Reconstructing the South

I don’t know what to think anymore. When racism, homophobia, and misogyny are openly expressed, I feel like the world tipped, and I can’t gain my footing or think straight. When it visits my life so closely I can touch it, I become unhinged.

A few weeks ago I discovered the attorney who represents my Homeowners Association (HOA) is a prominent member of a noted neo- Confederate hate group, League of the South (LOS).  Their logo is a black cross on a white field. The white field represents white purity and the black cross represents never surrendering to the government. They are against integration, interracial marriage, and equality. They promote secession from the United States.

In their write-up of the LOS, the Southern Poverty Law Center described the hate group, formed in 1994, this way: “The League of the South is a neo-Confederate group that advocates for a second Southern secession and a society dominated by “European Americans.” The “godly” nation envisioned by the League should be run by an “Anglo-Celtic” (read: white) elite that would establish a Christian theocratic state and politically dominate blacks and other minorities. “

They also believe, as the lawyer representing my HOA said in a video blog,

It simply cannot be honestly disputed that we are under threat from all sides today. Whether it is the media; the Federal government; the state governments, which falsely claim to represent us; or organized agitators – all are arrayed against us and are intent on our destruction as a distinct people. There are influential individuals in the media and in government calling for expressions of our heritage to be a crime. There are some who even call for ethnic cleansing of the South through numerically overwhelming our people at the ballot box by hostile immigrants from other parts of the United States or from the third world. This is nothing other than colonization and ultimately genocide. It may be a soft genocide but it is genocide nonetheless. Our people will be erased through deliberate government policy.

Apparently, even though North Carolina is in the top ten ranked states experiencing population growth, there are certain Southerners who do not want transplants, Northerners like us, or especially interracially married people like us (for first time readers, I am white and my husband is black), to relocate to their state.

The president and founder of the LOS, Michael Hill, recently gave a keynote address at a conference in August 2015 and spoke about letting the liberals assist him in radicalizing Southerners. He said they made his job easier.

I find his words incredibly unsettling.

As the president of the HOA, I don’t care to have the chair of the NC chapter of the LOS conduct legal business on our behalf. I don’t see that he can objectively serve all the neighbors in our development since quite a few of us are people of color and Northern transplants. I also don’t want my dues supporting his hateful rhetoric, which motivates, radicalizes, and incites people to violence.

My fellow board members disagree. They feel he simply has strong opinions. They like him.

We have exactly the same information and yet we disagree. The other officers offered that they share a Southern heritage of which they are proud. I told them my in-laws have a Southern heritage, too.  They were silent, because surely they recognized that the Southern heritage my in-laws experienced included exclusion, violence, socio-economic oppression, and Jim Crow. Or maybe they feel like many outspoken Neo-Confederates who think Southern heritage is only white Southern heritage. Maybe they feel that the experience of black Southerners doesn’t count.

I offered to resign. They asked me if they could do more research first. I felt they were dragging out the inevitable.

Sometimes I just can’t understand how anyone can uphold segregation and exclusion and feel perfectly fine about it.  Or how anyone can scream about radicalized Muslims and be silent about radicalized racists.

In fact, during our discussion one of the officers brought up gay marriage and Kim Davis. He said that even though he agreed with Kim Davis on the definition of marriage, he felt she had a civic duty to perform the work. He felt our attorney, even with his beliefs, was still fulfilling his duty to us.  The other officer chimed in that she didn’t agree with gay marriage either and told a story about how the department she managed during her career had many gay employees and there was nothing she could do about it because she would have lost her job.

If there had been no threat of termination, what would she have felt right doing to the gay employees under her management?

It is not just a strong opinion when you have power over another group’s ability to live, work, learn, worship, and play. It is blatant discrimination. And in the case of the LOS, it is racism at its most virulent.

I interact with people everyday who have “strong opinions” about my marriage and about my moving from the Northeast to the South. I have never been disrespectful. I have never once tried to be punitive.  Yet many felt perfectly fine telling us we are an abomination, staring at us in places we have every right to be in, and, in one frightening encounter, veering their car at us.

That is hatred. That is exclusion. That is the demand that we don’t come into their space, even though it is our space, too.  That is the belief that we are less American than they are, even when they talk of secession. That is dangerous and, in growing situations, deadly.

Our history remains unchanged.

I feel disappointment in my fellow HOA officers, in friends and family, and in Americans overall who don’t share my outrage. In my eyes they are people who aren’t concerned with the rising number of fatalities perpetrated by haters, racists, homophobes, or misogynists. They are blind to systemic racism and either deny its existence or blame the victims of it instead of seeking out the truth.

