Post election thoughts
November 5th, 2008
Five generations ago my great-great grandfather rode with the 18th Louisiana Calvary Company B in the cause of the Confederacy, fighting in a war some of the oldest surviving members of my family still call the “War of Northern Aggression.”
Three generations ago my grandfather was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and that didn’t make him an extremist among his peers; at that time and place it was in fact expected of a man of his station.
A few days ago, I voted for an African-American for President of the United States. More accurately, I voted for an American of mixed race for President. The heart-warming photos of our president-elect with his white grandmother would have inspired nothing but revulsion and fear in my forebears, and indeed even today in some of my relations.
My thoughts today turn to bigoted members of the Williams clan- past and present- and also to people who share my name, whom I have never met. At the conclusion of the Civil War my great-great grandfather’s only slave elected to remain on the William’s farm and took the William’s name passing it on to his descendants. Relations in name if not in blood I wonder where they are, how they’ve made out, and I worry.
It’s tempting for whites to think that with a black man in the White House we have at long last reached racial equality in America. This is not the case.
13% of otherwise eligible black American men were unable to vote in this election because they are now or were once in prison. I remember my misspent youth, which I had the good fortune to spend in the company of black friends as well as white. We were not “good boys.” But where I avoided incarceration, my black friends did not.
Why?
I was lucky, sure, but more importantly, the deep south deputies that never gave me a second look came down on them like cartoon pianos hitting the sidewalk.
I remember the high school I attended which was 90% white and how when the school across town, that was 90% black was winning a ball game the chant from the stands was, “That’s all right, that’s okay, you’re all gonna work for us some day.”
I remember my grandmother locking the car doors when a black man crossed the street in front of us.
I remember my cousin who as a young man would prowl the streets of town on a Friday night and if a black man dared cross the street in front of him he’d bump him with his car then get out and beat him…
Then I think about how that cousin joined the fire department.
When the first black joined the department, he grumbled.
When another joined he grumbled a little less.
And when after a few years he had learned to depend upon those men for his safety as they depended upon him for theirs, he admitted they were good firefighters.
A few years later, when his young son learned a new word, and tried it out, my cousin made it clear to him that he didn’t want to hear the “n word” out of him again.
And my thoughts go back to the Williams family I’ve never met. I hope they have shared in the opportunities afforded the William’s family of my blood, but realistically I know that their paths have almost certainly been harder.
We have come a long way, but whites need to remember, as blacks need no reminder, that we still have a long way to go.
If the tragedy of our history is found in the gulf that separates our American ideals from our actions as Americans, our promise lies in the hope that we may yet bridge that gap and create a nation where our ideals and actions are united.
When I think of my cousin and the progress he has made, when I see pictures of his son on a baseball diamond with the black players he calls his friends — I am hopeful.
When I saw the camera pan across the crowds of celebrants cheering for Obama — white, brown and black faces cheering as one — I cheered along.
I hope that one day I will meet one of the black relatives that share my name, and sharing one nation, one hope and one future, embrace him.
