RCAH 203 Short Stories

The Perfect White Home

We grew up in an area outside the city. Our nice cars parked on the sides of the streets that we ran between in the night. Children out after dark were never worried about, it was certain they would make their way home. Each house had several things, a mortgage on it, a two car garage, and a mother and a father. The mother got up early in the morning to make lunches and coffee, before she drove the kids to school. The father got up and went to work from 9 to 5, and came back to a home-cooked meal around the kitchen table. As children, we assumed that these actions were normal and that every child had the same experience as us. Every one of our friends had the same, so what ought we have thought? We were told that we had blessings, and we assumed our blessing was the half hour of video games we got to play after homework was done. We were told that if we worked hard and stayed in school, we could succeed in whatever it was that we tried. The American dream was our reality. In school, we were taught the histories of people that looked like us, and learned to speak the way our parents spoke. We were told that the world was good the way it was, and that we would be fine when we grew up. We never noticed how different the world looked outside of our little zone of perfection. Eventually, we left this small sphere and came to a slightly larger sphere. In this one, we claimed to be “culture shocked” by the amount of diversity here. However, we had an easy time making close friends that looked and talked like us. Eventually, we married and moved back to a place just outside the city, and had children that looked like us.

We never saw ourselves oppressing anyone because we never did anything to help or hurt. What we never realized was that we were doing more damage than we realized.

The Long Walk

This is what I remember.

Three yards down, past the dusty old sign post, sat a crow. Sleek, black, proud it stood gazing into the sun defiantly. Looking down, the crow could see past the sign to the small town that stood about a mile down the road. It went up a hill and down again, coming to a rest at an intersection with a four-way stoplight, even though the town only had enough traffic to merit a yield. This was as the town had been, and will be. It was like something out of history that hadn’t yet gotten the hint that the rest of the world had picked up the pace and moved on. It sat, unremembered, and uncaring.

A truck flew past, kicking up sand and making it fall like powdered snow. The crow flapped its wings and took off, heading off into the sky.

A group of six young boys walked around the corner, talking and laughing at some small joke that had been told moments earlier. Of these boys, only one lived on the road near the town, however a different one looked like he wouldn’t live in the town. The children hardly noticed, too busy laughing to see one of them was different. To busy seeing each other as human to let history interfere.

As they walked along the dusty road of a forgotten town, the five asked the one who lived there what the town was like, they had never been before.

The child, seeking to show how his town stands out, searching for a way he could be different, thought of something his parents had often told him about the town.

“Well, everyone here is a racist!” he proclaimed.

Most of the boys laughed, knowing they were not effected by this. Racism to them was just a thought, a joke, an asshole on television. It was never a crime, a noose, a justified bullet.

“My town’s racist too!” one shouted.

“Me too! They all wear Confederate flags and use the N-word” said another.

The boy was a little disappointed but laughed along with the rest, knowing he would have another chance to show his difference.

The other one laughed a little, but less so.

“Maybe we should not go then?” he asked.

The rest of the boys looked at each other, maybe they should?

Then the one that lived there assured them: “No, no! It’s safe and everything, they just don’t like black people.”

It was uncomfortable for a second as the group stood at the side of the road, up the hill and half way there and halfway back.

“Have you seen me?” asked the other, with a smile on his face.

Everyone burst out laughing, much to my embarrassment, and kept on walking.

No words were exchanged.

The group continued on, laughing as they went.

They made it to the town, walked around a little more, bought some pop, and walked back down the long road and eventually left.

The child wouldn’t know it but for a long time, but his ignorance of racism made one of his friends obviously uncomfortable and upset. He wouldn’t realize that that incident was just one of many that made him stop looking for reasons to make his town stand out, and start looking for signs that it was being washed away.

He sits at his desk and stares into the sky, waiting for change and seeing none.

Art and Culture

When the child was young, his parents took him to the city to show him art. They walked around all day long, staring at cultural masterpieces by greats. Big, small. Confusing and not. Pictures, paintings, photos. All day long they walked, slowly, and looked.

One piece struck the child. It was a small statue of an American President, Abraham Lincoln. The child had started to learn about Lincoln in his history classes and he knew that Lincoln had been a president during a war, and at the end there was no more slavery in America. It made sense then that there was a black man next to Lincoln, with broken chains at his feet staring up in thanks at this great daring president, who ultimately offered up his life in service to all those in bondage. The child showed his parents and everyone remarked at the courageousness and strong will of Lincoln, to do what he did.

They then left the museum, celebrating their day of cultural revelry with ice cream. The child continued to learn about Lincoln and found that the classroom reinforced the picture of Lincoln that the statue had made.

Many years later, having seen some of the more veiled parts of the world, the child returned to the museum with his partner and repeated the same day. Eventually, they again came to the sculpture, and he looked on it again with new eyes. The figure of Lincoln was still tall and proud, but when he was a child, the black figure had gone unnoticed. He found the depiction of this man extremely problematic. The black figure was bent over, almost on all fours, looking up at Lincoln with awe in his eyes. This was not representing the two races as now being equal, it was in homage to the generosity of the white man, who would now allow the black man to be free to do as he wished, but never equal to the white man. The figure of Lincoln was much like the man remembered him but now he noticed that much more time and effort had gone into creating him than the former slave. The detail on the face and jacket was much more pronounced, as if the artist had started with Lincoln and put in the slave as an afterthought.

The man had a bad reaction to this, yelling out in disgust with the statue as well as with himself at not noticing it before.

“What? Are you okay?” his partner asked urgently.

He tried to explain what he saw, what it meant to him. How this piece of art danced about with intentions of healing wounds, but only opened new ones.

She responded with: “It’s just a statue.”

The man sighed and confirmed, yes. It will always be just a statue. Nothing more.

The art we create is just a reflection of the culture it comes from. A racist artwork comes out a racist culture. The man reflected on how it is not fair that he must be a member of a culture that too often glorifies racism and fear. He will work to change that, and maybe someday someone else will succeed.