I find myself staying away from friends, family, and all people. It is not due to my prejudice, because I am a true liberal: tolerant, accepting, and open, and I follow the first documented socialist, Jesus Christ. I exclude myself because I see that even people who are close to us choose not to acknowledge the racism that rages in our country. I am not sure why they choose to pretend it doesn’t happen except maybe they can’t handle it.

When people around me ask why I view everything through the perspective of race, I feel disappointment and anger because they refuse to acknowledge the difference between race and racism. They refuse to acknowledge my truth and the truth of America.

So I choose to go it alone with the few people who share my experience or who are willing to, if not completely understand it, because one can’t unless one experiences it directly, at least agree that it sucks to be a person of color in this country. Not only is it terrible, it is often fatal.

The original sin of our country, slavery, continues to impact the structure of our society and every social interaction transacted in our lives. Everything from our jobs, to housing, education, health care, and class, is impacted by race and privilege in America.

In his commencement speech in 1965 at Howard University, Lyndon B. Johnson said, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, 'you are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates."

Organizations like the LOS want to perpetuate the uneven playing field for minorities, women, and LGBT individuals. I have lost hope that we can change the pervasive evil embodied by organizations like the LOS and others like it because our country can’t handle the truth.

This evening I found out the HOA officers can’t handle the truth either. We met again to discuss the attorney. I said, “I’m ready to hear you out.”

Then I got to hear about the different flags that represent Southern heritage, that blacks fought on the side of the Confederacy (they were slaves. Did they have a choice?), and just because someone has an opinion doesn’t mean he can’t perform his job. I was told that down here there are probably a lot of people who are members of groups like that.

I responded that was probably true, and I have a right to not do business with people and businesses if I am aware of their associations.

One wanted to know if I’d experienced racism in our neighborhood, and I mentioned our shooter neighbor. “But she’s mental,” was the response.

I asked if they would agree to having a member of the Black Panther Party represent us legally. They vehemently said no. I asked if they would let a radical Muslim represent the HOA. One said she would never have a Muslim attorney, period.

I’d had enough. I stood. I shouted. I told them I was offended that they could sit there and say who they wouldn’t work with but expect me to work with a group trying to radicalize white Southerners against people of color and the government.

Isn’t that the very definition of privilege?

I said, “At the end of the day, all I have is my dignity and my personal ethics.”

I resigned.

As I opened the front door to leave, they asked me not to let the neighbors know my reason for resigning. I told them I had to give the reason, because I made a commitment, and I wanted them to know why I broke it.

My breath heaving, my body electrified, I drove all the way home with the emergency brake on. I told Ronald all I could remember as soon as I let myself into the house. He said he already knew how it was going to turn out. I said, “You are never wrong.”

Then, before I could be blocked from the email group, I wrote:

I am sorry to report that I resigned from the position of president due to deep differences of opinion amongst the board on continuing to do business with an individual who is a member of a known hate group. I would hope that as a neighborhood, we would want all our interactions to be in the best interest of all neighbors.

It was my pleasure to serve you.

Don’t be silent.

Michael Hill, founder and president, LOS

For more information on the LOS, see the complete write-up at the Southern Poverty Law Center website:

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/league-south

Listen to Michael Hill, founder of the LOS, at the LOS conference in August of 2015:

http://northcarolinaleagueofthesouth.com/dr-michael-hill-our-survival-as-a-people-redux/

Decoding Hate

Hate groups in our country continue to thrive. They may market themselves as religious conservatives, fiscal conservatives or even protectors of Western civilization or white culture, but what they do is promote hate, insularity, and divisiveness. Jared Taylor, a fundraiser for YWC (Youth for Western Civilization), was quoted as saying, “When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization – any civilization – disappears.” 

Kevin DeAnna, YWC leader, wrote in a letter that “radical multiculturalism” and the “far left…destroy our people and our culture.”

