My parents raised me to stand up for people being picked on, but I didn’t do it as much as I should have. Even though I knew these things were racist, it was hard to get them out of my mind for years. It is so normalized there that I had no idea people everywhere in the United States didn’t feel like that.Īfter going to school at Bismarck High, I had to unpack and unlearn some awful phrases and attitudes. “Clear the Rez” was a particularly chilling thing to invoke in a state with a history of forced assimilation and genocide of indigenous folks.Īsk any non-Native American adult in Bismarck for their best impression of an “Indian voice.” Almost everyone there will give you the exact same racist skit about people from the town of Fort Yates. The slogan on the shirt read “Pack the Bowl, Clear the Rez.” It showed a pipe being cleaned out over the Bismarck Community Bowl, the field where they played homecoming games, and racist drawings of indigenous people falling out onto the field. Some kids from my school made T-shirts for a football game against another school with a high indigenous population. Indigenous students were treated very poorly in my entire public school experience in Bismarck, N.D. I have no interest in ever returning to New Orleans because despite its marvelous cuisine and rich historical sights it left me with sad and embarrassing memories. The bigotry affected every citizen whose right to utilize the pools had been taken away. Suzanne Borbón, 63, Californiaĭuring the summers, my main entertainment in hot, very humid New Orleans was swimming at a pool.Īfter legislation deemed that the city pools had to become integrated, the local government decided to close them. We should have made the teacher change the role. But being part of the magic of a theatrical production made me decide to do it. I never believed in the accuracy or authenticity of my character. I wanted to be a part of the show and accepted the role as all I would get after not being chosen to play Helen Keller. While the makeup was not exaggerated blackface, it was apparent that I was a white kid in makeup. There were no black students in our school nor any black families in the district, but the teacher/director chose to leave the parts in and find kids to play them. I wore black makeup on my face and the back of my hands and was taught to speak my lines in a warped Southern “slave” accent. In 1963, when I was in seventh grade in Lake Arrowhead, Calif., I had a minor role in a high-school production of a play about Helen Keller. When I was a preschooler in the 1950s, we all sang the ubiquitous “Ring Around the Rosy” that ended with “Last one down is a _baby.” I am horrified that we were ever taught this version. I thought nothing of it, because like legions of others back then, I lacked the sensitivity to understand how hurtful that behavior could be.īut when is this witch hunt that started in Virginia going to end? We’ve all done insensitive things, but it seems if we all want some tender mercy for our own misdeeds, we better be willing to give some. I was a 12-year-old kid at my cousins’ school-sanctioned minstrel show near Providence, R.I., where many kids were in blackface. Mayli-Anne Waterbury, 75, Wakefield, R.I. He only knew my dad as a very liberal Democrat who loved to make fun of conservative Republicans. He was surprised to find his grandfather’s role was so prominent. I told my 40-year-old son the story of the minstrel shows a week ago. From a very early age, he taught me to reject the racial discrimination and segregation in our town. He was a Sunday school teacher in our Methodist church. They were the perfect example of black men being depicted as not-very-smart clowns.Īt the time I was proud of my father. Of course, I now know how offensive those portrayals of black men really were.
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