Growing up in Virginia, I knew racism. Not just the subtle form of denied opportunities or preconceived bias that remains an inherent part of American culture. In the places I called home, racism blared with shouted slurs between cafeteria tables and revisionist history classes crafted by the Daughters of the Confederacy.
At high school graduation, I sat next to an African American young man with my unusual last name. The folklore surrounding my surname suggests I’m related to anyone with it, in some form or another. The odd spelling resulted from a mistake on the emigration forms of two brothers named Haible in the 1700s. I had never met my classmate before we sat side-by-side at graduation. We’d never attended the same classes. When I moved in the 9th grade, I joined the “college-bound” track at my Richmond-area high school. Since only a third of our class matriculated, there were many students I never met in four years.
Had he been white, I would have asked him about his last name.
Since my family had been in the south long before the Civil War and owned farms, I had a suspicion how we might have been related, but neither of us seemed inclined to talk about it. We sat in awkward silence until the ceremony ended and dashed to our respective families, already on uneven paths in life.
Given the blatant racism that surrounded me, it was easy to think of myself as not racist. I had family members and friends who made inappropriate comments. “You don’t mean that,” I’d chide if the person was my age, but more often than not, I’d say nothing to the older generations. I didn’t realize the extent of my cultural racism until I moved to New Jersey.
For the first time in my life, men of color sat next to me in public places. I’m ashamed to say, I noticed. I wasn’t afraid, but I was curious. I didn’t yet comprehend the power I yield as a white woman. I was too focused on the power outside my grasp and the preconceived conceptions others placed on me as a young woman. Most of use have seen the video of a white woman in Central Park wielding her whiteness and femaleness as a weapon against a black man who asked her to leash her dog. It’s easy to understand now why men of color avoided me in the racially-charged places where I’m from: I was a dangerous unknown.
I moved from Virginia to attend graduate school at Rutgers-Newark, NJ, which boasts one of the most diverse student populations in America. I was the only Southerner in any of my classes. For the first time in my life, people looked to me “for the Southern perspective”. I didn’t like it. I didn’t feel qualified to speak for an entire culture. I also didn’t like standing out among my peers for something I couldn’t control, i.e. my birth region. (Yes, I realized the irony of this white angst.). During one class about identity, we often delved into the cultural mores that shaped us as individuals. Throughout the semester, I’d confessed to having family members who fought with the Confederacy, my high school graduation story, and the very real possibility that my ancestors were slave owners. One day, the professor surprised me with the following question:
“Do you think you should have apologized to your classmate?”
“Why?” I asked. “I wasn’t alive before the Civil War, and even if I were, I would have been a Southern woman. Their power was limited at best.”
“But do you think your family is in a better position today because of what happened years ago? Don’t you think that warrants an apology?”
By this point, I was feeling very defensive, outnumbered in a class of intellectual Northerners. “Maybe we’re distant cousins,” I said. Maybe we were, but he’d never been to any family reunions I’d attended. “Even so, I wouldn’t apologize for the sins of my ancestors. All I can do is be a better person today.”
A decade ago, my grandfather received an award from the Daughters of the Confederacy. By this point, I’d been married to a New Jersey native for years and lived north of the Mason-Dixon line long enough to be embarrassed by what my husband was about to witness.
The event did not disappoint.
“Oh my God,” was about all my husband could say after the second rousing rendition of Dixie.
Women circled me at the event, asking if I’d like to become a member.
“I live in New Jersey,” I said and watched them scatter. I should have said “Hell no.” Either way, the buck stopped with me.
But as far as I’d come in recognizing the racism of my upbringing, I still catch myself being racist. When my daughter began studying the Civil War in school, she told me it was because of slavery. I started spouting off facts about “states’ rights”.
She looked baffled. I paused to think about what I was saying.
After all, that was what I’d learned in my text books. (Of course, the right individual states wanted to decide was whether or not it was ok to own people, but doesn’t states’ rights sound so much more patriotic?) And didn’t those Southern men, with far fewer resources, fight with such tactical brilliance to extend the war years when, by all accounts, they should have been annihilated in a month or two? And didn’t those northern factories at the time treat their workers far worse than plantation owners treated their slaves? All these reasons were used at the time of the war to gain Confederate support, but the fact educators were still teaching this shit, unironically, to children in the 1990s is disgusting. The fact I was about to repeat it to my own child, even more so.
Throughout my education, I learned more reasons why the War of Northern Aggression was “just” than the lasting impact of racism in the United States. But the buck will again stop with me.
I quickly corrected myself. “I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re right. Slavery was a terrible part of southern history, and it ended with the Civil War, but we still have a long way to go for everyone to be treated equal.”
I want to do better. I will continue to check myself, to learn, and to listen. If death of George Floyd and the protests that continue have taught me anything, it’s that we, as a nation, north and south, have a long way to go to end racism for the next generation.
It’s years too late, but to that young man with my last name, I’m sorry. Not for what my ancestors may or may not have done to yours, but for not knowing you. For only sitting beside you when forced by alphabetical order. For taking the road before me without glancing back to see where ours might have crossed. All these years later, I’m still learning the painful truths of your life and the prejudice of mine. And for that, I’m truly sorry.
Kathryn Hively
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