I recently made a trip from San Diego back home (with family spread out from Chicago down to New Orleans, I try to cover a lot of territory, wondering when I’d be able to afford the next trip. Lately, my trips have occurred with greater and greater interim periods, and a friend asked me about it. I had to confess how I’m becoming increasingly uncomfortable returning home and hearing people I love dearly echoing the racist rhetoric of Trump and denying its vitriolic underpinnings. That grainy picture was taken somewhere along I-55 which runs from the Great Lakes just south of Chicago (where I was born) all the way down to New Orleans...lined with pine trees and patches of brown dirt that would periodically reveal the red clay dirt for which Mississippi is more renowned...a virtual concrete version of the Mighty Mississippi splitting the country right down the middle. My family jokes that if you threw a rock out of the window anywhere along I-55, odds are you’d hit one of my family members. When my father retired from the Chicago train job he held for three decades, he moved back South to be near his family who can be found up and down the length of Mississippi, and my sister and I just followed suit. I’ve always loved it...I’ve told myself my great American novel is waiting to be written, fancying myself more of a Faulkner than a Grisham.
It was home. I might have been born in Chicago, but this had become home...maybe it was always there. We moved a lot, but we always stay within a stone’s throw of I-55. Growing up, I never challenged the culture of the South. I remember the first time I overheard my father make a racist remark, and I knew it was wrong. It was ugly. I didn’t say anything. I adored my father. I knew from various church sermons about the concept of ashes to ashes and dust to dust, and quietly accepted that a man I adored would pass away some day. And while I’d be sad, I would quietly slip some of those darker instincts into the coffin with him. Jesus would sort it out and help him see the truth. After all, he was a good man. He passed away seven years ago and I did just that. I still miss him.
But that coffin wasn’t big enough for what was building up in the heartland, all along I-55. I read somewhere the other day that Trump didn’t create white nationalism, he just gave it a voice and a degree of open respectability. What was in the hearts of many could now be said out loud...and proudly so. If you throw a rock today, you will probably hit a racist, and he will be a family member of mine. I used to go home once a year, and then it became once every two years. It doesn’t change. Today, wherever I go within a stone’s thrown of I-55, Trump supporters are everywhere. And the voices of hate are getting louder and louder, and my friends and family are front and center. I used to try to engage them in discussions, but the discussions changed to heated debate which changed to downright arguments which lately have been replaced with nothing but hostility. His staunchest supporters have only become more rabid.
I want to point out that I do not come from “backwoods” communities or low socioeconomic neighborhoods. On the contrary. My hometown is a diverse mix of races, a representative smattering of the full range of socioeconomic classifications, and you are equally likely to meet someone content with the high school diploma they received as you are to encounter a PhD. I go to a church that is primarily composed of doctors, lawyers, educators (the last five mayors of the town are all members of our church)...some of the town’s most respected members worship with me. Intelligent individuals.
My sister is in the choir, and knows everyone (I mean EVERYONE in town). If we go to Walmart, we spend half our time with her catching up with old students (my sister is a teacher), and she has the distinction of teaching the grandchildren of her first students, and for one young boy, she’s teaching him just as she taught his great grandmother (obviously a family who believes in getting a jump on parenting!). After cranking out boy after boy, my sister was desperate for a daughter (“for the love of God, give me a child who pees IN the toilet, not around it, and who won’t sniff clothes to see if something is good for another day”...her words, not mine), and she adopted an African-American girl who is the apple of her eye. She adores her. Put her in dance...ballet….tried piano...lacy dresses...fixing her hair...decorated with more pink than I thought would fit in one wardrobe...but God got in the last laugh!
And my sister has had to come to terms that “pink” isn’t on this girl’s color chart, not in that sense anyway. My sister has finally acquiesced to the fact that, while the apple of her eye doesn’t leave urine residue all around the toilet and doesn’t sniff clothes, she is the undisputed athlete of the family...easily outruns the boys...and could honestly be the next Griffith Joyner...soccer and softball...followed by basketball and track...it’s as easy as breathing to her...AND she was just promoted from the eighth grade to high school as the valedictorian of her class. She is gorgeous. Smart. Funny. Athletic. Endearing. a combination of Cicely Tyson and, well, Flojo! Maybe a bit too ‘into” boys for my sister’s comfort, but she wants to be a pediatrician and my sister has made it clear, a goal of that nature requires focus...and chastity! When I visit, I feel like I’ve come home to a best friend.
