Black Not Blind
Bryant K. Smith
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Bryant K. Smith
ISBN 978-0-9823833-2-2
Discover other titles by Bryant K. Smith at Smashwords.com
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
****
Foreword
Why would I spend my time writing my perceptions about my day-to-day take on the world? Let me tell you. I want to help, as many white people as possible understand the world they have created. If I can get them to just think about what it is they have done for just one moment, I will have contributed something positive to society. My other reason for writing this book is a very selfish one. I need to do this for myself. I have to write my thought down, or I fear I will fall victim to a heart attack or stroke from the stress of keeping all of the anger I feel bottled up inside. If I act on the feelings that are invoked by my experiences, I would end up incarcerated, a fate that is shared by too many of our brightest young brothers and sisters.
Once early in my professional career, after a bad experience with my white supervisor, I had to make a choice, kill him or write my feelings down. The result was my poem “Black Not Blind”. The poem had so much meaning that I had it printed on a tee shirt so the world could feel my pain. It subsequently has become the title of this book. I feel this poem, now book, accurately reflects’ the fear and frustration of so many African-Americans, while commenting on the privilege and nerve of whites. By writing one poem I found peace. In writing this book I hope to share that peace with others.
I hope that my experiences will also assist other brothers out there who find themselves in similar situations. Misery loves company and that is what I am providing them. Not misery, but security in knowing they are not alone in their perceptions of the world, and the anguish they feel. I write these notes with my two sons in mind. It is my attempt at preparing the world to meet and deal with them better than it was prepared to meet and deal with me.
Black Not Blind
By
Bryant K. Smith, A Black Man With Vision
In this country of opportunity,
“Home of the brave…land of the free.”
A problem exists,
And it’s scaring me.
Times once thought to have passed
Have now come again
Ignorance is the fool,
Judging people by color of skin.
Hate and prejudice
Still infest our races.
In our cities, the country,
And yes even suburban places.
Corruption directed towards minorities
Is the name of this game.
When the minority becomes the majority
Will the rules still be the same?
I see the petty games
That you would play with my mind,
But take this as a warning…
I am BLACK NOT BLIND!
****
Black In The South
The Long Drive
I was driving back to South Carolina from Chicago, when I was hit with a startling revelation. I had just pulled off the interstate into one of the several gas stations in a remote town in Kentucky. My selection of which station to stop at was not based on the quality or brand of gasoline they offered, they had a Burger King and I was hungry. A simple decision, one that I had made countless other times while traveling alone or with my family and not given much thought to.
It was not until I had gotten my food and was back on the interstate did my fraternity brother whom I was traveling with make me rethink my childhood and the opportunity I now have. He was worried about us stopping in a small town for gas. I had not given it a second thought. He was a 27 year old, college educated, gainfully employed, non-criminal record or warrant-having Black man driving a nice automobile on a major interstate in Kentucky in 1998, and he is afraid to be someplace where he might be perceived a unwelcome. He did not say, but his fear was strictly based upon us being Black in what he thought was a small, all white, town in the middle of nowhere. No one had stared at us, spit on or at us, or called u “niggers.” It was just a gas station with a Burger King.
It was in the chaos of that moment I was transported back to my youth. Every summer my brother and I, at the direction of my parents, made a pilgrimage from Chicago, Illinois to the small town of Earle, Arkansas. Earle was where my parents had grown up and my grandparents still resided. It was our family version of summer camp and summer vacation all rolled up into one. We spent the summers of our youth there in order to avoid the dangers unsupervised youth faced on the warm streets of Chicago. My father always drove us to Earle, and we always packed enough food for the trip. We had a cooler full of pop (soda), some sandwiches, and sometimes fried chicken. My father would stop at the same service stations on the way going to Earle as he did on the way back to Chicago. I had never given any thought to his methods until now. In fact I used to be quite upset driving along and seeing signs for “Stuckey’s”, Dairy Queen”, and “Big Boy” wanting to stop and purchase a burger just to be reminded that if I was hungry we had plenty of food in the car with us. As a child I as crushed. I secretly used to pray that my grandmother and aunts would not pack us a meal for the road just so my father would have to stop and buy us a burger somewhere along the highway. In hindsight I am thankful that my father saved us a few bucks as well as protected me from some greater evil that as a child I was not aware of. In fact, the reality is I am now just beginning to understand why my father stopped when and where he did, and why we packed our own food.
