We are not obligated to believe everything we hear or are taught. We are not obligated to repeat generational errors and prejudices. Thus, the impact of family on our values can be positive or negative.
This post is about events I remember from my childhood in the U.S. southeast, prior to and during integration. My focus here is on race relations, specifically the changes that came about in society during my childhood.
I’m writing this recollection so that my grandchildren will understand my perceptions of what I experienced while I was growing up. Moreover, I want them to understand the parallels I see in our society today. I’m not asking them to agree with my views, but I do want them to hear what I am thinking and feeling at this point in my life.
Some background
I grew up in Georgia, through the second grade, and then Florida. Born in 1950, my childhood years extended across the 1950’s into the early 1960’s.
Neither location where I lived was especially rural, but both were certainly consistent with life in the pre-integration South in the U.S.
I lived a fairly typical childhood in that most non-school days were spent outside, roaming around the neighborhood with friends. I rode my bike to school as a child. The modest house and neighbor in Tampa where I grew up were still there when I visited 40-or-so years later.
What I experienced
Listed below are some examples of the “norm” in regard to race relations during my grade-school years.
1). School integration started, very slowly and selectively, during my high school years, late 1960’s. Bus boycotts had begun about ten years prior to that in Louisiana and Alabama. Restaurant sit-ins didn’t start until 1960.
2). The U.S. Civil Rights Act was signed in 1964. That federal legislation prohibited discrimination in public places like restaurants. The Act required the integration of public schools and other public facilities, and made employment discrimination illegal.
It should be no surprise that private schools, including those associated with churches, that were already present, began to grow in number during that same time period.
3). At the time, “Separate but equal” was still widely practiced concerning primary and secondary school funding. Regarding higher education, the University of Georgia, for example, was not integrated until 1961. Riots accompanied the integration of the University of Mississippi in 1962.
Thus, HBCU’s were the only option for black students who wanted to attend college prior to the early 1960’s.
4). As a young teenager in a white, Southern Baptist church, I remember a business meeting where members discussed being willing to seat visitors of another race. As is largely true today in many similar churches, there were no non-white members during my time there at that church.
5). My high school band regularly played the song “Dixie” at football games.
6). My aunt and uncle in South Carolina, although people of extremely modest means, had a black maid who came to their home several days a week to help with housework.
The prior list provides a few examples of the norms and changes I grew up with in my grade-school years. I didn’t personally experience race riots or similar events.
Contrasts in the Deep South
Vacation trips to small-town, rural South Carolina, when I was a child, presented a much different picture of race relations than my “big city” life in Florida.
Most noticeable was the poverty – both black and white. But, especially poverty among blacks.
Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird was published in July 1960, when I was in elementary school. That book very accurately portrayed the ignorance, poverty, and bigotry that was widespread at the time it was written.
As such, the South depicted in that book still very much existed when I was a child, especially as witnessed on those family trips to South Carolina.
Of note, I think, is that only one or two characters in the book had a college education. Similarly, I’m a first-generation college student among my immediate family.
That book is set during the mid-1930’s in Alabama, thus the Great Depression era.
More personally, that’s the South my parents, and aunts and uncles, grew up in. It was poor, deeply religious, rural, and disconnected from the mainstream of world events – except for the radio.
My father told a story of how, when he was a child, they would visit a neighbor to hear the radio.
The Greatest Generation
That mid-1930’s Greatest Generation served in World War II. Like others, my father went around the countryside speaking to, and saying goodbye to, everyone he knew before leaving for basic training.
Most likely, the generation of my father’s grandfather did the same thing, from the exact same homeplace, before leaving at the beginning the Civil War. And, my father’s great-great grandfather, a slave holder according to census records, lived on that homeplace before leaving for the American Revolution.
Generational impact
The teenagers and young adults portrayed in To Kill a Mockingbird were adults, like my parents, when I was a child in the 1950’s.
Although I came along a generation after the one depicted in that book, the mindset the book shared was still widespread thirty years later, when it was published in 1960.
That mindset has been engrained, and passed down, from one generation to the next.
Some parts of that mindset, like faith in God, integrity, faithfulness in marriage, good stewardship of resources, and hard work, are very beneficial to any generation.
Some things to avoid
However, other aspects of that mindset, like mob violence, are destructive. For instance, the criminal intent of participants in the January 6, 2020 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol seem, to me, to parallel very closely the warped justice and ignorance expressed by the lynch mob in To Kill a Mockingbird.
The populist anger and simply mindedness of prior generations is still active in the U.S. today.
Politicians on the far Right and far Left, and serial liars on talk shows, make a living pandering lies and conspiracy theories to those who cannot, or will not, think critically. Thus, those who are scammed remain simple minded and undiscerning.
Good judgment, according to Proverbs 1.3, is bounded on one side by justice – doing what’s right, and on the other side by equity – acting in a way that’s fair and unbiased. proverbsforprofessionals.net
Impact on my career
My life was impacted, at least somewhat, by the turbulence of the Civil Rights era, which was then followed by the protests around the Viet Nam War.
I’m sure I’m more more liberal than my parent’s generation. I think of myself as a moderate Republican who has been abandoned by the party’s recent hard right turn. No, I didn’t participate in protest actions on either side of the issues I just mentioned in regard to the war or civil rights.
That said, I was an educator in two different public higher education institutions. I was also a higher education administrator for 15 years. I hired, promoted, and interacted with a variety of faculty and staff members over the years. Many had wildly differing view about issues such as race and gender than I did.
Unsurprisingly, I dealt with faculty of different races and religions, or no faith in God at all. Some were transgender, and several were in same-sex relationships. Thus, I think, they were fairly representative of the diversity in our culture.
That said, I managed a thirty-year academic career by being civil, by being supportive, and by focusing on equal treatment of everyone when I made decisions.
Proverbs 18.5 warns us to not tolerate the character of a wicked, godless person or, worse yet, to overthrow good judgement in regard to a person of integrity. proverbsforprofessionals.net
Some Take-Aways!
Where we grow up isn’t a choice we get to make. However, what we carry with us from those childhood and young adult experiences is most definitely a choice we can make if we are willing to think critically, understand contexts, and observe carefully.
We are not obligated to believe everything we hear or are taught. We are not obligated to repeat generational errors and prejudices. Ends don’t justify the means when the means are inhumane or criminal. Instead, we choose who we become.
It’s always good to ask yourself “Why do I believe that?” Often, beliefs have no factual basis. Instead, we’re simply repeating what we’ve heard from others who influence us.
We can choose to not accept widely-believed lies by building discernment so we know right from wrong!