How Racism Saved My Life

  

How Race and Racism Changed My Life

America has had a black President and a now has a Black Vice President. If race is the problem how did they achieve success. Really if you look at those two examples there is something that stands out. It is about attitude. Both of these individuals are first generation blacks in America. They do not have a link to the four hundred year history of race in America. They were also raised by families that told them they could be anything they wanted to be. They were never told to mind their place. If they were, they did not buy into it.

In fact that seems to be something I have noticed in Senate Testimonies over the last few years. It seems immigrants care enough about America to get involved. Dozens of people I have witnessed speaking are either immigrants themselves or first generation immigrants of America’s immigrants. They see America as a land of opportunity, something many Americans no longer see in America, mainly because it is to easy to just complain.

The most recent election in America and all the Black Lives Matter protests may be an indicator that blacks in America are no longer buying the lie that they are inferior. The election in Georgia gives the best example. Georgia went from Red to Blue. Not only that they proved in the runoff race, that Black Votes Do Matter. Thank God for this. We just suffered through four years of hell because blacks failed to take part in the 2016 election.

The events of 9/11shook America to its core. It made us question our goodness and our greatness as a nation. It set the stage for a change I NEVER, thought I would see in the America I lived in. In July 2004 I saw a young man give a speech that summed up the hope of America, and that it was a hope for everybody. Four years later that man ran for President and succeeded. Even with portions of America denying his very existence.

I am sure where I live is not the only place that his posters were taken down. When Obama won the election, it stunned me. I think people believed and bought into his message of hope.

The past twelve years the Republican Party has been fueled by hate and a desire to undo anything that Obama did. Here we are in the middle of a pandemic and the Republicans are totally focused on getting rid of the Affordable Care Act, just as Democrats are determined to get rid of Trump. Have the Republicans solved “ANY” of America’s problems or offered their own solutions to the problems facing America. The answer is a big fat NO. Unfortunately for America, neither have the Democrats. Exactly why we need a party that is for all Americans.

America needs a mentoring program for race relations. When in the Army I spent several months as the only white person in a 12 man room. I learned a lot of things about being a black American, that I would never have learned without that experience. Most of America's race problems are from a lack of communication. When we see white cops, killing black citizens we are seeing a lack of respect for human life, especially of our fellow Americans. Mainly because they can get away with it. They are using their authority, to avoid responsibility, for their actions. Authority needs to also require accountability.

Why can they get away with it, because of a lack of peer pressure to do what is right. It is something that is taught. When in the Army at Ft. Bragg, I went to the store to get milk with a friend of mine and his wife. While he went in to get the milk, his wife, baby and I sat in the car waiting. A black man walked past the car and the wife, started telling the baby who could not even walk yet, say N----- Johnny, this went on and on till her husband returned. I know for a long time I blamed it on the fact they were from Alabama. After my months in the room as the only white boy, I found it is taught, it does not just happen.

Even when I was growing up I experienced it in a different way. My Dad took me to the Indianapolis 500 time trials. We had to drive thru a very dark part of Indianapolis. I remember my Dad making me roll up the windows and lock the doors. His actions puzzled me. My home town only has a few hundred blacks in the whole city. Our high school had over 1200 students and only five students in the whole school were black.

Why I found my father a World War II veterans actions puzzling was that he had me do his good deeds so to speak. We had one elderly black lady in our whole neighborhood and her husband had died. My Dad sent me to mow her yard and shovel her snow, whenever it needed it. As he did for several other widows. While I would never call my father a racist, stereotypes definitely effected his decision process.

If America wants to cure the problem, the first thing we need to do is admit there is one. I remember when I was stationed in France and went to Paris that Blacks, Whites and others mingled and interacted and race was not a barrier or a problem. At least I didn't see it.

When I see the peaceful protests going on, I realize there is hope for America. One thing we need in America is accountability for every life. No one is above the law, especially those who administer the law. The idea that a law enforcement officer can take a life and is above the law is absurd. It may happen, but not when a person is shot in the back seven times from point blank range, or when a man is running away from law enforcement. He is not a threat, he is scared and in this country he has every right to be. Which is a sad thing to say.

My first experience with racism came in April or May of my tenth grade year in high school. I was taking a printing class and had to manually set type. I had a piece of type and looked at it and could not make up my mind if it was a “j” or an “l” and started saying Enee, Menee, Minee Moe and suddenly realized the person at the table face to face with mine was our schools star athlete a senior, and he was black. I stopped what I was saying. He said, “Finish it.” and I did. I have never forgotten what he said. “Words have meaning, and they have consequences” Two months later I dropped out of high school and joined the Army. I remember setting on the back steps of my barracks a week or so into training and four or five guys were talking. As I listened it was like they were speaking a foreign language. Little did I know that a year down the road I would get a crash course and learn that language.

