I know empirically that the days are not getting shorter. Twenty-four hours are still twenty-four hours, no matter what time zone you are in or daylight you are saving. The weeks still contain seven days, although every Friday seems like it happened only two days ago. And don’t get me started on Christmas. I remember when it seemed like decades between Christmas’, hence the old saying, “as slow as Christmas”. Now it seems like just a month or two separates this Christmas from last Christmas and next Christmas. Has the Earth sped up? Or is it something else?
I don’t feel older, but if I look at the date of my birth, it becomes more and more like ancient history. I’m remembering agonizing years of struggle for women’s rights, civil rights and wars that nowadays may get one or two paragraphs in a high school textbook (are there such things as textbooks?). I remember a time when I could not have a bank account, a credit card, or make a major purchase without my husband’s accompanying signature. My name was Mrs., instead of my given name. If I hadn’t been married, it meant that my father would have had to sign for me. I don’t know what happened to the females who had neither a father nor husband. As late as the 1950s, women could involutarily be committed to mental institutions by fathers or husbands without medical or legal requirements.
For a time in the 1940s, women were a major factor in the workforce because so many men were fighting overseas, and military production was ramped up. After WWII, when the men returned, women lost their jobs. It was more important that a man, who was considered the head of the household, have a job. Women were sent back home to be homemakers to support their men and nurture their children. I remember even into the 1960s, when I worked in offices, I was considered like part of the furnishings or a minion to be ordered about at the behest of any male in the company. I did all the step-and-fetch-it jobs as well as my own as a purchasing agent in one company and a secretary in another. A male colleague could pat my butt or throw an arm around me at will. There was no HR to run to. I learned to negotiate my autonomy with humor and strategy so as not to offend but let men know I was neither property nor servant. It worked.
I remember a time when people of color, then called “coloreds”, not blacks or Hispanics, were relegated to the back of the bus and entered and exited through the back door only – no questions asked. I remember a time when there were “separate but equal” schools, swimming pools, public washrooms, and water fountains. The signs said “Whites” and “Coloreds,” so there was no question. They lived on their side of town, we lived on ours. The only time we went to their side was for barbecue. Daddy took me with him to get barbecued smoked ribs from a man in colored town. The memory of those ribs lingers on my tongue, and I’ve never since had any as good as they were.
In 1948, the idea that a black man would be President or that a black woman would be Vice President or sit on the Supreme Court was as foreign a thought as man landing on the moon. Yes, there was a time when a moon landing was science FICTION. At that time, there were no black or female CEOs in major corporations in the U.S. The United States was run by white males.
As a small child, racism was just the way things were. I didn’t know any different. One quick story is about a time when my mother and I were going into downtown Wichita. I think I was about three. My mother told this story to me countless times. To her, it represented a time when I publicly humiliated her. Of course, I see it differently. We lived in the small community of Riverside in Wichita. We only had one car that my father used to go to work, so when Mom wanted to go to town, she and I took a short bus ride. We waited for the bus at the corner of 18th and Burns. When it arrived, Mom helped me up the steps into the bus. She claims that as soon as I got on, I ran toward the back of the bus with my arms open wide yelling, “Grandpa, grandpa.” The back of the bus was for coloreds only. Evidently, an elderly gray-haired black man was sitting back there, whom I found appealing. He had a big smile on his face. He seemed like a grandpa to me. All the bus riders, including the unlucky black man I targeted, held their collective breaths. This was NOT accepted behavior, and I’m sure it caused no end of consternation. Mom grabbed me by the arm and yanked me back up the aisle and out the door as fast as she could. The bus doors were closed, and it continued its route. Heaven only knows what the “grandpa” on the bus thought or what those around him said. I wish I could have been there to witness. The point is, I didn’t see color. I saw a grandpa. I needed to be taught that those people were different – not our kind.
Mom clung to her nebulous racism her entire life. It was how she was raised. She didn’t openly criticize, disparage, or mock people who were not white, but the subtext in her body language was discernible – especially by me, because I was aware of her prejudices. I remember mom as a gracious, kind, but critical woman. She maintained friendships with people from her high school days and later, all of her workplaces. She was a generous friend to all. And yet, under the surface was an inability to accept people of other races as equals. I really blew her mind when, in 1960, I told her my social studies teacher was black, and I thought he was so cute I’d consider marrying a black man – cuteness being the major criteria for marriage at that point in my life.
I wrote a short story about my encounter with a black woman who lived in our neighborhood, yet was totally isolated. It was one of my ah-ha moments. It happened when I was seven and could form an opinion about it. I’ll post that story at a later date. To this day, I don’t know how or why she was in a segregated white neighborhood.
The bottom line is that I lived that dynamic history, including civil and military violence. I was a witness, a participant, as our country moved through huge social changes. Today it seems we are regressing back to some of those old disputes. As a country, we are not perfect, but we have genuinely progressed. I hope progression can continue without more violence and with respect for what has been accomplished.
According to statistics (which I don’t go according to very much), forty years ago, 80% of US citizens were white, and it is expected that by the middle of this century, white citizens will be a minority. I maintain that color will be less and less an issue as the world shrinks and people have children with people from other places, other ethnicities. Someday, we’ll all be the same lovely tan color, and discrimination will no longer be a factor based on color. I’m sure as flawed human beings, we’ll find other ways to discriminate.
Ho-hum. The cycle will be unbroken – just under new management and rules. So maybe that is why my days are getting shorter. I’ve seen it all before, and my soul is ready to move on to whatever is next. My mind and body, though, are not ready, so I will continue to observe the revolutionary evolution of our species with curiosity.
