I am black. I am sure you did not realize this when you made/laughed at/agreed with that racist remark. In the past, I have attempted to alert white people to my racial identity in advance. Unfortunately, this invariably causes them to react to me as pushy, manipulative, or socially inappropriate. Therefore, my policy is to assume that white people do not make these remarks, even when they believe there are no black people present, and to distribute this card when they do. I regret any discomfort my presence is causing you, just as I am sure you regret the discomfort your racism is causing me.
Sincerely yours,
We can compute the constants "M" and "R" for America's oscillatory "race" notion. They yield a period of about a hundred years. It takes the United States about fifty years to travel from each peak of tolerance, when the color line has faded, to each valley, when blind hatred sweeps the land. It then takes another fifty years to slowly climb back to tolerance. Peak follows valley follows peak as steadily as a metronome.
We cannot yet compute the value of "D." We do not know if each swing of the race-hate pendulum will weaken until the "race" notion is finally forgotten, or if each spasm will worsen until "something breaks."
Kids are ruthlessly logical. Forbid them to play with Sally or Billy and their instant response is, "why not?" Explain that it is because Sally and Billy are different, and the come-back is, "different how?" Tell them that the difference lies in complexion, and your kids will either ask why tallness or fatness or strength don't count, or will point out that indoorsy but "Black" Sally is actually lighter than outdoorsy but "White" Billy, thus contradicting your labels. Sooner or later you may somehow make the prohibition stick. Most parents do. And when you do, whether you like it or not, your kids will memorize The Rule by the simple children's mnemonic: "they are dirty; we are clean." And that, folks, that alone, is the only so-called instinctive gut-feeling that will stick to them throughout their lives, whether they realize it or not.
As Milton M. Gordon said, on pages 235-36 of Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins (New York: Oxford University, 1964):
At the turn of the twentieth century, Booker T. Washington advocated segregation "as separate as the fingers of one's hand." He meant to protect African-Americans from the rising tide. Instead, the widespread acceptance of his well-meaning advice deepened the Jim Crow wave of terror, which lasted until about 1950.
But, in between those two waves, at the turn of the nineteenth century, began a wave of racism that lasted until about 1850. It was the strangest example yet of well-meant self-destruction. It involved a Yellow Fever epidemic and the first AME churches in the nation.
Then, social leaders of every shade began to advocate segregation. In 1787 New Yorker Prince Hall formed the first Masonic Lodge restricted to Blacks. That same year, according to historian Elizabeth Rauh Bethel, he "initiated a petition to the city [Boston] for separate schools for African-American children."
On April 12, 1787, Black ministers Absalom Jones and Richard Allen of Philadelphia were treated badly by White churchgoers at their Methodist Episcopal Church. The two men resigned and formed their own congregations, the first AME congregations in America. For the next six years, they prayed and preached in rented or borrowed locations. They collected for building funds, but the money came in so slowly that in 1793 they seemed no nearer their goal than ever.
The worst yellow fever epidemic in U.S. history struck Philadelphia that summer. Yellow fever (also known as "black vomit") is a virus similar to Ebola. It spreads quickly and causes death from internal bleeding. It destroys the liver, so the patient turns yellow with jaundice just before dying.
Many Philadelphia residents, including President Washington (with Martha) and Secretary of State Jefferson (with Sally), fled Philadelphia -- the nation's temporary capital -- when the epidemic of 1793 broke out. Some terrified people abandoned the sick in their beds. Others threw them into the streets.
Matthew Carey, who later became the official historian of the epidemic, preached a theory that the plague was Black germ warfare against Whites. He said that yellow fever had been discovered and brought in by brown revolutionaries from the rebellion in Sainte Domingue (now Haiti), which had begun two years earlier. He claimed that Blacks of the world wanted to overthrow the U.S.
White Philadelphians refused to swallow such idiocy. To the contrary, Philadelphia's mayor asked the town's Black community leaders for help. At that time, Americans of all complexions thought that folks of strongly African descent were resistant to this plague (they are not -- yellow fever is quite different from malaria).
The Black community of Philadelphia responded with heroism. Its members entered White homes to care for the sick and dying while healthy White people left town for the duration. Soon, you could see in every home, by every occupied sickbed, a Black figure keeping silent vigil by candlelight, nose and mouth covered with vinegar-soaked gauze to keep out contagion. No one knew that the disease actually spreads by mosquitoes, not by infected air.
Pennsylvania newspapers hailed this outcome in 1794. They said that it exemplified interracial harmony. Henceforth, Black folks and White folks could each have their own churches, neighborhoods, schools, and so forth. This would avoid their getting on each other's nerves. To make it work, the only thing people had to do was to remain tolerant despite segregation -- to not let ostracism slide downhill to alienation.