While living in that twelve man room I got a date with a local girl. Her Dad was the head of a local bank. He and I tried to make small talk while we were waiting for dinner. I bought up the subject that I noticed almost all the blacks in the community lived in run down shacks but had brand new and really nice cars in the drive and nice color TV’s which I could see from the road. I asked why they didn’t they fix up their houses. They evidently had money. The banker made it clear to me that they could buy anything they wanted, but they would never get a loan from him to fix up their property. Because then they would want to sell their house and move, possibly, in next to him. That was not happening. The supper was very good, but the atmosphere was very chilly. Needless to say that was my last date with her. She was still very friendly, but I got the understanding I was not welcome to come back to his house.

Sometime later I went to the enlisted club on post and had a learning experience. We had to be in uniform to attend the club. I was the only active duty paratrooper on the post. The other one lived off base. Anyhow I got called out by a black guy who wanted to start a fight with me. I said fine, but lets take it outside. As we went outside several of his friends fell in behind us. When we faced off outside several of his friends circled us. I was sure I was gonna get my ass kicked regardless what happened. BUT, All of a sudden another group of blacks came out of the club and formed a circle around his circle. It was my room mates. One of them stepped forward and said, “If you want a piece of his ass, your going to have to whip us too.” Suddenly it all just cooled down. When we got back to the barracks I got tagged with my new nickname, I was the cotton tailed nigger.

I learned a couple things living in that room. I asked why they always went everywhere in pairs. They explained that a lone black man walking in Georgia was an invitation to be assaulted if not killed. I also learned that they felt they had a station in life and they should not feel they could get ahead. If I did nothing else in the time I lived in that room. I told them that was bull crap and they were entitled to anything any other American had. If they did not stand up for their rights they were only hurting themselves. Over the time in that room I did acquire a couple changes in my life. I like bright colored clothes and most of my CD’s are soul music.

Almost ten years later I was stationed in Germany and one of the black soldiers in my squad was charged with drug possession. It was all a set up. My superiors wanted to get rid of him because they considered him a trouble maker. I refused to press the charges. So they moved him out of my squad and charged him anyhow. I went to his trial as a character witness. I knew I was cutting my own throat when I did it. I told my wife that if I testified my career was over.

I went to the trial and they would not let me testify till after he was sentenced. Then it was to vouch for his character. The judge asked me what happened and I told him. He smiled and looked at me. Then he said I have had six people tell me their stories and I realize yours is the truth. It makes sense of all their stories which were missing one thing or another. So instead of kicking him out of the Army which is what my superiors wanted, he fined him $25 and dropped all other punishments. My superiors were livid. I paid for it when I left Germany a few months later. The gave me two efficiency reports to ruin my career. They missed one thing. They had promoted me to Staff Sergeant half ways between the two reports.

Actually that turned out to be a Blessing in disguise. A year and a half later after reenlisting for six years at Fort Campbell. I ended up going to Panama, I volunteered for the Qualitative Management Program and used those two reports as part of reason. I had also received several reports in Panama saying I was physically unfit for my job. Just as I suspected the review board never caught the little glitch on the efficiency reports. For some reason I could not handle the heat in Panama and could not physically do my job. My father came down from the states and we went sight seeing. I could not keep up with him. It was then I realized I had a problem. I could not do the two miles in eighteen minutes for my physical. I was a miler in high school and ran five minute miles, so I knew something was wrong but I did not know what until almost thirty years later I found out the problem. I had been exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam.

The reason My father came to visit me in Panama was that in World War II he had been at the Normandy invasion and at the end of the war he was in Tokyo Harbor tied up close enough to the USS Missouri to watch the surrender ceremony. In the process of going to the Pacific Ocean they only kept a skeleton crew on his ship and picked the crew back up in California. It allowed the sailors a chance to go home and see their families. So he missed the trip through the Canal and wanted to see it. We had a neat thing about our birthdays. I was born on December 7^th the day World War II started. He was born on August 6, the day they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and technically ended the war.

In July of 2010 I went to a 4^th of July celebration at my best friends home. Most of the guest were retired military. One of them was a retired Air Force Colonel who had worked in claims and compensation before he retired. In the course of our compensation the subject came up that I had had a heart attack in 2004 and had a defibrillator. He informed me that all I had to do was file a claim and based on my condition I was automatically qualified for Agent Orange Compensation. In January of 2012 I decided to file a claim based on our conversation.

In October of 2014 I started receiving my Agent Orange Compensation. It was not till four or five years later I realized I had been ripped off for about half of the compensation I should have gotten. I received a copy of the Niehmer Claims compensation guidelines and realized I should have received compensation from the time the claim was created. As I was under VA treatment at the time. Actually they owe me till the Diabetes Claims were started. If they want to be technical my letter to request discharge under the Qualitative Management Program made clear that I wanted out for health reasons, Even though I did not know at the time what caused those problems, so technically they owe me from the start of it all.

After leaving the Army I did not really feel like I had wasted thirteen years of my life in the Army. I learned to drive a truck in Vietnam while driving OJT for three months. It got me a job in civilian life. I did it till I had my heart attack caused by the Agent Orange, but I do feel cheated out of what I was entitled too. Which is part of why I felt compelled to write this post for my blog. I intend to send a copy of it to my Congressman and see if he can get me what I am entitled to.