My father is not alive now, and I can only imagine his reasoning. I have put what I believe his views would have been based upon into two general categories. The first category is my father’s upbringing. As a child my father grew up in the segregated south of Earle, Arkansas. He would have experienced the worst Southern segregated society had to offer. He would have rarely traveled the open highways, and would have always been fearful of stopping in unfriendly territory when he did venture out. He would have always been afraid to step foot into a restaurant or gas station that did not have a “whites only” sign in it, but had a whites only attitude and clientele. This fear became a pattern of operation that he could not shake even after the laws of segregation were changed.
The second category could have been based upon his understanding that regardless of the changes in the law, it would take some time to change peoples’ attitudes. He would rather be safe than sorry. His actions were out of a strong desire to protect his family. He established a pattern of behavior based upon his perceptions about his environment. Perhaps he had tried on occasion to stop at different gas stations and did not like the way he was treated. Maybe, just maybe, he had gone into a burger joint and was quickly reminded that he was only considered to be three fifths of a human being. His ability to pay for food, gas, the automobile he was driving, or his one year of college meant very little to some citizens of racist, segregated America. His unwillingness to stop was just another way of demonstrating his love for his family. In sticking to his principles he spared us the indignities that he might have suffered.
In my naïveté I had never appreciated the progress that has been made, primarily due to me never having known anything less. As I kept driving I thought about how many times I had stopped for gas and food at any old station that suited me. I paid for meals, and paid for all other services that were rendered to me. I am just realizing that I never paid my debt of gratitude to those men and women such as my father who could not enjoy the luxuries that I now enjoy. For a brief moment it made me smile, and every bite of my Whopper was that much more enjoyable. With each chew I thought of how somewhere in hell there was a white man who had kept my father from buying gas or eating in his station who was now turning over in his grave with every swallow I took. That joy was short-lived when a new realization struck. There were also white men who were not in hell, who had grown up and currently growing up that will never value the lesson I have learned. They have the luxury of being able to take for granted that while driving across America they can stop in any gas station or restaurant without fear. They may never know what it is like to wonder if the people in the station will treat them different based on skin color? Their children will not have to rethink the actions of their parents and wonder at what dangers they were spared. While I would not wish those horrors on anyone, I could not help but wish they could at least, as Chris Rock would say, “understand” without having the experience. Unfortunately, I was also wishing that I did not have five more hours of driving to do either.
****
Vote Yes For Wiggers
Some years back, comedian Richard Pryor made a plea to Black America to come up with a word to describe “white folks” that would be as offensive to them as the term “nigger” is to us. “Honkey was just not strong enough!” I agreed. We have yet to develop a word that whites have accepted as the worse thing anyone inside or outside of their ethnic group could call them. In this chapter, I attempt to remedy that oversight on the part of a generation of Black folk.
At first glance you may think I am just another bitter person attempting to spawn the birth of a new racial epithet. In reality, I am just a social commentator attempting to expose another social injustice. In order to accomplish my goal, I have begun using the term “wigger”. The word may not be one hundred percent original; however, it is the most accurate description of how I feel about some people of European ancestry with whom I have come into contact.
It does not take a rocket scientist to see that combining the words “white and nigger” created “wigger” What better term could you create in order to insult them? The term would be used only to describe white people who are acting like niggers (as used and defined by whites, not to be confused with the term of endearment used by most rappers, comedians, actors, and wigger movie directors). There will be an occasional exception made for some brothers who have forgotten their heritage (Clarence, Shelby, Ward, Armstrong, O.J., etc.). The term “wigger” is designed to be nothing but derogatory. I make no apologies for using and endorsing the expansion of the term into mainstream America. I believe that it is high time for me to provide the world with a lesson on labels.
