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Note: I have a much longer essay about... well, everything that I'll be publishing soon, but for the moment I just want to get this down.
Friday June 12th will mark the 53rd anniversary of Loving vs. Virginia the Supreme Court decision that struck down laws against inter-racial marriage in the United States. That's less then 2 years before I was born. I learned about it when I was in middle or high school I think, during my social studies classes examining the Civil Rights struggle.
What they never bothered to teach me was that my home state, Maryland, not only segregated schools until 1955, they also had their own miscegenation laws in place until just before the Loving decision. They never bothered to teach me Maryland was a slave state, even though it fought for the Union, and I never figured that out until.. um... I was much older. And I grew up in Montgomery County, which was and is fairly progressive. Just not as much as I thought.
I don't consider myself a racist, but I freely admit it's been only in the past decade or so that I've come to understand how privileged I am because of the color of my skin. The fact that I was ignorant of my privilege because I wasn't taught any better is no excuse.
Everything I was taught about the Civil Rights movement made me think it was in the distant past, that it was over done, but if I'd been born just ten years earlier it would have been in my lifetime. More to the point it's still in my lifetime, because just because a decision was made a bit over fifty years ago doesn't mean the job isn't done. It probably won't be done in my lifetime. It may not be done in my children's lifetime.
Racism is still with us, and only the blind believe otherwise. It took me too long to see.
Friday June 12th will mark the 53rd anniversary of Loving vs. Virginia the Supreme Court decision that struck down laws against inter-racial marriage in the United States. That's less then 2 years before I was born. I learned about it when I was in middle or high school I think, during my social studies classes examining the Civil Rights struggle.
What they never bothered to teach me was that my home state, Maryland, not only segregated schools until 1955, they also had their own miscegenation laws in place until just before the Loving decision. They never bothered to teach me Maryland was a slave state, even though it fought for the Union, and I never figured that out until.. um... I was much older. And I grew up in Montgomery County, which was and is fairly progressive. Just not as much as I thought.
I don't consider myself a racist, but I freely admit it's been only in the past decade or so that I've come to understand how privileged I am because of the color of my skin. The fact that I was ignorant of my privilege because I wasn't taught any better is no excuse.
Everything I was taught about the Civil Rights movement made me think it was in the distant past, that it was over done, but if I'd been born just ten years earlier it would have been in my lifetime. More to the point it's still in my lifetime, because just because a decision was made a bit over fifty years ago doesn't mean the job isn't done. It probably won't be done in my lifetime. It may not be done in my children's lifetime.
Racism is still with us, and only the blind believe otherwise. It took me too long to see.
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