Fat chance. The very next generation of Philadelphians torched the Black neighborhoods in order to uproot the sub-humans infesting their city. According to historian Leon F. Litwack in North of Slavery: the Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1961) pages 100-101:
Incidentally, Adrian Piper no longer hands out those little cardboard scoldings. It seems that some folks thought the idea so ingenious, that they began making offensive remarks as soon as they saw her coming in order to receive one of her famous cards. So she stopped.
Editorials and letters here, especially those by our Kindly and Illustrious Publisher, sometimes give the impression that people of multicultural heritage have a special role to play. The premise is that we are torchbearers; that by our very existence we undertake the duty of rubbing America's nose in its "race" delusion. It reminds you of Washington DC artist and philosopher Adrian Piper, a European-looking lady of part-African descent who became upset at the casual verbal bigotry often voiced by White Americans when they thought that they were among only themselves. So she handed out cards that read:
Dear Friend,
I cannot prove Dr. Piper's anti-racist motivation, of course. My speculation that many people of dual heritage feel a selfless calling to eradicate racism is just a guess. But if my guess is accurate, and if it applies to you, then it behooves you to know what you are up against.
Adrian Margaret Smith Piper
The "Race" Notion's Oscillation
Newton discovered that, in our space-time continuum: F = Md2x/dt2. A system's acceleration "d2x/dt2" from any position "x" depends on its inertia "M" and on the strength of the force applied "F". But in some situations, force is proportional to displacement but points backwards. In other words, a restoring force "R" grows as the system departs its original state: Md2x/dt2 = F = -Rx. Every engineer recognizes this quadratic differential equation. It describes an oscillation. Coil springs, rubber bands, pendulums, even the feedback squeal from public address microphones work thus. The complete formula is: Md2x/dt2 + Ddx/dt + Rx = 0. The middle constant "D" is crucial. If this dampening force is negative, the oscillations fade away like the sound of a struck bell. If it is positive, they grow wilder with each swing until something breaks.Segregation Breeds Hate
Either way, benevolent segregation is not possible. Human nature forbids it. Throughout history, even the well-intentioned creation of social enclaves inevitably spawned fear and hatred in subsequent generations. The reason lies in our children.
Recent studies have pointed to the role of intimate equal-status contact between members of majority and minority groups in reducing prejudice. Structural separation, by definition, denotes a situation in which primary group contacts between members of various ethnic groups are held to a minimum, even though secondary contacts on the job, on the civic scene, and in other areas of impersonal contact may abound. In view of the tendency of human beings to categorize in their psychic perceptions and reactions and to form in-groups and, frequently, out-groups on the basis of familiar experiences and contacts, it may plausibly be argued that just as intimate primary group relations tend to reduce prejudice, alack of such contacts tends to produce ethnic hostile attitudes.
History teaches the same lesson. At the turn of the eighteenth century, Virginia's Governor General William Gooch, at bayonet point, forced his Black and White constituents to segregate from each other. He meant well. Society's leaders back then thought that "racial" segregation would reduce the likelihood of bloody revolution. Instead, it became the harbinger of the Nathaniel Bacon wave of bigotry, which lasted until about 1750.The Philadelphia Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793
In 1780, free Americans of part-African descent in Newport, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia had very nearly assimilated into the mainstream. Exogamy (intermarriage) and permeability (fair-complexioned children born into African-American households re-labeling themselves White after high school) were at a peak.
Cooler weather eventually ended the epidemic after it killed 5,000 Philadelphians of every complexion. Despite Matthew Carey's pamphlet (shown) continuing to shriek that it had all been a Black plot, the White community of Philadelphia was so grateful that it took up a collection and helped build something that the African-Americans had wanted for years but had been unable to afford -- the first two Black owned and operated churches in the nation. Those churches, the African Methodist Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, and the Mother Bethel AME Church, still have active congregations today. For details of this tale, see Kenneth R. Foster, Mary F. Jenkins, and Anna Coxe Toogood, "The Philadelphia Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793," Scientific American August (1998): 88-93.
Between 1832 and 1849, Philadelphia mobs set off five major anti-Negro riots. In July, 1834, a white mob stormed though the Negro section, clubbed and stoned its victims, destroyed homes, churches, and meeting halls, forced hundreds to leave the city, and left many others homeless.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Today at the turn of the twenty-first century, once again regular as clockwork, increasing numbers of political leaders say that each "race" should patronize its own businesses, churches, schools, and neighborhoods. Once again, they promise that segregation need not lead to terror, if only people would simply change their very nature. To this hallucination, the undersigned former engineer answers, "Md2x/dt2 + Ddx/dt + Rx = 0."
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