Now I know this may seem cruel to some of you, or more like a sick joke to others, but all I am asking is that you give it a try. It is a ridiculous word that was practically just made up. However, at this very minute there are people all over the world (mostly whites, but not exclusively) who are pissed off by my comparing them to “niggers”. They are not upset that I have invented a negative word about them. They are upset that I would use a word they have created and demonized in creating the word I am using for them. They are offended that I would compare them to “niggers”, a label they created to refer to us in a negative tone. Do you see how this works? The power of the word is not in its use; power is derived from the images conveyed by the word. In this case white olds are being compared to what they consider to be the lowest form of life on Earth. That is one of the reasons “honkey” never caught on. A honkey was the worst thing we Blacks could think of, which did not matter to whites because they thought so little of our opinion to begin with. It becomes a different story when we use a word they invented against them. “Nigger” conjures up all types of images in their minds, consequently “wigger” makes them see whites in those same images. They can’t handle it, thus the backlash, and the success of the word.
That one term brings to mind billions of negative images that whites have popularized about Blacks. Calling them a “wigger” instantly brings to their mind pictures of themselves as unintelligent, lower class, shucking and grinning while eating watermelon, lying, violent, unemployed, lazy, evil (that one is courtesy of Mr. Webster’s unabridged dictionary), and always late for work, meetings, and what have you. As a Black man I know there are whites out there that fit these images just as there are people of all ethnic groups who have fallen victim to these social ills at one time or another. However, using the term “wigger” is an instant wake-up call to white folks. They have been in such a state of denial for so long that it is hard to view them selves as anything less than superior. The term “wigger” allows us to speak to them using terms they understand because they created the very essence of the word. There is no way for you to be offended by “wigger” unless you have a clear understanding of the word “nigger” from which it derived.
One of the things I hope to live long enough to see is not only the adoption of the word by Blacks, but I hope to see it “chain out” to the point that whites attempt to remove any power from the word by claiming it is a term of endearment. I want to turn on my radio and hear Garth Brooks singing that he is a “wigger” you love to hate. I want to go to my local theatre and see the new Spielberg film “Wiggers in the Burbs”. I want RCA, Polygram, Sony, or any of the major record labels to sign the newest group of five young white boys from a trailer park in South Carolina “Wiggers With an Attitude”. I then want those same record companies to justify their signing the group and distributing the music by saying “they are just letting the artist report on the environment they have grown up in.” Yes, I hope to see it all. As Martin would say, “I had a dream” that little white kids from all across this land will play in playgrounds and while doing so address each other as “my wigger” and then have their parents and elders try to explain to them the psychological damage they are doing to their young minds by referring to themselves in such a manner. Again, this may seem a cruel thing to wish on people, but I say, “turn-a-bout is fair play.”
Think of the countless times you have heard the word “nigger” used in casual conversation, films, literature, songs, and every other aspect of popular culture. I am even looking forward to the day the Johnson family is sued for discussing the proper place for “wiggers”…no, I am sorry, for white jelly beans in their publishing empire.
Sounds rather powerful when you think about it. Imagine the Backstreet Boys winning a Grammy for their smash single “Down For My Wigger.” Remember you can be offended only if you understand the meaning of the word being used against you. You have to object to being compared to a “nigger” in order to be offended by the term “wigger”. “Honkey” was a negative word, but it had no point of reference. There was no root for the word. It is the “igger” part of “wigger” that stings white folks like a wasp (pun intended). Eventually, the word would become so common that new forms of the word would arise. Inner city whites would refer to each other as “wiggas.” Law enforcement officials would have a whole new list of racial epithets to hurl as they attempted to keep the streets safe from groups of young dangerous “wiggers.”
All of this is not so far fetched. With the use of technology, we can introduce the term and spread it instantly. The Internet is a powerful medium. Just think of all of the computer terms that did not exist a couple of years ago; now four-year-olds are talking about “ram”, “meg”, “server”, and “hard drives”. It will not be too hard to introduce “wigger.” I am sure it will not take more than one year to have it included in several American dictionaries. I just hope they get the definition right. Webster did not have a hard time linking “nigger” to Blacks. “Wigger” makes it easy to establish the link between whites and “niggers”; after all, the point is to show we are all linked anyway, whites, Blacks, “niggers” and “wiggers”.
