The Day I Saw the KKK

When I was young, I remember sitting in the backseat of our car looking out the window as we drove home from church. As pop drove up to the stoplight by the court square, I recall seeing the men dressed in white cloaks and pointy white hats. There were several other members standing on the corners, and one came towards our green station wagon. I think they must have been collecting money or something; as far as I recall, pop didn’t roll down the window, but kept looking straight ahead. I was scared; me, a little white girl in rural Tennessee, was scared.

(I remember being quite small when this event occurred, but my mom said I would have been in the seventh grade. She also said I could be remembering a time when I was small as well; sadly, it happened more than once.)

I was born and raised in the south. I’ve not always been comfortable telling people this fact. I grew up in a small town in West Tennessee, and I saw blatant discriminations on display regularly. I grew up hearing about "The War of Northern Aggression," (known as The Civil War to most) and I am very familiar with the bumper sticker that states "The South Will Rise Again." I am more grateful than ever before to have been born to parents who loved all--no matter what color, ethnicity, or background--but the same was not always true for the culture in which I was raised. One smaller town close by even boasted that the last colored person who had dared to set foot in that town was taught a lesson.

Blacks and whites, for the most part, lived separately. Many of the black residents of our town lived in black bottom, (yes, it was really called that) and whites didn’t go there often. The races married within their kind (again, that’s how it was stated) for the children’s sake, supposedly; white women who married black men were looked down upon. I remember visiting a black church on their side of town on a few occasions; our white church had joined with a black church in an attempt to overcome the religious/racial segregation that still stood firm. 

Quite by ironic accident, I watched 12 Years a Slave and Freedom Riders (A Documentary on the Civil Rights Era) on the day of the Ferguson grand jury decision. I watched as protests erupted, even here in New York, and opinions spread like wildfire. It is somewhat disturbing that I hear some of the exact phrases used in modern events as in the historical films I watched. Do we really not learn? Whether or not you believe there was a gross injustice served in Ferguson, Missouri in this decision, we cannot keep pretending we don’t have problems in this area of race. I grew up in the midst of racism; I know what it looks like.

Chris Rock said it quite well in a recent interview: “we treat racism in this country like it’s a style that America went through. Like flared legs and lava lamps. Oh, that crazy thing we did. We were hanging black people. We treat it like a fad instead of a disease that eradicates millions of people. You’ve got to get it at a lab, and study it, and see its origins, and see what it’s immune to and what breaks it down.”

I’ve been more than a bit troubled as this recent news in our country unfolds. I sincerely struggle to wrap my mind around all that is going on, and I find myself wrestling with how to respond. I even find that I am having trouble writing this blog, because I’m frustrated by our lack of collective compassion, I’m feeling helpless and a bit hopeless that we’ll see our way through this, and if I’m going to be honest, I’m angry—angry that some vocal whites still have a superiority complex in this country and many have been acting like asses. I even find it hard to chant my mantra of “we’re better than this,” because our history does not necessarily back me up on this stance. So I find myself modifying this mantra lately: I still believe we can be better than this.

It is a time for self-reflection and voices joined together for peace. I believe the voices that desire peace are more numerous than those divisive voices, from all viewpoints that spread violence and spew hate, but perhaps, it is time to raise our voices of peace and togetherness to a new volume.