Crossing Mason/Dixon line in 1952 was an experience
My perspective regarding the societal influences and all of their denigrating and horrific outcomes on “other” human beings, especially those of color, come from a personal experience as a teenager.
That experience, which happened when I was 17 years old and quit school to join the Navy during the Korean War, left a mark on my psyche that remains with me until this very day.
It does so because I had the good fortune to be born into a family who believed and practiced the biblical tenets of “I am my brother’s keeper” and “There by the grace of God, go I.”
Growing up, my parents and other family members welcomed all my friends of every color, hue and ethnicity for their personas and respect.
That’s the reason my very first experience of being away from home stuck with me.
Coming from an East Coast, liberal-thinking environment, it was a shock crossing the Mason/ Dixon line in 1952 en route and among people and amid a culture unfamiliar to me.
It was during the earlier years of protests, marches and campaigns of the civil rights era, and overdue advancement for justice.
The totality of that roughly two-and-a-half-year experience, starting with boot camp in Baimbridge, Md., to eventually being assigned to a ship, the LST 983, which was stationed in Little Creek, Va., introduced me to a “new world.”
I was immaturely unaware of being a kid from “the North” now confronted with segregation and man’s inhumanity to man within every context thinkable.
While on liberty or out at sea, I traveled to numerous Southern states and hatred prevailed in every state I visited with my fellow Navy compatriots with similar sentiments.
Racism is an illness/sickness that children should learn about early.
I believe that the emphasis and concentration on it should be initiated from nursery schools to high schools with historically factual information from our inception forward.
And the pairing of Caucasians, blacks, Hispanics and every ethnicity must be involved in the participatory process of learning both inside and outside the classroom.
The involvement of parents and their awareness of facts and reality must be part of the process.
Because I feel there is an element of misogyny associated with racist attitudes, it is my fervent belief that the quicker we, as a nation, enact and attain gender parity in the governance of our entire nation, the caring and sharing character traits of women shall aide us in nullifying the innate character traits associated with men’s power and control instincts.