****
Southward Through Time
“Sweet tea, shrimp and grits, The War of Northern Aggression”, do any of these sound familiar to you? They represent just a small sample of the many nuances I have had to familiarize myself with since moving down south (from up north). Unlike when I visited my grandparents in my youth, I was planning to be down south for quite some time. During my youth my biggest concern was to make sure I asked for a soda, or coke instead of a pop. Visiting the south as a kid was much different than attempting to migrate. It was cool to be a kid from up north. You were given a certain degree of respect; after all, you lived in the big city, and had survived the harsh reality of urban life. Most of the kids I was playing with had never been out of Earle, Arkansas and I was a seasoned traveler. I could visit them every summer, leave them with my wisdom from up north, and rarely be challenged. Now the rules were changing. Experiences in Earle did little to prepare me for life in South Carolina. I am convinced now that my visits south were so segregated that I never saw the real south during my summer vacations. Now as an adult my eyes were opened and catching an eye full.
Don’t get me wrong, neither Chicago where I was born nor Bloomington/Normal, Illinois where I attended college were without their problems, but this was different. Before my move I thought one college town could not be any better or worse than another; once again I was wrong. My move south took me over 700 miles across the country and about 30 years back in time. Each time I drove to and from Illinois, I could see the years rolling by me. Indiana was the early 1900’s; it was a Klan stronghold then and still seems that way today. “The invisible empire” - you may not see them out, robes waving and crosses burning, but any Black person who has ever driven I-74 at night knows that unshakable feeling that the eyes of the invisible empire are upon them. You get a brief reprieve when you reach Indianapolis, but it fades as the lights dim and you progress East out of the city back onto the starlit interstate.
Kentucky had the look and feel of the mid 1800’s, a land ravaged by war yet surrounded with subtle reminders of southern gentleness. Rolling hills dotted with plantation-like ranch houses. Throughout Kentucky there seemed to be constant construction on all of the interstates as if they have yet to recover from the “War of soldiers, hauling heavy equipment, and shaking the earth with an occasional dynamite blast to remove some earthly obstacle. On through Tennessee, which depicted the early 1800’s. Images of porcelain mammy dolls and Aunt Jemima are proudly displayed and sold at every gas station in Tennessee. When is the NAACP going to protest this? It won’t happen; there was no NAACP in the early 1800’s.
I continue my journey southward through time and space next came Tennessee and North Carolina, the late 1700’s. The mountains continuing their vigilant watch over the white man’s manifest destiny. From the interstate, time seems to have stood still in the mountains. The roads that had been carved through the rocky wilderness marked progress here. An occasional highway marker identifies one of the many Native tribes who still have not found their place among the home invaders they once welcomed. True Native-Americans are quick to remind you that they are not southern or northern, just one of the many human beings.
Finally you arrive into South Carolina. Virginia may be the home of the confederacy, but make no mistake about it South Carolina is the birthplace of the confederacy. Confederate flags surround you much as the confederate army had done during the “War of Northern Aggression.” From storefronts to pick-up trucks, the “heritage not hate” is as thick as the mist rising out of the mountains. The urge to strip myself of all I have and pick tobacco is driven out of my by the haunting images each passing oak tree shared with me. Visions of thousands of Native, and African people whose lives were forever changed by the presence of melanin less strangers with dreams of conquest.
I had heard about South Carolina but never identified the South Carolina on the news and the place I was moving to as being one and the same until I was there. Surprise!!! Damn, too late.
If the southeast was referred to as the “Bible Belt” then I had moved into its buckle. Religious freedom in South Carolina was limited to you being free to leave the state if you are not religious. White Christian religion was acceptable anything else was pagan and treated as such by the establishment in South Carolina. Who are the establishment, you might ask? They would be the descendants of the same folks who thought wealth obtained based on a free labor society was a good enough reason to divide a nation and enter into the Civil War. Upon losing the Civil War, white South Carolinians created a system of governance within a state to ensure the protection of the rights and wealth of the status quo at the expense of equality, education and the ability to purchase alcohol on Sunday.
