Personal Perspectives: Reflections on Racism

There are so many signs of our country's sickness: racism at worst and general disease at best. Simultaneously, there are marvelous examples of growth - change from the old patterns of "petty-apartheid." For one who knew the pain and humiliation of being told, "We don't have toilet facilities for y'all," and whose father feared to tell a white salesperson the radio in his new car didn't work, I cannot deny the growth and change.

We've come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. We don't know each other; we don't let ourselves know each other across racial lines. Without this knowing, we develop and hold suspicions of each other. I include all of us in this generalization, though it is blatantly clear where economic power lies.

I believe healing of the sickness - that is, racism - will happen faster, yes, if whites wake up, own the problem as their own, and make demands for change upon economic, political, and social leaders who hold concrete, specific power in these areas; if those holding real power see a changed social and economic order as desirable, take steps for change, and realize the legacy to their children when they pass on their racial prejudices. Could it be that an awakened generation could prove Frederick Douglass wrong when he said that power corrupts and concedes nothing without a struggle?

Healing of this sickness would also occur more swiftly if black people in larger numbers would heal themselves - of the scars left by a legacy of oppression; of the hatred spoken and unspoken; of the pain and the fear born of having to wonder "if I am capable"; of the lost confidence that submerges one into a morass of inertia; of the hostility when we realize the dead ends, especially in the corporate work world; and of the "black orthodoxy" that tenaciously holds worn-out language, perceptions, and interpretations of our problems that are no longer valid and that no longer serve us well. We must become bold healers, so we must first heal ourselves.

"WHERE DO WE GO from here?" Martin Luther King Jr. observed 20 years ago that we had come a long way but still had far to go. That this observation can be as relevant today as in 1967 suggests, perhaps, that this struggle against racism is forever. But because we have noted some progress, even more must be seen as possible.

We come into existence to learn things, said one spiritual teacher, such as how to love better. How have we not evolved beyond the primitive fear of difference so we can love better? As long as we hold on to fear of the unknown, of not having enough, of death, we will not be free to love. We will instead build walls around ourselves, presenting unreal images and thwarting the very possibilities of building community where differences can be celebrated.

To want a non-racist world would move us forward; wanting it is something massive numbers need to awaken to. A change in the consciousness of groups and individuals will bring about the wisdom and responsibility needed for this change to spread. Openness to learn this big lesson must be facilitated in schools and religious institutions and wherever awakened people are functioning. A climate for this growth must flow from state houses and the White House.

Intolerance of racist behavior must become a national mandate. People must be helped to under stand root causes of their racism and taught the efficacy and joy of wholeness. We have the "technology" and now need only to activate the will.

A young white man on a plane recently asked me, "Why do we have to have black magazines? They feed separation." I found a large part of me agreeing with him even as I explained that we are an invisible people, except as the white media, with all its distortions and racist projections, wish to portray us. My agreement took the form of realizing that there would be no need to produce black magazines if every time we picked up The New York Times, Better Homes & Gardens, or Life magazine and every time we viewed TV we could get reports that include a focus on issues of special concern to historically excluded people. The "magazine of the people" - all the people - must be the ideal for which to work. In a non-racist society, this would not seem strange.

Dorothy F. Cotton was director of student activities at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and had worked with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, both located in Atlanta, Georgia, when this article appeared.