Growing up anti-racist

I never understood why people needed to hate other people who were different

The second part of a series about southern white people who were against racism.

As a southern white man, I never thought black people were any different than me. I thought the same of other races as well. It was how I was raised and my grandfather had a lot to do with that. I was also not around people of other races growing up in southern Appalachia, so when I did meet them, I was more curious than anything.

Even though I knew certain words were bad, I did not understand the significance. The racial tension was a mystery to me growing up. There were very few black people where I lived. I probably never met one personally until I was in college.

My grandfather hated racism with a passion. I'm not sure anything would make him angrier than someone spouting out racist garbage. I learned this about him early and watched him act consistently over the years.

The questions were always there for me and the answers were hard to find in rural southern Appalachia.

Why did people react so strongly? Why did some people seem to hate black people, and why did some like my grandfather hold those people in the deepest of contempt? There were people arguing over black people and there were not even any around. When I asked the adults, they usually told me I was too young to understand and did not try to answer the question.

Why did people react so strongly? Why did some people seem to hate black people, and why did some like my grandfather hold those people in the deepest of contempt?

The same was true for Hispanics, Indians, Asians, or anyone who was different. Being in a religion other than Christianity was also bad and being gay was beyond anything else.

For a long time, I thought of it is nothing more than a sports team type rivalry. My team can beat your team, sort of thing. It mystified me, even more, when I realized people were serious in their dislike of other races.

Some of my friends adopted racist type thinking without any difficulty. But there was a lot of gray between the black and white of racist or not. There were levels perhaps.

Whether it was a blessing or a curse, I am not sure, but I was blessed with curiosity early on. I did not always accept what I was told as truth, and there were just enough adults around me to encourage that sort of thinking. If I thought it was interesting, I wanted to know more. I got a reputation for being rebellious because of my questions.

Every now and then I would run across an adult who tried to answer my questions and even encouraged me. One of those people was a pastor, which was a bit unusual. He thought questions were good and said there were lots of things he did not know.

When I did meet an adult like this, I tried to take advantage and get as much information as I could.

I also had a hefty case of ADHD going on, but at that time no one had heard of this condition. I even thought of myself as scatter-brained. I was just interested in many things and it never occurred to me that I needed to fit what other people thought. If my immediate family was not unhappy, it was ok, was my reasoning. Other kids thought I was a little strange, but they didn’t care. I was the bookworm of the bunch.

The issues of the day were hippies smoking marijuana, people having sex outside of marriage, and men wearing their hair long.

My grandfather did not care about those things, but he did care about racism. Nothing would raise his ire more than someone making blanket derogatory statements about races of people.

I saw him kick people out of his house and tell them to never come back, even relatives at family gatherings. I saw him get into shouting matches and even get into a shoving match over people using racist language.

I saw him refuse to do business with people that would have benefited him financially because he thought they were racists or because of their racist attitudes.

I did not see it myself, but my mother told me the story about how he once stormed out of a church during a service where the pastor said something bad about black people protesting for civil rights. She told me that when the pastor came by his farm to try to make peace, he chased the pastor off his porch with a stick of some kind.

He had a strong faith in God and believed the Bible to be the word of God. He never went back to church, but he still prayed and read the Bible every day. It was from him I learned to separate a spiritual life and church. I learned from him you need to determine your own beliefs even if they are different.

There were lots of gray areas, and issues that had no clear answers. However, the issue of racism was black and white with him. There was no grey and no room for compromise.

There were lots of gray areas, and issues that had no clear answers. However, the issue of racism was black and white with him. There was no grey and no room for compromise.

One day he got his Bible out and showed me how the scriptures show racism is wrong. We all came from Adam and Eve. We are all God’s children. He showed me several other verses that had the same message. He was dogmatic. A person could not be a Christian and be racist. They were opposites. It was a black and white matter.

There were not many other issues that he was so dogmatic about, or so certain that he was right. The question of why remained. It took years to get the answer.

The first story in this series

The third story is coming soon.