Love in Black and White: The Triumph of Love Over Prejudice and Taboo (27 page)

“That’s the stereotype,” Mark said. “I went to North Carolina full of them, but many were dispelled. I felt more at home down there than up here.”

“Of course you felt at home,” I said. “It’s probably just like South Africa. And who wants to have Jesse Helms for a senator?”

“Gail, you don’t understand,” Mark said. “You just have to see things for yourself. I’m not saying the South is a paradise. Far from iL There’s still awful poverty, ignorance, and racism in many places.

But I’ve finally realized that the North, with all its liberal professions, hardly practices what it preaches. Up here there’s the kind of racism that leaves black people numb with rage and schizophrenia. In the South at least you know who your true friends are. In the North people smile in your face and then stab you in the back.”

“But what about us?” I asked. “When I come down to visit you, I don’t want people staring at us bug-eyed wherever we go. At least in New York City we just blend in with all the various shades of white, brown, and black.”

Despite my opposition and the warning of friends that he was making a serious mistake, Mark moved to North Carolina. I remained in New York, where most of my family and friends lived.

For several months I coped with the stresses of a commuter relationship.

But with each visit to High Point my attitude toward the South changed.

The greatest transformation was in how I felt physically; after only a few hours, I would shed all the tensions and anxieties I had accumulated by living in a crime-ridden section of Brooklyn.

Mark and I went for walks at night, sat on the balcony gazing at stars, often left the apartment door uniocked, breathed fresh air until it made me drowsy-things almost impossible to do in New York.

These simple changes had a profound effect on my personality. I became aware how three years of a fast, hard, and competitive life in a big city had dulled my sensibilities and blinded me to two of the most important things in life: health and peace of mind.

I joined Mark in North Carolina following our wedding on Long Island.

Once settled I became used to the relaxed pace of Southern life, found new interests and challenges, made new friends, and no longer missed New York.

I began noticing the different ways In which racism manifests itself in the North and South. During occasional visits to New York I could feel the racial tension in the air. The city’s blacks and whites were becoming increasingly polarized with each racial incident: Howard Beach, Bensonhurst, Central Park, Teaneck.

Traveling by subway from the Upper West Side to Midtown during one visit, I found myself trapped in a tunnel during a race fight. A Hispanic woman had jostled her way into the crowded train at 116th Street, irritating many of the sardined passengers who had boarded in Harlem and were already drenched with sweat and gasping for air.

“Don’t you be pushing me!” a young black woman shouted at the Hispanic woman as she entered.

“I din’t push nobody,” the woman replied.

“You lyin’ spic!” the young black woman said, angrily pushing the Hispanic woman off the train.

The Hispanic woman fought back and managed to get aboard just as the graffitied doors slammed shut. “Stupid nigger,” she muttered under her breath.

“Say what!”

As the train jolted into motion the fighting continued with threats and taunts and racial epithets, then came to blows. Trapped in the crowd, I was struck repeatedly by flailing elbows and fists but could not move out of the way.

Another young black woman, apparently in solidarity with her black sister, stood up on the bench and cried, “Here, use this!” then threw a closed switchblade over several heads to her friend.

Others followed suit. I looked up and saw a dozen knives flash open, waving in the air like bayonets over an army. I had never imagined so many people carried weapons on the subway.

0No knives! No knives please!” someone shouted.

Passengers panicked. Mechanical difficulties forced the train to grind to a halt in the tunnel, hallway between two stops. The lights went out and the fan stopped. The scuffling and screaming continued in the dark, airless cage, several feet below Manhattan’s sidewalks. Hispanic passengers jumped into the fray, fighting with any black who shouted encouragement to the young black woman. The crowd shoved me about as I evaded blows.

As suddenly as they had gone out, the lights came back on and the train jerked into motion. When we reached the next station, the doors slid open and people practically stampeded over each other to get out of the train, away from the knives and fighting. I staggered onto the platiorm, breathless and shaking, then sprinted up the stairs onto the street.

