Alright, you get a few more than two, today.
Not everything I learn is something I necessarily *want* to know about. Some of it... ::shakes head:: ..some things I'd just rather not give head-space. But as Santayana wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," so it's as important (perhaps *more* important) to give attention to the less-than-stellar moments of our history, as to our sucesses.
One of the failures of our country's past (and, let's face it, present) is how we have dealt with the issue of race. The topic came up for me because a friend of a friend was interested in the concept of "passing" in literature-- that is, when a person of one sex or race attempts to pass him- or herself off as another, and so enter a segment of society from which they might otherwise be barred. (For example, a woman dressing as a man in order to fight as a soldier-- that's a popular example of "passing" that goes waaaaaaay back.) Specifically, this friend was looking for instances of race-related passing set in the "Jim Crow" era of the South. (That, by the way, was "new thing" number one, right there. I knew basically what "Jim Crow laws" were, but I didn't know the origin of the term, or realize the full scope of civil wrongs they protected and perpetuated. I thought they only concerned the unfair voting practices.) And when I started looking into it, I turned up a whole bunch of things I didn't know but probably should have.
It's sort of funny for me to look at the dates on these events... the entire Civil Rights Movement happened before I was born. I know this sounds horribly self-centered, but to me, anything that didn't happen in my lifetime is as much "done deal, history" as, say, WW II, the American Revolution, or the Magna Carta. I grew up with affirmative action, equal opportunity, universal suffrage... to me, "the black vote" is just another liberal faction the Democrats court, which (to me, anyway) has more to do these days with black activists and politicians than a major segment of the voting population. I can't even *conceive* of the level of prejudice that would cause someone to install two water fountains for white and black. I mean... it's silly. And when you get down to it, it's still the same water anyway, isn't it?
But really, none of this happened *that* far before I was born. And to my dad, it's like the Cold War, or Apartheid is to me. It's "over," sort of, but he can remember being in the thick of it. He remembers hearing Dr. King on the radio, live. He remembers the bussing, and the sit-ins, and the riots. He can remember when the local bank refused to sell a house to a middle-class black couple down the road from us. (They lived in an apartment in the city and wanted a house in the 'burbs, so that their kids could grow up with trees around them. They'd done all their business by mail, so the bank didn't even realize they were black until they came in to sign the final papers. Their realtor was so appalled at the way they'd been treated, after dealing in good faith, that he bought the house outright from the bank and sold it to the couple the same afternoon.)
It's just hard for me to remember sometimes that for a lot of people, this still isn't considered "history".... so. Whew. This is getting REALLY long. On with the lesson, I'll try to keep the rest of it brief....
To begin with, I learned that most "passing" literature about the Jim Crow era (or earlier) was written *during* the Jim Crow era, and had an awfully hard time getting published. I learned that Mark Twain wrote a novel in this genre (Pudd'nhead Wilson). I learned that this was a popular theme with authors of the Harlem Renaissance-- some of whom, like Charles Waddell Chesnutt, were writing semi-autobiographically (Chesnutt himself was very light-skinned, and when his stories were first printed in the Atlantic Monthly, the publisher withheld the fact that he was black).
Then I learned about some of the social and legal inequalities that made "passing" such a risky proposition (well... risky if you got caught, anyway). I learned, to my disgust, about miscegenation and the one drop theory (just how far will people go to make up stupid rationalizations of why they're "better" than the next guy? Pretty damn far). And while we're on the subject of blood-- I also learned what an octoroon was. (And no, it has nothing to do with coconut-almond cookies, or a dark brownish-purple-red.) I learned that the state of Kentucky ratified the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U. S. Constitution 112 years late, in 1976 (um... whoops?).
And to my relief, when I was done with all this, I learned that I can hear this online.
If anyone's curious about the bibliography I finally came up with, I can post it here. There are some really great books in the list.
Posted by gris at July 17, 2004 10:32 PM