About 20 years ago, my cousin moved to DC where I was then living. My "significant other", now wife, and I had never been to WV since we got together and, in fact, I hadn't been there for about 15 years.
I had some bad recollections about the place I grew up in, Wheeling, WV, which wasn't really very typical of a community that was legally segregated. That was probably because we lived across the river from Ohio, which was not segregated and it would have been pretty hard to enforce some segregationist practices as a result.
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We had no separate restaurant seating, buses did not have segregated seating, and Ohio schools were integrated. In fact, I started school in Tiltonsville, OH where I had Black classmates with whom I always interacted with no suggestion from anyone that I shouldn't.
After leaving Wheeling (as nearly all my peers did), it dawned on me that there were a lot of things that should have rung a bell when I lived there but that never seemed to me to be indicative of overt prejudice.
Lincoln High School and Blessed Martin DePores High School were closed after Brown v. Board of Education and it stunned me to realize at age 14 that I lived in a State in which segregation was legally mandated.
In Wheeling, the transition was smooth. In other parts of WV, some riots broke out. That led me to believe that Wheeling was "different". But then, after getting away and getting involved in the Civil Rights Movement, I started to remember things such as the fact that only about 1 block apart were American Legion Post #1 (the white one) and American Legion Post #? (the "colored" one). I started to really resent the place.
That was a large part of the reason I had not been back to my home City and State. I had gotten my MS from West Virginia University but was loathe to return there, either. Besides, my wife-to-be is Black and I certainly did not want to subject her to an even "uncomfortable" environment.
Back to my cousin: He insisted that I take my friend back to see the splendor of WV, insuring me that Wheeling was not what I thought. I resisted for a while but after taking a trip to San Francisco and having her chide me for "never being impressed with anything" when I remarked about the "hills" in CA, I decided to show her why I wasn’t impressed.
We got into our old Datsun B-210 and headed for Wheeling. I decided to take the scenic route, leaving DC on US Rt. 50 and traveling west to Clarksburg, WV. It wasn’t long before she understood what I meant when I told her that when WV puts up a sign that says "Maximum safe speed 15" they mean it.
We got into Morgantown and I showed her the WVU campus. The fact that we had to put the four gear Datsun into first gear to make it up the hill on fraternity row impressed her. Driving to Wheeling on US Rt. 250, besides making her car sick from the twists and turns, also cleared up why I wasn’t so impressed by the "hills" in San Francisco.
Wheeling turned out to be more than we could possibly have hoped for. At the time we were into night life. Discos were big and surprisingly Wheeling had several. They played good music and everyone was there. Segregation was a thing of the past. We saw a lot of interracial couples and nobody even looked askance at us.
My wife is a favorite in my reasonably large family. People are, it seems, more interested in seeing and talking to her than to me. There was never a time when she felt "out of place" or felt any hostility from anyone in WV. I should add that she is a very disarming personality, warm, friendly, outgoing, and clearly genuinely interested in you.
During my days at WVU in the early '60s, there were a good number of racist incidents I observed. But that was at the very beginning of the Civil Rights Movement and is certainly not, in my experience, still existent today.
Is WV racist? The clear answer is no. Is there still racism in WV? Of course there is. It does not seem to me that there is enough racism in WV to cost us the General Election. It won’t be easy to win it unless we come up with some concrete program to create jobs in the State and prevent people from exploiting the State’s resources at the expense of its citizens.
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Finally, I think a word should be added about the notion of "reverse-racism" that is bandied about so much. As my kos name indicates, I lived in DC for some time – about 33 years, in fact. During that time, I lived in a good many neighborhoods spanning the breadth of the City. A number of the neighborhoods I lived in were predominantly Black areas and a number were predominantly white areas both before and after my wife and I met. I always found it comfortable to interact with people I came into contact with, be they my neighbors, people I met in clubs, co-workers, or people I met on the street.
I have learned during my nearly 68 years that people will respond positively to you if you just be yourself and interact with them as a fellow human being. My mother taught me well when I was a child. She always told me: "Remember that there is no one better than you; and you aren’t better than anyone."
It seems to me that is also Senator Obama's philosophy and it is why he is so appealing to so many people, attempts to label him "elitist" notwithstanding. We should all resolve to strive to be more like Senator Obama. That will be our winning edge.