“How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see?”- Blowing in the wind, Bob Dylan

  I was very glad to see The Blacksville Project, HOPE Family Ministries and Southern Safety Services hosting a Black History Month discussion in McDonough recently. These types of dialogues are essential in order to bring us together as one American people.

  Many well-meaning and normally fair Henry County citizens think that they are not racist when in reality they are. I know … many of my acquaintances and friends in the area fall into this category.

  Of course, childhood upbringing is a large part of the problem. If you hear your parents talk about an African-American as “one of the good ones,” then you come to believe that all the rest can automatically assumed to be “bad ones.” When this biased attitude is reinforced by your social groups (“they are all lazy”), the child ends up growing up with a negative, skewed point of view that is difficult to modify. However, this phenomenon is also a direct result of white children knowing very little about the history of black people in America over the last several hundred years, which is why I am advocating an accurate course in black history be a part of every high school’s mandatory curriculum, including Henry County.

  In the late 1970s, I worked and car pooled with a retired Army Colonel who lived in Fayette County. He is now dead, so I feel free to repeat this story.

  He told me that there was no need for any affirmative action at all. The Civil Rights Act was passed (he was against it) and now everyone was on an equal footing so there was no need for affirmative action. Everyone should simply compete. I tried to explain to him the other side of the issue, but he refused to listen. And, he made sure his family felt the same way. His son moved to Idaho to be in an all-white area.

  I had forgotten about this incident until I recently had a disturbing conversation with another vet … a sincere, caring and bright person … who essentially said the same thing. “Per him, we do not need affirmative action, African-Americans can just work harder.”

  Both were native Georgians, brought up in Georgia public schools. Both of these men had a simplistic view, ignored history, making it much easier for them to justify their own bigotry and deny being racist.

  I find clear analogies are often the best way to achieve understanding. The analogy I like to use is that of a foot race. If one runner has his feet tied together for the first half of the race, one cannot expect him/her to be competitive. That is the situation in regard to African-Americans. Even if we accept the totally incorrect assumption that African-Americans were suddenly treated equally after the 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act (they were not), they still faced a straight uphill climb to just catch up.

  Under slavery and even afterwards, African-Americans faced nearly insurmountable odds. They had no capital or assets to begin with (they never got the 40 acres and a mule the government promised).

  They were strongly discouraged from getting an education. In the 70s I saw very young black children picking cotton in Woodville, Mississippi rather than going to school. The schools that they did attend were substandard and segregated until 50 years ago. African-Americans could not get employment in professional jobs even when they were qualified and were not promoted.

  I will give just one example of what I am saying. In the early 1970s, I worked as an industrial management engineer. I was a consultant in a large rural North Carolina mill which had profitability issues. The manager of one area had indicated to me that one particular line worker was far better than the rest. He was black, as were all the line workers in that particular area. I suggested he be considered for the current opening as a line supervisor. The manager told me that he could not promote him because he needed someone who the other workers would respect. When I questioned him further, incredibly, he said that black line workers would never accept a black supervisor.

  When Muddy Waters sang “I’m a man,” black people understand what he is saying is don’t call me “boy”. Very few whites in Henry County or elsewhere understand this fact. There is just no easy answer to the riddle of how to eliminate racism but having the history of African-Americans taught in our local Henry County high schools would be a good start.