Couple o’ White Guys Sittin’ Around Talkin’

Jesse Helms ran this ad in 1990. https://t.co/5YMYyWFLWF https://t.co/TdULgJMu1A pic.twitter.com/XdnMgzHKEc

— Jay Allen (@jayallen_uj) May 8, 2023

I remember when people in America didn’t care about race. And then the 1950’s came along.

But I was born in 1955, so I don’t really remember when people in America didn’t care about race. Although I grew up among people who quite intentionally didn’t care about race, because non-white people “knew their place.” I don’t mean my friends and family were racists or white supremacists, but the world I lived in was very white, and we all benefited from that. It was very segregated, and we benefited from that. Non-white people were virtually invisible in the world I grew up in, and all the white people I knew benefited from that, whether we knew it or not.

“We” being all the white people I knew. Black people were a polite and friendly anomaly, and until they started going to school where I did (in 1970), it didn’t occur to me that they didn’t, or that I never saw them in daily life. They had “their” part of town, and we had ours. It never occurred to me why. That group of issues took a lot longer to face and understand.

So the only time people in America weren’t concerned with race was when white people were comfortable with the white status quo. Which is the only situation these two young white guys can be talking about.

Same as it ever was.