He was also quoted as saying, “Even if you prove to me…that [curtailing illegal immigration] would hurt the economy, I would still be opposed to immigration because it’s about our dispossession as a people.” (The Intelligence Report, Fall 2011, Issue 143)

I think America was preserved and pristine at the hands of its first natives who helped the white man so he would not die in the harsh conditions during the early years of settlement, even as the settlers engaged in genocide. I think America was built on the backs of slaves, most of whom were African or descendants of Africans, and the Chinese and the Irish. It was built on the backs of immigrant women and children who lived in tenement housing and worked in factories where they were locked in and forced to work in inhuman conditions. It was built on migrant workers, mainly black and Hispanic, who still work the fields today and live in poverty and squalor. Liberals helped the progress of our country by supporting social programs, such as social security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, and Headstart programs. These programs equalize and diminish the difference between haves and have-nots. They also allow our country to tap into the vast potential of those who may not have the access and resources to reach their full potential by giving them avenues to do so. Helping those who need help, who need not just bootstraps with which to pull themselves up, but the boots that are connected to the bootstraps, without regard to race, gender or ethnicity, helps all of us in ways that most of us take for granted.

Fear of change and loss of power are what drive most of the hate groups today and have always been the driving force behind them. These groups use words that have coded meanings and instigate, support and perpetuate violence. Either their members feel dispossessed because they assume they are entitled to a piece of the American pie, or they already wield power and wealth and fear losing it.  I don’t care if they want to hate, and I don’t hate them in return. They have the freedom to feel and think as they do, but they don’t have the right to impose their rhetoric, beliefs and actions on others.

They could not exist if racism did not still exist, if all the isms did not still exist. Yet here I am imposing my own beliefs on you, dear reader. But I am only trying to say that we are all equal, more alike than different in our needs and aspirations, but diverse in our approaches and perspectives. Our different ingredients make up the American pie and there are enough slices for all of us.

I’m not always so serious. I’m actually quite funny. Read another excerpt from my memoir, Shades of Tolerance, below, and maybe it will make you smile.

(Excerpt from Chapter 7 The Ubiquitous They, Shades of Tolerance: A Biracial Love Story)

Dad picked me up at the Schenectady bus station, a tiny room surrounded by windows. He drove down Central Avenue toward Colonie, and neither of us spoke. I watched the buildings and cars and people out the side window, afraid to ask how Ma was doing.

I do not remember much about my stay those few days except that Ma was released from the hospital and she told me to go back to school and finish the semester. I was angry and embarrassed I had called all my professors, my voice shaking with grief, telling them I had to go home because my mother was near death. Now I would be back for final exams after all. I worried about taking exams after such a disruption. I worried the faculty would think I had lied or exaggerated. I considered whether or not Ma had exaggerated her illness or got sick on purpose, so I would come home. I wondered if her illness was my fault, just as she had accused me of causing Dad’s second heart attack the summer before.

I spent the bus ride back to Syracuse with my forehead pressed against the window, deep in thought, watching each mile marker streak by the window. Just as I had stopped drinking a few years before, I decided now to stop going back to the source of my feeling abandoned and anxious.

Ronald met me at the bus station in Syracuse and walked with me back to the dorm, carrying my bag. When we got to my room, I told him what I thought about the whole ride back in the bus. “I’m not going back to Albany this summer,” I said.

“Where are you going to stay? Where will you work?” he asked.

“I’ll figure it out,” I said.

“Don’t do anything rash,” he said, “It’s only a few months.”

“I can’t stay in that house again.”

Copy Services at Bird Library had a new supervisor. Maxine had moved to Technical Services and Mary had taken her job. Mary was almost six feet tall, a linebacker with long, fine blonde hair and pale blue eyes. Her voice sounded like a whisper. She had a twin sister nicknamed Bug who looked exactly like her, unless you studied the shapes of their faces, and you realized that Bug’s face was softer at the edges and smaller than Mary’s. Mary and Bug made all their own dresses: the same empire dress pattern with long sleeves, but in different solids and prints. The personalized license plate of their shared station wagon announced their avocation: QUILTERS.

“Oh, your poor mother,” I had said to Mary upon realizing that the person I was waving to on campus was Bug and not Mary, and that was why she ignored me.

‘Why do you feel sorry for my mother?” Mary had asked.

“To have twins for her firstborn. It must have been very difficult for her as a new mother,” I said.

One day she would laugh at me, looking at my belly circumference that nearly matched my height, when I, too, would have twins for my firstborn. A few weeks before I went on maternity leave, Mary would throw her arm around my waist, heft me up like a sack of grain, and walk across a runnel of rainwater rushing towards the street drain.  All in good humor, she and Bug made quilts and stuffed teddy bears for my set of twins.

I told Mary my plight when I went to pick up my paycheck.

“I have one more summer position open,” she said, “You and Ron can work all summer, full-time hours.”

“Great!”  I said. I called Peggy that evening and begged to use her spare room in the house she and Dawson had just bought with another couple. It was an old two-family, built in the 1920s, down in the ghetto on the south side of Syracuse.  Peggy, Dawson and baby Liza lived in the first-floor flat and the other couple and their baby of the same age lived in the second-floor flat. Peggy said she would be happy to have me stay.

