Against the Grain

Here’s a post I wrote back in 2009 that sheds some light on things I’ve said regarding the racial tensions that our nation has experienced recently…

I guess it must’ve been 1975. I’d have been in the 10th grade, a sophomore at West Brunswick High School.

My father had moved our family to Holden Beach, North Carolina, a small “barrier island” on the extreme southern North Carolina coast, only a stone’s throw from South Carolina.

While North Carolina is usually not considered the “deep South”, Holden Beach was close enough. When we moved there in 1965 or 1966 (not sure about the exact date), the schools were still segregated.

For those of you not old enough to know what that means, the whites had their school, and the blacks another.

When desegregation took place in my third year of primary school, a few white families banded together to form a private school where their children could escape the unimaginable horror of attending school with black children.

However, that idea for some reason didn’t last too long, and after two years of attending Lockwood Academy I was thrust into the world of desegregated public school.

It’s not entirely clear to me why, but for some reason I just never took to the idea of racial intolerance.

It may have had something to do with a black gym instructor I had beginning in the 5th grade. His name was Moe Stanley and he became a great influence on my life in those formative years. I became very interested in sports, especially basketball and Moe Stanley helped to fuel that passion. Also our neighbor and close family friend was the head coach of the West Brunswick varsity basketball team, which had a very successful run back in those days.

Now most of the guys who were interested in basketball back then were black. I spent a good amount of time honing my skills on the playground courts with the black kids. I befriended many of them, which served to alienate me from white kids who didn’t think too much of my social inclinations. There were many physical threats, although I don’t remember any coming to fruition.

My dream was to be a varsity star at West Brunswick and when I entered that school in 1975 I tried out for the junior varsity team and made the squad, being the only white player on the team.

About that time I was also beginning to take notice of members of the opposite sex. Given that basketball was mainly an African American activity at West Brunswick, the cheer-leading squad also happened to be color consistent.

One girl on the varsity squad really caught my eye. She was older than me, being a junior. However, my infatuation with her quickly became known by my pals on the team and the word spread to her. We began a quite innocent relationship, which mostly just involved talking on the phone and occasionally hand-holding after games. I might’ve even stolen a kiss, I don’t really remember.

But what I do remember and what has marked me deeply for life is the reaction amongst the white crowd, young and old. My actions were, to put it mildly, scandalous and an abomination. I became an outcast, shunned by white society and threatened even with grave physical harm.

Later, after I “came to my senses” and began to date a white girl, it sent shock waves through me and I would turn pale as a ghost whenever someone would mention the topic. I was reminded often, even by my own family.

Despite the fact that I grew up in an environment where this malady of thought, this cancer of the conscience, affected so many of my peers, I have always gone against the grain. That hasn’t always made things easy for me.

I don’t know exactly from where my rebellion, or nonconformity, originates, but I am thankful that despite the pressures I felt from all sides to succumb to racial intolerance, for the most part I did not.

For the truth is, there is nothing so illogical, or plain downright ignorant, stupid and backwards, than to hate someone, or judge someone, or even think poorly of someone, because of the color of their skin.

I have a great deal of inner rage at the people who judged me so harshly for “siding with the blacks.” And actually, that wasn’t the case at all, I just hated white racial bigotry and would have taken any side opposing that.

While the U.S. has come a long way from the days of ugly racial intolerance and bigotry that I experienced during my high school years, I believe it still has a long way to go.

image credit: vieilles_annonces via Compfight cc