I had only known adult African-Americans; I had never met their children. Many of the White children that I grew up with did not have any kind of personal relationship with African-Americans. I had gone to all White schools, and African-Americans were oftentimes the objects of scorn and twisted humor. Older boys bragged to me about riding through "N. i. g. g. e. r. town" and shooting African-Americans with twenty-twos. They had replaced the lead with wax. This other side of my life, the public side, was completely devoid of African-Americans.
My first job was pumping gas at Chapins' Shell Service in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; I was thirteen, and Daddy believed that I needed to learn how to work for other people. We had three restrooms: "Men," "Women" and "Colored." When our only Black employee quit, the "Colored" restroom was never cleaned again. It had no light bulb and was nasty.
My father was a health officer; once I was with him when he inspected a Black school. "Separate but equal," he said, as he got in the car, "there's not a damned thing equal about their schools . . . used books, worn-out equipment, buildings needing repair." Daddy believed in being fair: "N. i. g. g. e. r. s. love me, because I treat them just like White people." To the best of my knowledge my father never mistreated a Black person. He was a kind and decent man, a good father and an active churchman. But my Daddy was a racist, and he taught me to be a racist, too.
In so many ways my mother exemplified the contradictions of my society. Mama would drink coffee with our maid in the kitchen. She cried with her and went to the funeral when Mattie's father died. After I became a Christian, I asked Mama about African-Americans coming to our church, she responded, "Oh, Robert, I couldn't stand it if a Niggrah man sat down next to me!" How well I remember Daddy coming home from a session meeting and proudly telling us that the elders had passed a resolution on how to handle these agitators: "We agreed to meet them at the door and ask why they had come. If they tell us that they are here to worship, we'll tell them they have their own churches to worship in and send them away." Mama was relieved.
This action on the part of the officers of my church was not isolated. Back in the sixties, my wife and I worked at Thornwell Orphanage; it was under the oversight of the Synods of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida of the Presbyterian Church U.S. Black children weren't allowed there. My alma mater, Presbyterian College, finally admitted a couple of African-Americans my senior year.
During the four years that I was in seminary -- three in Philadelphia, one in Pittsburgh -- I became acquainted with Northern people. Since I was married and had to work at least part time, I discovered that there was at least as much bigotry up North as there was in the South; it's simply that the non-Christian Northern folk with whom I worked were less honest about their prejudices than the non-Christians in the South. Once again, to quote my political science professor: "I can accept a Black on equal terms in an impersonal relationship, or I can accept a Black in a personal relationship as long as he is not my equal, but I cannot accept a Black on equal terms in a personal relationship."
In many ways the South is becoming more like the North; it has become more hypocritical, and relationships between African-Americans and European-Americans have become much less personal. By and large, racism on the surface is gone; there are lots of changes that have come. The nineteen sixty-four Civil Rights Act has guaranteed many things, but underneath, in so many ways, little has changed.
Illiteracy among African-Americans is far greater now than it was sixty years ago. There is still great disparity in everything from jobs to housing. Streets are poorer; streetlights are left burned out more often; mailboxes are harder to come by. And Black folk, especially males, are far more likely to be stopped by the police and end up in prison.
I know the response that is usually given by many White folks to these things, but I wonder about corporate responsibility. My ancestors on both my mother and father's sides owned slaves. In many places in the old South, it was illegal for a Black to be able to read or write. Marriage between African-Americans was not accorded the same legal status as that between European-Americans. Families were broken up: fathers and mothers were sold and separated, sometimes by hundreds of miles.
I don't feel guilt for the past -- Adam's, my ancestors or my own -- because the Lord Jesus died in my place as my substitute and became a curse for me. (Galatians 3:13) But I do accept responsibility to work for change. I will not respond like Cain; I acknowledge that I am responsible. A society that has systematically, overtly and legally discriminated against African-Americans for several hundred years is responsible, too.
I believe that most Americans are racists, at least at some level, but hopefully most are not hateful, malevolent racists. That's true for African-Americans as well as European-Americans. Until we recognize it in ourselves, we cannot deal with it. Racist thinking is a bit like self-pity, pride or lust, it sometimes knocks on the door of the conscious mind, but the Christian person must learn to reject it by the authority of the name of Jesus.
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