I was thankful I had moved out of New York. But I did not yet feel at home in the South. Sitting in a High Point truck rental office one afternoon shortly after we were married, I waited for the secretary to process some forms so we could rent a moving truck to carry our belongings from one High Point apartment to another. Mark had come briefly, then gone outside to wait in the car and finish listenIng to a library tape of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.”

“Hey, did you know they got niggers up in Canada?” a male voice shouted to the secretary from a back room. “I didn’t know they got that far north! I’ll be damned. Niggers in Canada! Niggers everywhere! Aln’t no place you can go these days to get away from em.”

The secretary, who had seen Mark come in with me, flushed crlmson.

“Aw, shut up, you damn redneck!” she shouted toward the back room.

The man, who happened to be one of the mechanics, came to the door of the office and stared in disbelief at the secretary. He glanced around the room and, seeing no one but me and the secretary, no blacks, appeared more bewildered than before.

“Since when did you get to be such a nigger lover?”

“I ain’t!” the secretary retorted.

0Then what the hell’d I do to bring on such a storm of fire? I was just tellin’ you a bit of news I just got from readin’ the papers.”

“Well, you don’t have to shout so everyone can hear ya,” the secretary replied.

He eyed me carefully. Satisfied that I was thoroughly white and, therefore, not offended by his remarks, he walked away shaking his head in dismay at the secretary’s impudence.

I took every opportunity to speak confidentially to older whites, born and bred in the South. I questioned them about race relations and hostilities that might be left unspoken.

“What do most white Southerners think of my being married to a black man?” I asked a middle-aged white woman who had spent most of her life in Kernersville.

“Oh, that’s easy,” she replied. “They think you’re a whore.”

Her blunt reply took me aback, and I marveled at her honesty.

She went on to relate stories of her Southern upbringing, how she was taught to speak to blacks In a tone of authority, how some of the boys she had dated are now members of the Klan, how the Klan still holds meetings frequently in many North Carolina towns, which she named.

“I’d be careful if I were you,” she said with a meanIngful look, then paused. “You know, I had to think twice after you invited me to come to your home for dmner. When I mentioned it at work, one of my coworkers said, you’re not going, are you? She’s married to a black man. You don’t approve of race mixing, do you?” It threw me off a bit, made me remember all the things I was raised to believe. But I’ve always been somewhat of a rebel, so I decided to come.”

This, too, surprised me, for I had no idea she considered she was doing me a favor by coming to my home and eating food I had prepared.

On another occasion I asked a balding but vigorous white man, raised In Virginia and the Carolinas, what Southerners thought of my marrying a black man.

“They pity you,” he said without hesitation. “They feel sorry for you because a black man raped your mind and brainwashed you into marrying him, against all your best interests and every remnant of reason and good sense.”

Eager to understand the source of such twisted attitudes in Southerners, the contradiction between their public smiles and private scorn, between the all-embracing Christian love they felt on Sunday mornings at church and their inherent belief In segregation and white superiority that still governed their daily lives, I read various books about the South, among them Killers -the Dream by Lillian Smith. In this thoughtful and well-written autobiographical work, I found answers to most of my questions about the explosive issues of race and sex in the South.

Born in Jasper, Florida, in 1897, at the end of a decade in which one thousand Negroes were lynched, Lillian Smith and her eight siblings were raised to believe in God, the Bible, democracy, and freedom, but were taught to stay away from colored children and shun the warm breast of their black mammy when they reached a certain age. Glowing memories of a pleasant Southern childhood spent in Florida and Georgia, well protected from the disturbing world of sex and race, are laced with bitterness toward the South for its hypocrisy and ignorance and provincialism and for teaching her to deny the humanity of blacks.

Just as white children were taught in South Africa, Smith was taught that her white skin was her glory and the source of her strength and pride. She was also told that white is a symbol of purity and excellence, that her white skin proves that she is better than all other races on this earth.

