. occupational forces announced to the slaves of Galveston, Texas, that they were now free. If it becomes a holiday, and I hope it will, I trust the day will be used as a day to commemorate not only how far we’ve come—but  how far we have to go.

Will we participate? You bet. For the first time in forty years in Roland Park, we now feel almost welcome here.