Even though I had rushed home to see Ma in the hospital, I had kept conversation short and directed at her health. I did not want to call her to tell her I would not be home for the summer, so I sent her a letter. Syracuse became my hometown for the next thirty years. Ma would fight to keep Andy home, and he obliged, if only because he had no other plan. She had called Andy and me “the two little ones.” She never wanted us to leave, and now she was angry that she could not make me stay, could not make me choose her over Ronald. Syracuse, already home to Peggy and Rocco, had stolen another child.

Mary and Bug lived in the Valley section of Syracuse not even a mile from Peggy’s house, and they beeped their horn each morning to let me know they had arrived to pick me up. Ronald walked to work from his Euclid Avenue home. He and I worked together, leaving at noon to wander down to Marshall Street and the Burger King at lunchtime.  After lunch we would stand side by side, working to get the copy requests completed.

The Copy Center was walled by glass that looked out on Periodicals. Often as we stood at the copy machines, we watched one of the Library administrators walking by, his head turned in our direction. One day he slipped in the front door and told Mary he wanted to talk to her.

Mr. Bullard came up to Mary’s chest. He was middle-aged and balding, his suit a grayish green. Rumor was his hero was Winston Churchill. He had read every one of his books and all biographies about him. He must have fancied himself Churchill-like, his finger resting in the watch pocket of his vest. He also imagined himself as a wise and desirable mentor to young female employees in his charge. I thought he was creepy.

“I’ve had complaints,” he said to Mary.

“Complaints?” Mary echoed. She dwarfed him and her usually soft features looked menacing.

“Those two can’t work together,” he said, nudging his chin toward Ronald and me, standing behind copy machines side by side.

“Who can’t work together?” Mary asked, her voice losing its whispery quality. Ronald and I looked at each other then back to the scene playing in front of us. We kept the copy machines humming, turning pages of the books we were copying from, flipping the books over and flattening their spines so the copies would not be black on the bound edge of the pages. We did this without looking down, our eyes fixed on Mary and Bullard.

“One of them has to work in Technical Services,” he said, pointing at us.

“They are my students,” Mary said, leaning toward Bullard. He looked down at the counter separating them.

“It’s voluntary. Otherwise, someone will have to be fired,” Bullard said, “I told you people have complained.”

Mary picked up a ruler from her desk. She used it to slap her palm to emphasize each word. “Who complained?” she said again, slapping the ruler twice.

“People,” Bullard said, “I can’t say who.”

“The ubiquitous they,” she said, slapping her palm again on each word, her voice seeming to bounce off the walls and glass.

Bullard took a step backward. I looked out the glass into the Periodicals Department and noticed all eyes, students and staff, were turned to Copy Services. Everyone had heard Mary’s whispery voice turn dangerous.

“And what did they say their complaint was?” she said, continuing to slap her palm with the ruler. Now it was a constant slap, slap, slap.

Bullard stared at the ruler. I think Mary was imitating some nuns she knew, or at least one or two that I had run into during Sunday school classes, and I was even surer that Bullard had attended Catholic school based entirely on his expression and body posture.

“I can’t say,” he said, his voice faltering. Then he straightened his spine and looked up at her.

“I’ve spoken,” he said. “I want an answer within the hour. Someone is working out back.” He turned and reached for the door.

“Oh, you’ll get an answer,” Mary said.

“No,” I said, staring at Bullard, my copy machine now silent. “I’ve got an answer now. I quit!”

“You can’t quit,” Bullard said, turning to look at me.

“No, she can’t quit,” Ronald said, “ because I quit.”

“I still quit,” I said.

Bullard stood rooted in his spot, his hand still reaching for the door handle, staring at us.

“I quit, too!” said Steve. Steve was the night manager at Copy Services. He had only started his shift an hour earlier. Wispy and bespectacled, he sat behind the microfilm reader/printer and it seemed we had all forgotten he was there.

“Are the ubiquitous they being hired on as my new staff?” Mary asked, the ruler slapping at a fast and furious pace now.

Bullard dropped his hand to his side and turned to face Mary.

“Okay, drop it for now, but don’t think this is over,” he said. He quickly turned, opened the door and slammed it behind him.

We all watched Bullard through the glass as he marched across the carpeted floor in Periodicals and up the center stairway. When we could no longer see his feet, students and staff in Periodicals started applauding and we burst out laughing.