As another Southern Raised White Male, THANK YOU. The lie of the gracious and genteel Southerner was banged into my head from being a small child and the reverse of the crass, arrogant, corrupt, and morally void “Yankees” (always said with a bitter edge) was tossed about as one calls out your errant family member. We always had off Jefferson Davis’ and Robert E Lee’s birthdays. I’ve always remembered how many of the white Southern kids basically turned beet red and their words of anger afterward when my 5th grade report on a person whom I admired and thought of as a great American. My choice was Dr Charles Drew, the African American doctor who perfected the method that allows blood transfusions. He died in 1950 after single car accident after a long night in the operating theater.
That these children had been taught to hate so many people struck me as wrong, even as a ten year old. That they had been taught to revere men who treated other human beings as possessions and fought others and died over that mindset struck me as wrong. That they claimed to be patriotic Americans while relishing in the traitorous acts of Secession and Civil War and all but spitting while saying the name Abraham Lincoln was mind blowing. That I could not go over to a African American friend’s home without getting called “ni@@er lover” or jumped by a group of white kids was staggering.
I had one white “friend”, more like an passing acquaintance. Virtually all of my friends were African American they were honest, caring, and protective of everyone. The myth of the genteel antebellum white South still colors the minds of many Whites in the South. Hopefully more of the old white bigots will die off and we can end this shit.