Throughout my adult life, I have struggled over the color line. I’ve never doubted it exists. Rather, my struggle has been over which side of that line I’m on.
This struggle has been on my mind since my 20s, when a Japanese American woman many years my senior told me this story:
She recalled being a young college student in the South in the 1950s. She was 12 years from being released from an internment camp where she and her family were detained during WWII.
She went to school determined to make something of herself. She wanted nothing more than to quietly toil to prove herself as a “good” American. Success would be her way of thumbing her nose at white supremacy.
But in the South she was faced with segregation. One day she found herself in a park wanting a drink of water. There were two drinking fountains – one for whites, and one for Blacks.
She intuitively walked toward the “black” drinking fountain. But just as she was about to take a drink, a police officer stopped her and ushered her to the whites only fountain. Confused and scared, she did as she was told and drank at the fountain for whites. She realized with shock that the police officer considered her white.
Years later, her life was profoundly changed by witnessing the Civil Rights Movement. Here were people who weren’t quietly enduring. They were standing up, making demands, marching. And as she learned about the issues at stake, she came to understand that the principle of the color line. Being pushed onto the white side of the line on that day at the fountains was not an endorsement of her. It was an act meant to stigmatize and isolate Black people.
She told me the story as a lesson in not being too cocky. I heard her and try to live the lesson. But what really stuck was the idea of the color line.
Whether intentionally or not, we reinforce the power of race to define us unless we commit to see life through the lens of race – not just my race, but of race writ large.
Through that lens, the disadvantages built into the menu of choices we are given are obvious to some of us, but less so to others. It depends on which side of that line you live on, and whether or not you are allowed to cross over now and then.
In this age of racist drug wars, roll backs in voting rights, Stand Your Ground laws, and legal licenses to racially profile African Americans as criminals, Latinos as “illegal,” and presumed Arabs as “terrorists,” the color line can be hard to discern. Rather than being colorblind, we are blinded by the absolute ubiquity of racism.
But if you look hard enough, there it is, written in the tears of those who wait for the return of the nearly 900,000 Black men in U.S. prisons. It is drawn with the stories of those pushed off the welfare rolls when assistance turned to punishment. And it is plain in the persecution of undocumented immigrants and Muslims, and the resentment and bullying of Asian school children because of the lie of the model minority.
The color line is as vivid as ever if we only have the eyes to see it. Erasing it will require us to first ask the question, on which side do we stand?
2 replies on “Where I Stand on the Color Line”
I find your observations on race profound – brought me to tears, given my own history, and understanding and appreciation for your truths. Thanks for bringing forth your clarity and the power of anothers’ story of what’s right – and wrong – with the system propped up by racism. I really, really thank you!
Scot, this article is excellent. I have great appreciation for the story, and the cross generational exchange.This is a really good old question worth asking for all of us; which side am I on? Especially these days where everything is all about ‘getting the cover off the book, but not what is has in it’, and the name of the game is to create confusion, or cover up what things mean -I mean everybody gets confused about what policies and practicies are in their best interest. And all of us movement people confuse policing with being liberated. And Accountability becomes a form you can fill out in lieu of the accountability in that woman sharing that story with you.
As I and my comrades struggle to do liberation work in the belly of the beast, I find myself more and more concerned that in an effort to be multi-cultural we have begun to use language and praxis that does not challenge white supremacy. I appreciate readings that uncover this, and seek to find ways that grow beyond changing the words while still being based in straight-out-the-can white supremacy. I hope to use this article (and some others you are writing) in my work to hopefully keep building opportunities to broaden and deepen the conversation about race.