White Southerners Grapple with Racial Change
By Brother Rogers
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday is the one time each year that we pause to remember the changes wrought by the civil rights movement. While much attention is rightfully focused on black progress, not much has been written about what life was like for white southerners who lived through the most serious challenge to our social order since the Civil War.
A new book on the subject is “There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975” by Jason Sokol. The observations below are from this outstanding book, which is must reading for anyone with an interest in race relations.
Before civil rights struggles hit their town, Sokol observes, many whites believed that race relations were good, that blacks were content with segregation, that white southerners understood African-Americans and knew what was best for them, and that their love across the color line was returned.
Whites were shocked when African-Americans rose up in defiance in the 1960s. Most were not aware that African-Americans were dissatisfied with their status and bent on change.
Many whites thought themselves sincere when they said they cared deeply for blacks. But it was a care based upon inequality, rooted in oppression, layered with discrimination, and willfully blind to those very facts.
Southern whites possessed care, affection and even love for blacks they knew. But these whites gravely missed the point, according to Sokol. The paramount issue was not whether white southerners knew or cared for African-Americans. The question was whether whites, under black pressure, could alter their social worlds—or at least adapt to new ones. More than affection was required.
In those days, good race relations was defined by a lack of trouble from blacks and submissive acceptance on the part of blacks of a social system that excluded them from everything except menial jobs, occasional friendly exchanges on the streets, and the annual exchange of church choirs. Only a minority of whites thought segregation was unjust.
Sokol writes that higher education or social status could confer many things, but racial tolerance was not necessarily one of them. Affluent whites might not use the n-word at the dinner table, but they did plenty to hamstring blacks’ quest for equality. An Atlanta doctor recalled, “It took a good while for me to realize that there were many examples of people I regarded as educated and enlightened on many issues…intelligent, articulate, successful professionals,” and yet in their “attitudes on blacks there was a real blind spot there.”
By the 1970s, Sokol remarks, whites could no longer subjugate blacks by law, but neither did they have to live near them, send their children to school with them, or shop in stores owned by them. In general, white southerners tried their best to ignore the civil rights movement while it occurred, and just as many attempted to disregard it afterward.
That is why a national holiday to remember the progress we have made is important, and why the trek toward a racially just society can be agonizingly slow. Let’s take pride in the distance we have traveled together, but not forget we have miles to go before we sleep.
Brother Rogers works at the Stennis Center for Public Service and is a guest columnist for the Starkville Daily News.
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday is the one time each year that we pause to remember the changes wrought by the civil rights movement. While much attention is rightfully focused on black progress, not much has been written about what life was like for white southerners who lived through the most serious challenge to our social order since the Civil War.
A new book on the subject is “There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975” by Jason Sokol. The observations below are from this outstanding book, which is must reading for anyone with an interest in race relations.
Before civil rights struggles hit their town, Sokol observes, many whites believed that race relations were good, that blacks were content with segregation, that white southerners understood African-Americans and knew what was best for them, and that their love across the color line was returned.
Whites were shocked when African-Americans rose up in defiance in the 1960s. Most were not aware that African-Americans were dissatisfied with their status and bent on change.
Many whites thought themselves sincere when they said they cared deeply for blacks. But it was a care based upon inequality, rooted in oppression, layered with discrimination, and willfully blind to those very facts.
Southern whites possessed care, affection and even love for blacks they knew. But these whites gravely missed the point, according to Sokol. The paramount issue was not whether white southerners knew or cared for African-Americans. The question was whether whites, under black pressure, could alter their social worlds—or at least adapt to new ones. More than affection was required.
In those days, good race relations was defined by a lack of trouble from blacks and submissive acceptance on the part of blacks of a social system that excluded them from everything except menial jobs, occasional friendly exchanges on the streets, and the annual exchange of church choirs. Only a minority of whites thought segregation was unjust.
Sokol writes that higher education or social status could confer many things, but racial tolerance was not necessarily one of them. Affluent whites might not use the n-word at the dinner table, but they did plenty to hamstring blacks’ quest for equality. An Atlanta doctor recalled, “It took a good while for me to realize that there were many examples of people I regarded as educated and enlightened on many issues…intelligent, articulate, successful professionals,” and yet in their “attitudes on blacks there was a real blind spot there.”
By the 1970s, Sokol remarks, whites could no longer subjugate blacks by law, but neither did they have to live near them, send their children to school with them, or shop in stores owned by them. In general, white southerners tried their best to ignore the civil rights movement while it occurred, and just as many attempted to disregard it afterward.
That is why a national holiday to remember the progress we have made is important, and why the trek toward a racially just society can be agonizingly slow. Let’s take pride in the distance we have traveled together, but not forget we have miles to go before we sleep.
Brother Rogers works at the Stennis Center for Public Service and is a guest columnist for the Starkville Daily News.