Marc Estrin
BLACK IN 60s TEXAS
Arnold’s first word problem was not “Hitler”, but “nigger”. That, of course was the huge issue for southern schools post-Brown vs. Board of Ed. BJ fleshes it out from a felt black perspective for his graduating class. But it was just too much of a slowdown to include when so much other evidence was already presented, and the story sequelae could proceed without it. Nevertheless, he makes some good points on issues still with us:
BJ’S GRADUATION SPEECH
BJ Frame was elected president of the new Black Student Association at Mansfield High. All the blacks remaining from last year, and all entering this one were willing members, and came regularly to the Sunday meetings at Bethlehem Baptist. After two months of organizing meetings, musical events, and even lectures by out-of-towners, the BSA became a “thing”, a thing of curiosity and perhaps even suspicion in the white community. In early November, BJ was invited to speak about its aims and activities to a community meeting, well-advertised, and heavily attended by the public. The entire Mansfield police department was present -- all five officers.
No one who had lived through the years of resistance could have been unimpressed by the change. Here was an auditorium with a racially mixed audience anxious, for whatever reason, to hear the thoughts of a black eighteen year old student. There were no hanging effigies, there were no sound trucks or reporters, there were no racist signs whitewashed onto cars parked outside the school. Integration? Desegregation? Meet thy friends? Know thine enemy? It remained to be seen.
BJ was introduced by Principle Pigg, who, as ex-football coach, chose to extol his virtues on the field. But football was not BJ's theme that day.
He began with a personal account of his own experience in moving from I. M. Terrell to Mansfield High -- the daily differences between operating in a majority and in a minority environment. He was hard on academics at Terrell, but used this to broaden his theme beyond the personal:
“The level of Negro education is even lower than the general level, and the general level is low because Americans by and large have so little genuine respect for intellectual effort. I find that here in Mansfield. I find it reflected in the school budget, and in the salaries of teachers vs. coaches. But there is a reason much more powerful than that: the level of Negro education is low because the education of Negroes is designed to perpetuate a segregated society. No matter how much money Mansfield, or Texas, or the South, or America boasts of spending on Negro schools, this underlying reality -- the propagation of inequity -- is utterly demoralizing."
The whites looked at one another; the blacks stared at the speaker.
“Black kids know this -- it’s hard to fool them. They know why they are caged in over-crowded, ramshackle buildings, in classes so large that even the most gifted student has got to slowly suffocate. It is not surprising then that the violent emotions of puberty, occurring in such a cage, take their annual toll, sending our girls into the maternity wards and our boys into the streets and jails. It is not surprising that a young man one day decides that if all his work is going to prepare him only to be a porter or an elevator boy, well, then to hell with it.”
Murmurs in the audience. One black parent mumbled -- publicly -- “Tell ‘em the truth, BJ...”.
“Our parents know this. African-American parents want their kids to get an education which will allow them to escape, and one day abolish the environment in which they see so many children perish.
“Now, I've lived in Mansfield eight years. But since enrolling here -- finally, after being told for those eight years I couldn’t -- I’ve heard a lot about how we’re putting all that Jim Crow behind us. I’ve heard it hopefully from honest, well-meaning people, and resentfully from people who would have it otherwise. But, you know, neither of them has it right. It seems to me white people will face up to our reality only as far as they can face up to their own. And white America has so many things it refuses to face.”
Here he shifted into the portion of his speech suggested by Arnold.
“America is the first society to actually achieve a taboo on anything unpleasant. Dirt? Bad breath? Dandruff? Away with them. In his “Last Word” publication, my team mate Arnold Hitler has pointed out to many of you the vocabulary of oppression and of slaughter. What he hasn’t emphasized, I believe, is that these language games represent a conscious decision to sanitize the unsanitary. Like racism and white supremacy.
“I’ll give you an example. My cousin Phil just came back from Nam, and told me about being on a chopper just outside of Hue. There were two North Vietnamese prisoners, and one said something to the other one, and the second one started to laugh. So the pilot said “Throw him out.” He ordered Phil: "Throw him out." So my cousin just pushed him out the door. Splat. “Might as well throw out the other one, too,” the pilot said, and Phil did. When he got back to base camp, he told his buddies the story, and they assured him it was a normal application of ‘M.G.R.’ -- the ‘mere gook rule’ -- for sub-humans.
“Now the M.G.R. doesn’t come from nowhere. As a term, it hides and excuses the inexcusable. It grows out of a culture which hasn’t seen the last of its lynchings and murders. It inherits the cold-bloodedness of a nation built on slavery and extermination of the Indians, our own domestic gooks. When Mr. Griffin published his exposé a few years ago, he was hung in effigy and run out of town -- out of the country, in fact.
“‘But,’ you say, ‘Look at all nastiness that goes on in niggertown.’ And I say that that is the function of niggertown. If we weren’t there, white Americans would have to look into themselves and their own personalities, with all of their own vices, and darkness. Instead, they can look at us, and feel righteous.”
The silence in the room was excruciating, the blacks not daring to express their approval, the whites not daring to express their rage. BJ paused to allowed what he had said to sink in. Then he shifted nimbly, as he did on the field.
“It’s good to be here,” he continued. “I should have said that at the beginning. Normally, you throw and I catch. That’s how we’re bound together. Today, just for a few minutes, I get to throw, and you
catch. And if that makes you feel bad, I have to admit that it makes me feel bad, too.
“But I am sustained by knowing that the so-called “Negro Problem” has always been a white problem, a problem of self-fulfilled projection. It has been the peculiar triumph of white society to able to convince those whom it calls inferior of the reality of its decree; white America has the weapons to translate its dictum into fact, so that the allegedly inferior are actually made so.
“I was invited here to explain the purpose of the Black Student Association. The BSA exists to explore the situation of black people here in Mansfield, and in the country at large. And already, in only half a year of meetings and classes we have come to two important conclusions, which I am happy to share with you today.
“First, as we all know, the goal of integration -- not just after dark -- is far more difficult to attain than simple desegregation. We can change the laws and the Jim Crow practices, but changing hearts and minds, changing hearts and minds is far more difficult. Ending the deep racial inequalities that afflict our society and, on a more personal level, fostering brotherly love among all races can only happen in a society of genuine equality. That means political and economic equality as well as social equality. That means equal work opportunities, and equal pay; that means equal standing before the justice system; that means equal treatment by realtors and banks and insurance companies. We are not interested in integration, per se. Black people are not as concerned with how to get along with whites, as with how to get along with their lives. We might make some new friends in the process, we might make even more enemies. But we intend to work for -- and bring to pass -- a system which assures the equal right of all, regardless of race or class, to live as full human beings.
“The other conclusion we have drawn -- and I offer this not as threat, but as suggestion -- the other conclusion is that American whites -- often childishly vindictive and potentially dangerous -- have the choice of becoming human -- or irrelevant.
“Thank you for your attention, and I’ll see you all on Friday night for the seventh Tiger romp of the season!”
The applause was tense: guardedly enthusiastic in black hands, grudgingly polite in white ones. Arnold and Edna began the chant planned to follow the strategic end of BJ’s speech: “GO TIGERS GO!, GO TIGERS GO!, GO TIGERS GO!, the mindless, but somehow enthralling mantra no Mansfieldite could ignore. To not join in this formula of approbation, even after being assaulted, would be tantamount to heresy. So the chanting built towards the hypnotic, and BJ was able to return to his seat under the false mantle of reflex passion. Pavlov could not have planned it better.