I am in Florida, where I grew up. And I thought that an effective way for me to think about issues of race was to consider where my attitudes started. When I was first a Guest Blogger at daily kos (that's what Contributing Editors used to be called) in the Cretaceous Period of daily kos, I wrote this post. In it, I detail some of my personal history regarding race issues:
Am I a "son of the South?" No, I am a first generation Cuban-American, born in New Orleans, raised in a rural agricultural stretch of Florida on the southern shores of Lake Okeechobee, Pahokee, Florida a small town of 6000 souls, is where I grew up, went to public school and first experienced the South and the issues of race.
Pahokee had and has a population that is about half African-American, 30% White, 15% Hispanic, mostly Cuban. Before 1960, Pahokee and the surrounding communities were the "Winter Vegetable Capital of the World" (I kid you not--the Bank of Pahokee, sadly now a SunTrust branch, had this slogan written on its checks). Castro and the embargo changed that. One of the world's largest sugar mills was built in Pahokee in 1962. My dad, who took my mom and brothers out of Cuba in late 1961, came there to work in a business Cuban refugees knew--the sugar business. This place became my home. I was less than a year old.
Pahokee had segregated schools, despite Brown v. Board of Ed. ("all deliberate speed" was pretty deliberate in Pahokee), until 1970. But the Democratic candidate in 1968--Hubert Humphrey--came to Pahokee in 1968, landed a helicopter on the high school football field, and brought Lorne Greene, for a campaign rally. It was exciting. I don't remember if Humphrey spoke about civil rights or values or Vietnam. I was 6.
When I started my third grade year at Pahokee Elementary School in 1970, a significant change occurred. There were almost no black children in my second grade class. My third grade class was mostly black. Some of this was due to the inclusion of the black children in our now-integrated school. Some of this was due to the fact that most white parents pulled their kids out of the public school and put them in the new all white private school that opened in the neighboring town, which had also integrated its public schools.
In the fifth grade, I started intermediate school at the old black elementary school, East Lake, "across the tracks" (and yes, literally, the black section of town, referred to as N__r Town by white Pahokeeans, was on the other side of railroad tracks). My white neighborhood was a short walk to East Lake, so I walked to school--no bussing for me. In the sixth grade, one day I was taking my usual route to school and noticed that the streets were unusually empty. I arrived and found myself to be the only "white" (my consciousness had not yet absorbed that I wasn't white) student in the school--there had been a race riot the night before--a white man had shot a well respected black man dead in a personal dispute. The police had released the white man, who claimed self defense. A riot had ensued. School was closed for the week. I walked back home and by then the streets had regained activity and I was chased out of the neighborhood with calls of "cracker" and thrown rocks bouncing around me. I was 11 years old.
Life goes on. Time passes and I made many friends of all races. I was athletically inclined and played sports throughout high school, generally the teams were nearly all black--the basketball team was all black except me. These were my best friends. Good kids, smart kids. After high school, some went to college on athletic scholarships and made good lives for themselves. Most ended up in jail or dead. My white friends went to work or college and made good lives for themselves. Was this a race issue? Yes, it was. A complicated issue, but race was at its heart.
I went back to Pahokee and talked with my closest friend from high school, who I met when we were 8. Yes, he is black. He was the best athlete in my grade and went on the play Big Ten football and played professionally for a few years. After that dream died, he went off the rails some, and then spent some time incarcerated. After he got out, he became religious and is living a productive life. We had not seen each other in probably 20 years, though we spoke on the phone a few times.
I went to see him to see how he was doing, but in the back of my mind, I also really wanted to discuss race with him. You see, growing up, we did not talk about race issues directly. I don't think we were avoiding the subject. I think we were just kids, loved sports and were thinking about other things.
Anyway, we were reminiscing, and he was telling me how people we grew up with were doing. And I broached the subject - and we talked about it. At least in superficial terms. We talked about when the schools were integrated and how we all handled that. We talked about how black folk live and lived. And how that affected life paths. And how race issues had affected him and our friends.
And yet, the commitment to the discussion was almost all on my side. My childhood friend was more interested in talking about life issues - jobs, family, the economy - kitchen table issues.
This reminded me of some of the things Denise Oliver Velez talked about in her appearance on Daily Kos Radio - sort of her First Principles of activism. Denise said that effective activism starts with home issues - helping people get food on the table, a job, a place to live. She said that if you can deliver help in those areas, then you can start trying to raise political consciousness and illuminating the connection between politics, government policies and everyday lives.
It was an illuminating experience for me. My childhood friend of course knew what it meant to be black. He knew how it affected his life. This is an educated man capable of fully articulating his thoughts on any issue. But his focus was on other questions. I was the one committed to discussing issues of race, not him.
I do not pretend to present any great insight in this post, but I thought I would share this story with you about my attempt to discuss race this weekend. Feel free to share any thoughts you have on the issues of race. Do not feel confined by the contours of my story.
An Open Thread, so to speak, on the issues of race.