So when I return home and hear the odious comments made by members of my own family, my circle of friends, and members of my church, I am at a loss for words. I no longer try to engage them in discussions because they only speak Trump-ese and are increasingly becoming fed up with my California liberalism. This last visit put the final nail in the coffin of my visits home. When I hear their racist-tinged remarks, I’ve asked a few how they reconcile that with expressions of acceptance of my niece. I am assured it is honestly different with her. Why? Because she was raised in a white family with white cultural values, and then they use her achievements as ammunition in their arguments. “She’s not like the others.”
Yes, it’s true. The wealthier members of our community are white, live in certain neighborhoods, and socialize along racial lines. The poorer members of our community are typically African-American, living on state subsidies, and few seem willing to break through the chains that hold them back. It’s changing slightly, but by no means is it moving quickly enough to motivate so many of them. Another generation is being sacrificed on the altar that that is just the way it is. Again, that’s all the proof some people need to say: “You see? I told you.” You can’t convince them that old patterns of behavior are hard to break...yes, some are on state assistance for the third and fourth generation...that’s because there are no real jobs for them...they see their brothers and their fathers being incarcerated at alarming rates...unemployment among “their” end of town is double and triple what it is at “our” end...the only way to earn decent money for them is found in illegal drugs, or other crime...while we see education as our lifeline to move up and out, they know that lifeline is primarily a perk of white privilege.
Treyvon Martin. Tamir Rice. Laquan McDonald. Walter Scott. Sandra Bland. Michael Brown. Eric Garner. Mention those names to a black mother. She knows. White mothers have no clue. Sadly, black children see no outrage from their white neighbors when a black man is shot in the back by a law enforcement officer after being stopped for a traffic violation. It’s almost as if they’ve bought into the notion that “black lives don’t matter”. White families have no concept of what a black mother faces when she sends her child to school, worrying if this will be the last time she will be able to hold that child in her arms...at least alive, anyway. That’s what black children see and those are the messages that are ingrained in them from an early age. But you can’t persuade the other end of town to listen to this. How do they react? Mention the name Colin Kaepernick and you’ll see the difference. The whites in my hometown never wanted to hear WHY he kneeled (for the love of God, he knelt because Laquan McDonald can’t, because the eight bullets in Walter Scott’s back prevent him from kneeling), but Trump painted it as disrespectful, unpatriotic, and worse. “Get that son-of-a-bitch off the field.” No one in my town has met Trump so I can’t say he personally inculcated them with his racist vitriol, but they listened to his words. And those words resonated with them. Those words resonated with the deepest, darkest thoughts they harbored.
I try to point to the fact that my sister’s adoption of the apple of her eye is proof that you CAN lift them up, maybe just one at a time, but if “the village” would kick in and raise all our children, I argue they’d be stunned at the results. No, they’re not interested. While they don’t say it, they have THAT look in their faces….the same look Trump had when he said Mexican men were all drug dealers and criminals and Mexican women were nothing but prostitutes. The look is dismissive. Contemptuous. Judgmental. A Christian school opened up in our town some years ago, and the white flight was unbelievable. The public school — now attended primarily by African-Americans — is failing and the voices at “our” end of town says: “I tried to tell you.” It only provides more ammunition for many in the community to say: “You see? We were right.”
I can’t continue to beat my head against a brick wall. I can no longer sit next to some of them in church when I know what’s in their hearts. It’s not Christian. It’s horrible. I honestly thought sitting in a different pew would help. It didn’t. I dread going home. I dread having to face them, knowing I have to keep my mouth shut to have any degree of peace just to spend time with family. By doing so, I feel complicit. Silence is agreement. And John Denver is dead...the country roads can no longer take me home.