Homeward Bound

(Note: While this post was written on the airplane on July 1st, I didn't get a chance to post it until July 6th)
From 38,000 ft:

Well, my two week stint back in the Delta moonlighting as a musical choir director and summer camp extraordinaire has come to a close, and now I’m on an airplane trying to put my thoughts down on paper. I find that when I’m not busy or when I have something more pressing to do I will try and blog on it: at the moment I don’t have much to do.

Lately I’ve been having lots of conversations about race and race relations in the Delta from in very educated and well thought-out settings. Usually these conversations spring up randomly: a guy at a coffee shop or a random encounter at play rehearsals. Coming back to and thinking of home always gives me a moment to reflect on my experiences that I’ve started to take for granted in the Delta and the racial norms that I’ve started to take for granted or still question. The biggest lesson I’ve taken away from my experiences down South this past year has been that racism runs both ways. From my liberal, guarded standpoint a study on the South was oftentimes a study of an oppressed, black, lower class with no ability to rise up due to the iron fist with which they’d been put down, whether it be by sharecropping, slavery, or a poor economy and a drug culture cultivated by an indifferent upper class.

To these stigmas and pre-conceived notions I’ve found some levels of truth. I have found that the environments my kids come from are very much a factor in their upbringing, and more pressing, the continued segregation of whites and blacks in our schools leads to the dehumanizing of those people by the other group: whether it be white, black, latino, etc. conversations will center on a naïve racism on the parts of either group.

About time I give you a concrete example: a recent acquaintance of mine works as a computer hardware technician and does things like set up networks. He recently bid on a contract at a local high school to do all of the fiber and set up the network at the school. He spoke with the district on the phone and was the only company to have bid on the project. Upon meeting the principal, however, who was black, he was soundly rejected, and even though his company had the lowest bid, the school re-issued the bid in order to attract a firm with a different racial makeup. These aren’t stories we here too much about up North.

I think that education is the only way to end or abate these racial barriers. Due to lasting poverty and a label as an “other” the African American community in towns like Lake Village keeps to itself and is proud to be self-sustaining and in control of certain sectors: the public schools, certain government jobs, etc. Meanwhile, the upper class white class in these areas leave these places alone and there is little dialogue in between. Usually situations devolve into a special interests “us verses them” mentality. How will education fix this?

Simple. These two separate, disparate communities live within 5 miles of each other and yet hardly interact except for in a grocery store or at the gas station. Further integration needs to be stressed in these communities and more support given to the public schools by the community as a whole. Magic happens when we have a community that holds its district accountable and a mixed-race population at the school. I’m not saying this is the case at my district: we do a good job, but the community needs to be more involved. Doing this does not necessarily force children to interact with one another, but rather encourages it and dispels the stereotypes that can predominate when you separate two classes of people that have been against each other for almost a century. The short answer to this is that it’s going to take time: these things don’t happen by magic. Another recent acquaintance I’ve spoken with said that reintegration happened too quickly and too poorly, and I think there’s a grain of truth to that, despite Martin Luther King Jr. and the NAACP ringing in my ears about how there was to be no more waiting. I’m still mixed on this view: I think integration was absolutely vital to the area but I think the local reactions to it, not necessarily the implementations of it were more of the cause for the current plight in the area. If we slowly start educating our kids on both ends of the class spectrum about the other and provide exposure we will see more dialogue, and the archaic racism that still predominates in areas like the Delta may slowly wittle away. Until that time, there is still a lot that needs to be done.

Home isn’t far away now. I’ll be in Washington for about three weeks and then in Minnesota getting a few more skills so I can give my kids the best music education I’m capable of, then a Tallman reunion in Wisconsin before it’s back to the Delta with a new house. I look forward to seeing all of you in Washington.

Cheers,

-Nate

“I am standing up at the water’s edge in my dream. I cannot make a single sound as you scream. It can’t be that cold, the ground is still warm to touch. This place is so quiet, sensing that storm.” –Peter Gabriel