My racist past … and Joe Biden’s
East Central Jr. College sits in Decatur, Mississippi, 30 miles west of Meridian and off I-20 seven miles north. Just as Daniel Webster said of Dartmouth, “She may be small but there are those of us who love her,” so have many students become endeared to this small but strong educational institution.
Now called East Central Community College, it is still a vibrant rural college, lauded by the fivecounty area it serves. My greatest debt to the college is for a re-awakening it brought me.
In freshman English, I chose to write about race for a required argumentative essay. I titled the essay “A Defense of Legal Segregation.” The year was 1963. Lest we forget, for decades in the Deep South segregation was required by law.
“A Defense of Legal Segregation.” Ponder that now in 2019, 56 years later. I’ve done so many times. How did I, as a child and younger teenager, go from feeling deep sorrow for segregated black people to defending segregation as a 19-yearold college student? Why did the deep sadness of seeing “Whites Only” signs everywhere leave me?
I don’t know the answers to these questions. Perhaps it was the dulling inattention to racial prejudice on the part of adults I respected: community leaders, pastors and politicians. Perhaps it was segregation itself which, despite its injustice, was a way of life.
My essay received a “B” with comments from the stern Miss Una Harris: “Well written technically, but I see no jottings!” (I had forgotten to hand in my rough “prewriting notes.”) Even so, apparently Miss Harris showed the essay to other faculty members. It was well received, causing several teachers to stop me in the cafeteria to compliment me on the essay. One of them said, “You did a good job upholding our way of life.”
The following summer at a youth conference with other ECJC students, I was confronted and convicted by the words of a speaker who was addressing race. The speaker was Bill Moyers, a man whose views (outside of race) are almost diametrically opposed to my own. At the time, Moyers was assistant director of the Peace Corps. He would later become President Johnson’s press secretary. Moyers spoke simply and convincingly of man’s inhumanity to man. He remarked, “Anyone who would come to this particular conference is probably not a true segregationist.”
This comment thrust my mind to my father, who claimed he was a segregationist but who treated everyone with respect, including the Choctaws who lived nearby and the blacks who worked with him in the fields. If he was a segregationist, why did Choctaws and blacks eat at our table? Moyers convinced me that tradition is strong and can make you think you believe things you don’t really believe. He, a classical liberal, turned me, already an opinionated conservative, into an active anti-segregationist, pushing me back to the sensitivity I had lost. The result was my writing articles for newspapers, letters to the editor and teaching in a black school.
Recently, the Washington Examiner reported that in 1975, Joe Biden defended segregation. Uncovering an interview which Biden gave to National Public Radio, the Examiner reports that Biden said, “Black culture is beautiful. Desegregation will diminish black identity.” This is the same fallacious argument I made as a 19-year-old. If Biden had a sincere conversion as I did, I’m glad. Just for the record, he was 33 when he defended segregation and his state of Maryland was experiencing a huge backlash against busing.
Since hearing Bill Moyers, I have fought for racial justice — not that vague bromide, “social justice,” that yells “white privilege” and divides us even more. I reject the professional black racists who make their living crying, “America is racist.”
Americans who fought segregation — successfully, I might add — are granted few if any victories. Yet, since Bill Moyers, a black president has been elected twice. We’ve had a black Secretary of State. In the state where East Central Jr. College resides, there are more black elected officials than in any other state in the nation. At East Central, several Homecoming Queens have been black. Here in Cobb County, Georgia, I see good race relations every week of my life.
President Kennedy had to talk Moyers into being the Peace Corps’ deputy director. Relating their conversation, Moyers stated, “I cherish the memory of JFK for awakening me to a different story for myself.”
I cherish the memory of Moyers’ talk, of a small college, and a youth conference that re-awakened in me a different story as well.