It was here in South Carolina that I had my first experience with the “Blue Laws”. Businesses must close at midnight on Saturday and can’t re-open until 1:30 p.m. on Sunday – after church services have concluded. No need to have something like a desire to work on a Sunday morning come between you and your relationship with the Lord.
Until I moved south I thought all Baptists were Black, whites had other religions like Lutheranism, Catholicism, etc. White southern Baptists run South Carolina. Bob Jones University is located in South Carolina. No co-ed dorms, no integration, men wear shirts and ties, and women wear long skirts and dresses. If you are alum of Bob Jones who is found to be gay, you are banned, under threat of arrest from ever returning to your alma mater. Yes, moving south was an instant reminder that Martin and Malcolm both died too soon. There was almost an entire state of folks they had not yet reached. Now it looked like I was the one who is supposed to pick up and carry on where they left off. Talk about feeling overburdened…Strom Thurmond has been a senator of this state since the time of my grandfathers, both of whom are deceased now. Strom, like a Timex watch, has taken a licking (and given out quite a few to Black folks) and is still ticking. Ask yourself how a person who has resisted integration and has never apologized for it has managed to stay in office in a state that is more than 30% African-American? A whole lot of good Bible-toting, God-fearing, white southern Baptists in this state support him and his ideology. Now I had packed up my belongings and moved south to work on a campus that had a Strom Thurmond institute. The irony (or tragedy) did not end there. The land my new place of employment occupied was once the property of Senator John C. Calhoun. You know John - the man who many people say started the great “War of Northern Aggression.” Ain’t that a bitch? Exactly. Imagine how I felt upon finding out I had left the land of Lincoln (keep in mind I spent most of my life being confused believing Lincoln had freed all of the slaves) for the land of Dixie. It was irony at its best, tragedy at its worst, and typical for the kind of stuff that continues to surround my life. I was a young, pro-Black, radical jumping blindly out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Don’t get me wrong I did not move south expecting to be welcomed with open arms. I was fully conscious of the racial conditions that exist in this “my country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty of thee I sing”. A couple of years ago I drove from Normal, Illinois to Atlanta, Georgia for a conference with two female graduate students, one Black and the other white. I refused to let the white student sit in the front of the car while I was driving. I was unsure of how it might be viewed from the cab of some confederate-flag-laden, rear-window-gun-rack-clad pick-up truck. Thought of Emmitt Till fresh in my head along with the memory of the verbal warning my mother had given me upon dropping me off at my predominately white university…”don’t mess with no white girls down here…”
Based upon the nations still lingering reaction to O.J., I think my decision was for the best. People in the south might not have been ready to see a Black Yankee with a white girl in the front seat of the car. It wasn’t worth the risk. We were not dating she was a graduate student and not even a graduate student in my office. It was easier for me to ask her to ride in the back of the car than I envisioned trying to explain to “Bubba” what was going on.
Just what was going on? First Marvin Gaye asked, then Nathan McCall, now it’s my turn. What is going on in South Carolina? The Citadel allowed women to be admitted as cadets for the first time in over 100 years. Susan Smith killed her two kids by driving them into the John D. Long Lake (John D. Long is the guy who introduced the legislation which placed the confederate flag atop the state capitol building) then created a massive media and community manhunt for a mysterious Black man whom she accused of car jacking her. The “Redneck Shop” opened in Laurens, SC so that you would have an official place to purchase all of your Klan and hate group materials in one convenient location. Interracial marriages were finally legalized in 1999. A white male South Carolina State Trooper drags a black woman out of her car through the window for speeding (all caught on video tape like that incident in California). The confederate flag is still flying on state property located directly in front of the capitol building in opposition to the federal governments desegregating schools. Despite being 49th out of 50th in education for the majority of the last decade South Carolinians, in the year 2000 have finally voted to change the state constitution allowing for the creation of a state lottery the proceeds of which will be used to bring the educational system up to par.