A Lot Has Changed...But Much Has Not

Today is Martin Luther King day in the USA. And today my favorite local public radio station, WVXU 91.7, rebroadcast an interview from September 2015 with Marian Spencer and Dorothy Christenson, the author of KeepOn Fighting: The Life and Civil Rights Legacy of Marian A. Spencer. Marian Spencer was 95 at the time of the interview. 

Marian Spencer was and still is an amazing civil rights activist locally and nationally. She was raised in Gallipolis, Ohio in the home of her grandfather, a freed slave from West Virginia. She joined the NAACP when she was 13. In 1938 she came to Cincinnati to attend the University of Cincinnati. She earned a BA in English in 1942. In 1981 she became the first black female president of the local NAACP and remains the only black female to have held that position in the Cincinnati chapter. She was the first black female to be elected to Cincinnati city council and served as Vice Mayor as a member of the Charter party.

One of her most famous battles was against Coney Island in 1952. After her sons had heard a radio ad inviting children to Coney Island to meet a local TV personality she called to verify. But once she told them they were “Negroes” she was told that her children were not allowed. On July 4^th Spencer showed up at the gate of Coney Island and was banished by a guard brandishing a gun.

Soon after her banishment she chaired the  NAACP Legal Action vs. Coney Island, Cincinnati, Ohio. The day Spencer showed up at the gate at Coney Island she had enlisted the help of approximately 25 other African-Americans to stand in line and be turned away. They all testified and were asked who called them to go to Coney Island. All answered, “Marian Spencer.” When she took the stand the attorney for Coney Island admonished her, “a white woman”, for getting involved with the Negroes. He called her a Communist. Her simple reply was “Sir, I am neither a white woman nor a Communist.”The NAACP subsequently won the case.

More recently Spencer spoke out against the controversial parks levy which was pushed by Mayor John Cranley. She initially supported the levy. But when she found out the money would only be used for capital projects and would become a charter amendment she pulled her support.  The levy was voted down.

Much has changed since MLK marched and gave his life for civil rights in the United States. Yes, we elected a black president…twice. But there is still a lot that has not changed.

Unarmed black men (and children) are being murdered by rogue policemen, who are indiscriminately protected by their blue brethren. We are seeing more black artists in the movies but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences seems to be blind to that fact. OprahWinfrey is the most respected, wealthiest, influential and generous black woman in the world, yet blacks still rate as the highest percentage of those living in poverty and imprisoned in the United States, which touts itself as the richest country in the world. The face of our government, local state and federal, is still predominately white men. 

Today while visiting my 87-year-old father he sarcastically remarked “I wish they’d make a holiday on my birthday.” This is not the first time he’s made that crack and he is not the only person I have heard use this kind of coded language.

Yes a lot has changed, but much has not.

Today is Martin Luther King's Actual Birthday

...and I feel the need to speak out about the state of racism in our country today. It makes me sad, but not surprised, that one of the end results of having Barack Obama, President of the United States, a black man, in the White House, is the ugly muck of racism rising to the top of our American society.

Out of the Mountain of Despair A Stone of Hope

We have Sarah Palin using racist terms like "shucking and jiving" and John Sununu making allusions to the denigrating racist description of African Americans when he referred to our President as "lazy." The complete description so popular among racists is "lazy, shiftless n.....r." Then there are the Photoshopped posters with the President's face super-imposed on an ape or with a Hitler mustache. I am embarrassed when I hear or see these things.

When I was growing up in the eastern suburbs of Cincinnati in the 60s and 70s there were no African Americans living in my neighborhood nor attending my school. It wasn't until I started working at Swallen's in Fairfax at the age of 16 that I met and worked alongside African Americans. I became friends with many. I was fortunate to be raised by a mother who never allowed the n word to be said in our house and taught us to respect people who were different than us. Over the years I have had the privilege to know many African Americans and have the honor to call them friend.

The fact is, many people don't think they are racist.

Some years ago I was in a restaurant having lunch with a African American female friend. When the waitress left our checks on the table, I laid down cash and my friend laid down her credit card. When the waitress returned with the card and change she gave me, the white woman, the credit card and my friend the change. It was a teachable moment for me and my first exposure to what is called subconscious racism.

An innocent mistake by the waitress? Sure. But it illustrated the underlying perception of some white people that people of color are "less than" and could not possibly own a credit card or a house or a car. For many white folk it is an automatic subconscious reaction. Like women who hold their purses a little tighter when they pass a black man on the street.

Usually white folk who behave this way have never had any kind of relationship with a human of different skin color or ethnic background. So they believe the stereotypes and the misconceptions they see or hear from sources like Fox "News" or the ravings of Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. My challenge to them is to make an effort to really KNOW someone of a different skin color, a different religion, a different culture. You will be surprised how much your own life will be enriched.

To many in our country Martin Luther King's birthday just means an extra day added to the weekend. To me it is a reminder that we still have a long way to go in America to eliminate racism.

Post Script: In the January 19, 2013 issue of the Enquirer journalist Mark Curnutte shares some startling statistics on racism nationally and locally. The following are some excerpts from that article:

"A majority of Americans now express prejudice toward African-Americans, even if they don’t recognize those attitudes, according to an Associated Press survey released in October 2012. Conducted with researchers from Stanford University, the University of Michigan and University of Chicago, the survey showed that the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments increased to 56 percent in 2012, up from 49 percent in 2008, when measured by an implicit racial attitudes test."

"The U.S. prison population comprises 40 percent African-American males, though they make up just 14 percent of the overall population. In Hamilton County, 70 percent of the jail population is black men, even though the overall black population – male and female – is 26 percent."

"The number of hate groups – which includes neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, skinheads, black separatists and others – has increased 69 percent since 2000 and now has reached 1,018 nationally, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights organization based in Montgomery, Ala. Since the end of 2008, the number of anti-government groups, including armed militias, grew 755 percent, from 149 to 1,274 in 2011."

"Despite advances in workforce integration, Cincinnati remains one of the nation’s most racially segregated cities. Cincinnati ranked eighth in residential segregation of the nation’s 22 most racially divided cities, according to an analysis of 2010 census results by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. It reports that 66.9 percent of one racial group would have to move to other census tracts to integrate Cincinnati."

Here's the full article On MLK Day, 2nd Obama inaugural sign of progress