Her skin gave her certain “privileges,” which she began to see as limitations to her freedom. It dictated which entrances she used, where she should sit and stand, what part of town she lived in, where she ate, which theaters she attended, which swimming pools she used, and whom she could love.

When Smith was just a child, her mother spotted a little white girl living in a shack in Colored Town. Believing that the child had been kidnapped by blacks, Smith’s mother “rescued” the girl and raised the child in her own home. Smith and the little girl, who were about the same age, became best friends. Then one day Smith’s mother received a letter from the colored adoption agency stating that the child did indeed have some Negro blood. The little girl was swiftly sent back to Colored Town, and Smith was never told why she was not allowed to see her best friend again.

The South has changed a great deal since Smith’s childhood. But the attitudes she described still fester. One measure of how much they still exist in a particular area is the introduction of a mixed couple onto the scene.

On May 26, 1990, the Greensboro News Record did just that. The paper published a color photograph of four teenagers: two ginthe black, one whiteanced on a low wall beside a black boy In high-top sneakers and a baseball cap tenderly holdIng the hand of a white girl with long blond hair wearing an oversize T-shirt and bobby socks.

The photograph provoked a flood of angry letters, most of them from white readers. The debate raged for more than a month in the “Letters to the Editor” column.

“The picture entitled Dancing in the Park’… was embarrassing,” one letter read. “Why did you allow staff photographer Joseph Rodriquez to choose such a distasteful, demoralizing, suggestive pose for the newspaper? I have heard many derogatory remarks from friends and out-of-state visitors regarding this picture. It was an awful picture and I’m disappointed in your newspaper.”

Another letter began, “I was startled by the picture on the local front page. Why did you show a picture such as this? This promotes race mixing and shows what kind of paper you print. I have talked to several people in my area and they, too, were very upset. This kind of edia coverage is not appreciated by the general public. I think there should be an apology.”

A third read, “I’m sure you’ve managed to fan the flame of racial hate with the photo of Dancing in the Park.” What’s next, photos of burning crosses? Very poor judgment.”

A few letters, in response to the above three, argued that the photograph portrayed racial harmony and urged Greensboro residents to be more tolerant toward mixed couples. These letters were all penned by women, perhaps because women are more likely than men to accept love in whatever form it takes, even black-white.

One insightful response came from a woman who wrote “In those 13 years have I seen any progress in the fight against racism in this area. I am constantly embarrassed by the racist attitudes of those whom I otherwise consider to be good, decent, moral, loving people.

The saddest testimony of all is my willingness to tolerate this racist attitude In my friends, because after 13 years I realize I might very well be friendless ill didn’t.”

“Disillusioned people such as the reader who opposed race mixing’ need to re-examine their own moral values and decide if what they believe is truly right,” wrote a black female high-school student.

“I find it distasteful and demoralizing that such attitudes continue to exist. Instead of seeing a group of young people having fun, they chose to view the scene in their own twisted way.”

A white Southerner in Siler City, a rural community thirty miles southeast of Greensboro, rebutted this and other conciliatory letters.

“Interracial marriages are unbiblical and immoral,” he wrote. “God created different races of people and placed them amongst themselves.

To abolish racial separatism and promote interracial marriages is to do away with God’s workings. … If mixed marriages are necessary for racial harmony, count me out. I will not sing or dance to that tune.

There is nothing for white Americans to gain by mixing their blood with blood of other peoples. There will only be an irreversible damage for us.” The letter sounded as if it had been written by an Afrikaner in support of apartheid.

Mark and I have often wondered if we are partiy protected from many of these hidden, hostile attitudes because we recently moved to the South from New York and, therefore, don’t “know any better” or because Mark is a black South African and is thus not regarded with the same unjustified contempt as the descendants of slaves or because Mark is friends with Stan Smith and Oprah Winfrey and has written two bestsellers.

To find out whether white Southerners did indeed treat us differently from other mixed couples, I proposed to write an article on interracial couples in North Carolina for WinstonSalem Magaune.